Goudsward’s Monkey Business with Haverhill Movie Star Gets Attention

The latest Pulp Adventures magazine features Dave Goudsward’s look at Haverhill native Katie O’Connor who played the landlady in the 1933 movie, “Son of Kong.”

When Pulp Adventures magazine was compiling its current issue, it looked to Haverhill.

Pulp Adventures is a quarterly journal devoted to studies of the literary roots of modern pop fiction known as pulp magazines. The new issue is a look at the creation of the classic film “King Kong.”

And Haverhill has a definite connection to the famously oversized monkey in the form of WHAV historian Dave Goudsward. More specifically, his 2023 article in WHAV’s Wavelengths eNewspaper, “Haverhill’s Forgotten Movie Star.” Goudsward looks at the life and careers of Haverhill native Katie O’Connor, who became Katherine Klare, the “Irish Thrush,” a balladeer critics considered “the new Maggie Cline,” Haverhill’s other successful Irish chanteuse.

By the 1930s, O’Connor was widowed, well-off and bored. To break the tedium, she became Kathrin Clare Ward, a bit player hired by movie studios for one day, usually with a line or two, just above a background extra in the Hollywood food chain. She launched a new career playing landladies, mothers-in-law and hired help. One of these parts, uncredited per usual, was the landlady as the 1933 sequel “Son of Kong” opens, giving her more dialogue than normal and a pivotal role in setting the plot in motion that would return the cast to Skull Island.

Goudsward’s article is reprinted in Pulp Adventures #46, available at Amazon or boldventurepress.com.

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