Virginia Gregg

Grand Teton quarryman and family patriarch carefully navigates issues of religion and education in order to eke out a brighter future for his family. Clay Spencer is a hard-working man who loves his wife and large family. He is respected by his neighbors and always ready to give them a helping hand. Although not a churchgoer, he even helps a newly arrived local minister regain his flock after he and Clay get into a bit of trouble. If he has one dream in life it's to build his wife Olivia a beautiful house on a piece of land he inherited on Spencer's mountain. When his eldest son, Clayboy, graduates at the top of his high school class and has the opportunity to go to college, Clay has only one option left to him. —garykmcd Clay Spencer, his wife Olivia Spencer and their nine children are the third and fourth generations of Spencers who have lived on Spencer's Mountain in the Snake River Valley nestled within the Grand Tetons of Wyoming. Like generations before them, they are uneducated and poor but hard working. Despite abhorring religion, Clay has allowed Livie to raise the children as Christians. Clay has long promised Livie a large dream house on the mountain to replace their small house, where they live with Clay's parents. He hopes to build it with the help of his many brothers, for who he has done many favors over the years. Their dreams take a change of focus when their oldest, Clay Jr. - who everyone calls Clayboy - is the first Spencer to ever graduate from high school, not only with honors but at the top of his class. Clayboy wants to continue his education, which he hopes will lead his siblings into a better life than having to work in the quarry like their father. Money becomes the issue. Not only Clay and Livie, but Clayboy's teacher Miss Parker and the newly arrived Preacher Goodman, do whatever they can to help Clayboy achieve this goal. Clayboy's own resolve in this matter is tested by the progressive minded Claris Coleman, who wants to be Mrs. Clay Spencer Jr. sooner than later. —Huggo

Two Korean War veterans re-unite to pull off a heist at a San Francisco airport but find themselves running for their lives. During the Korean War, Matt saves the life of his buddy, Vince, who promises that someday he'll repay Matt by cutting him in on a million dollars. Eight years later Matt is in the midst of a rapidly disintegrating marriage to Nina, a man-hungry alcoholic. Vince suddenly reappears for a reunion with Matt, telling him that enemies of a Central American dictator have hijacked $3.5 million, and that he knows how he can get hold of the money and collect a large reward he'll share with Matt if he will help recover the money. Matt is skeptical, but after a particularly violent quarrel in which he leaves his wife, he agrees to go along with Vince, provided there is no gunplay. —Anonymous

During World War II, a commander finds himself stuck with a decrepit (and pink) submarine, a con man executive officer, and a group of army nurses. A submarine newly commissioned is damaged in the opening days of WW II. A captain, looking for a command insists he can get it to a dockyard and captain it. Going slowly to this site, they find a stranded group of Army nurses and must take them aboard. How bad can it get? Trying to get a primer coat on the sub, they have to mix white and red in order to have enough. When forced to flee the dock during an air attack, they find themselves with the world's only Pink submarine, still with 5 women in the tight quarters of a submarine. —John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net> The Philippines, December 1941. Lt. Commander Matt Sherman is the captain of USS Sea Tiger, a submarine. While in harbour she is damaged by a Japanese air raid, and is close to being written off as sunk. However the crew manage to refloat her and repair her as best they can. Sherman acquires a supply officer, Lt (j.g.) Nick Holden, a staff officer with no discernible naval experience or talents, except one - he is a master of scavenging parts and supplies. The submarine sets out for Australia for repairs. On the way they stop at a US -held island only to find it deserted, but for five nurses. Things are about to get very complicated. —grantss December, 1941. While docked in The Philippines in preparation for its first wartime order to sink or destroy all enemy fleet, the submarine USS Sea Tiger sustains major damage in a Japanese air raid. Lieutenant Commander Matt Sherman, its first and only captain, in lamenting the fact that the Sea Tiger has never seen active battle in its one year of service, is able to convince Capt. J.B. Henderson, rather than sending it to the junk yard, to let his crew make the minor repairs required for it to become at least seaworthy so that they can make the two thousand mile voyage to Darwin, the closest full service naval yard, where all the necessary repairs can be done properly in order for it to be sent back into commission. One problem is that these minor repairs necessarily need to be accomplished within two weeks. Another problem is by the time the decision is made, many of the crew have been reassigned leaving Sherman with a skeleton crew. And a third seemingly just as big a problem is that Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Nicholas Holden is assigned to the crew, he generally attired in dress whites or non-regulation designer clothes, he whose only role in the war has been to make his own life and that of other senior officers and their wives fun and comfortable far away from any danger. Holden is aware that this assignment is outside his comfort zone, but he still wants to play his part working to his strengths of understanding how to operate outside "regulation" so that he can move onto his next more appropriate assignment once they reach Darwin whatever that comfortable assignment may be. Beyond the issue of the sub's seaworthiness or lack thereof with these band-aid repairs and the perils of the war still raging, they face further issues in the seeming incompatibility of male submarine life with an infusion of the feminine in more ways than one en route to Darwin. —Huggo

On Saturday April 9, 1954, Miller Starkey, a small-time hood who works for West Coast mob second-in-command Max Edward Troy, is palling with Troy in a field when he sees hitman Chester Davitt appear over a nearby hill, sawed-off shotgun in hand. Starkey turns but is pushed by Troy and is promptly shot by Davitt. Sgt. Joe Friday, working out of the LAPD's Intelligence Division, gets information on the killing from forensic scientist Ray Pinker as Pinker briefs division chief James Hamilton and other officers. Hamilton suspects Troy and several of his close associates, such as Lee Reinhardt, Wesley Cannon, and Davitt, and after a meeting with chief of police W. H. Parker the detectives arrest Troy and his associates and a low floor of the Crown Regent Hotel is appropriated by the police to allow mass-interrogation. Davitt cannot be found but his wife Belle is brought in and angrilly calls out Friday and company, to no avail. Friday and his partner Frank Smith interrogate Max Troy, but after four hours they get nothing out of him. As he is taken to jail they get word that an eyewitness has been found. It is a museum curator named Jesse Quinn, who positively identifies Chester Davitt as being near the field at the time of the crime. Friday and Smith check out The Red Spot Grille, a restaurant secretly owned by Troy, and find nothing. They then decide to infiltrate a policewoman, Grace Downing, into the bar with a primitive wire to record conversation between Troy and his pals. After 36 hours habeus corpus kicks in and despite the reluctance of Deputy DA Adolph Alexander, Troy and his pals are released. Friday and Smith, however, get information from Roy Cleaver, an informant and jazz musician; he tells them that Starkey was seen weeks before his death sporting heavy bandaging from a beating. When Friday and Smith question Starkey's widow, she tearfully confirms this and gives Friday a copy of her husband's work book, a collection of gambling debtors. Friday and Smith question 22 of the names in the book but get no information until they question theatrical agent Fabian Gerard, who explains that he paid back a gambling debt but was confronted by other mob enforcers claiming he didn't; when he showed them proof they left him alone. Now the two officers figure out why Starkey was killed - he'd been pocketing debts he'd been collecting. They learn more from one of Grace Downing's recordings - Troy tells the bartender to take a package in his car's glove box and dispose of it; the bartender loaned the car to his nephew for a fishing trip and it won't be back until Wednesday, and he'll get rid of whatever this package is then. The police, however, find and arrest Chester Davitt, and a grand jury is summoned to investigate Troy and his pals. Friday goes to get Jesse Quinn, but Quinn suddenly gets cold feet about testifying; he is supoendaed but tells the grand jury nothing substantial. The jury members question Friday in their investigation, and in the end the jury votes not to indict Troy. Captain Hamilton angrilly orders Friday and Smith to tail Troy day and night, and they do, constantly searching him wherever he goes. It goes too far when they tail him to a gin game and several toughs attack Friday and Smith; the two policemen win the ensuing brawl but get a mild reprimand from Hamilton for it. More pressing is a call from Grace Downing that she found something from the bartender's car at The Red Spot, but that Troy may be on to her. Friday and Smith arrive at the bar and escort her safely out, then she takes them to the back alley where they find a box of shotgun shells - with four missing. Eventually a wiretap is installed at The Red Spot, and one of Troy's pals, Wesley Cannon, gets a call from Cleveland, and informs the bartender that Chester Davitt has been killed to keep him quiet - permanently - about the Starkey murder. Friday and Smith reluctantly confront Belle Davitt with the resulting tape, and she tearfully changes her tune, showing the officers the toolbox where Troy and Chester sawed off the shotgun barrel, and she reveals that the gun was thrown into Echo Park Lake. With a signed affidavit from Belle Davitt and the resulting evidence, DA Alexander has enough to convict Troy, but Troy pulls the ultimate fast one that ensures he'll never be arrested.