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Schaurig schön vorgetragen von M. Rutherford...


The Shooting of Dan McGrew (aus "Vier Frauen und ein Mord")

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;

The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;

Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,

And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.

When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and glare,

There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.

He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,

Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.

There was none could place the stranger's face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;

But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

There's men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;

And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;

With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,

As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.

Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he'd do,

And I turned my head--and there watching him was the lady that's known as Lou.

His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,

Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.

The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,

So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.

In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway,

Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands--my God! but that man could play.

Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,

And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;

With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,

A helf-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;

While high overhead, green, yellow, and red, the North Lights swept in bars?--

Then you've a hunch what the music meant...hunger and might and the stars.

And hunger not of the belly kind, that's banished with bacon and beans,

But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;

For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;

But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowded with a woman's love--

A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true--

(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge,--the lady that's known as Lou.)

Then on a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;

But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear;

That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a devil's lie;

That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away and die.

'Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair, and it thrilled you through and through--

"I guess I'll make it a spread misere," said Dangerous Dan McGrew.

The music almost dies away...then it burst like a pent-up flood;

And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay," and my eyes were blind with blood.

The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,

And the lust awoke to kill, to kill...then the music stopped with a crash,

And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;

In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;

Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm,

And "Boys," says he, "you don't know me, and none of you care a damn;

But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my poke they're true,

That one of you is a hound of hell...and that one is Dan McGrew."

Then I ducked my head and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark;

And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark.

Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew,

While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that's known as Lou.

These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.

They say that the stranger was crazed with "hooch," and I'm not denying it's so.

I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two--

The woman that kissed him and--pinched his poke--was the lady known as Lou.

Mir war heute abend mal langweilig...

Habe es übrigens selber noch nicht mit dem Film verglichen.
Wenn ich es so überfliege, glaube ich allerdings, daß im Film sehr gekürzt wurde.
Die Rutherford-Filme sind meine Kindheitserinnerungen an Miss Marple
überhaupt. Und wenn die gute Jane diesen Monolog im Theater vorspricht,
kommt bei mir auch heute noch eine Gänsehaut auf...

Guten Morgen!

Hier die deutsche Fassung aus dem Film:

Sie schwenkten die Becher in fröhlichem Lärm, in dem Malamute-Saloon.
Ein Junge stand an der Music-Box und er ließ die Scheibe nicht ruh'n.
Und am Ende der Bar saß beim Pokerspiel der gefährliche Dan McGrew;
neben der Frau seines Herzens, mit der sein Glück stand und fiel,
der schönen Lady mit Namen Lou.

Da kam aus der Nacht... da kam aus der Nacht, aus dem klirrenden Frost hinein in die gleißende Gier,
ein Bergmann gestolpert, vom Fluß geradewegs, ganz dreckig und trunken vom Bier.

[...]

Und er dreht sich zurück, und es glühte sein Blick als ob ein Feuer in ihm war!
Und sein Hemd hing lose über der dreckigen Hose, und er starrte schwankend zur Bar.
Er grinste bös' vor sich hin, und er reckte das Kinn und sprach und im Saale ward's stumm:
"Hört zu", sagte er "ihr kennt mich nicht, und schert euch auch gar nicht darum -
aber ich will es euch sagen, daß ihr's von heute an wißt, und ich wette meinen Kopf, es trifft zu:
Daß einer von euch ein Höllenhund ist, und dieser eine heißt Dan McGrew!"

Dann zog rasch ich den Kopf ein und das Licht ging aus und zwei Schüsse durchpeitschten die Bar,
eine Frau schrie laut auf und das Licht ging an, und zwei Männer lagen steif da und starr -
mit durchlöcherter Stirn und bleischwerem Hirn: Der gefährliche Dan McGrew!
Doch der Mann, von dem keiner was wußt', lag gekrallt an der Brust der schönen Lady mit Namen Lou.

Ich bin viel zu schlau, daß ich's laut zu sagen mich trau, aber ganz insgeheim geb ich's zu:
Die Frau, die ihn küßte und ihm sein Geld dabei stahl, war die Lady, Lady mit Namen Lou!

Immer, wenn Miss Marple dieses Gedicht aufsagt, dann wirkt besonders die Synchronstimme von Usrula Krieg, und sie erinnert mich dann an eine andere Figur, die sie synchronisierte: Elsa Lanchester als Emily Stowecroft in "Käpt'n Blackbeards Spukkaschemme". Herrlich, wenn sie dort den Fluch ausspricht!

Ursula Krieg war zweifellos eine der besten Synchronsprecherinnen aller Zeiten, bei mir (neben Miss Marple) vor allem durch die Prinzessin Dragomiroff präsent ("Mrs Armstrongs Mädchenname, MONSIEUR, war Greenwood!")

Vielen Dank Agarallo, vielen Dank Milchester

...herrliche Verse...in Englisch textlich meines Erachtens ein wenig Schauer-voller, in Deutsch dank der einmaligen Synchron-Stimme von Ursula Krieg aber auch ungeheuer ergreifend!