Thorne Smith - unknown American Wodehouse

I was reading a few of my favorite author's bios today when I ran across the name "Thorne Smith" as one of the early 20th century humor writers. Like you, possibly, I had no idea who he was.

I looked him up and found the ideas of his work immediately interesting. I saw that he had been the author of Topper, which inspired the 1930's movie that starred Cary Grant as some sort of horny ghost, if memory serves. As soon as I read some of his summaries, which usually sounded like drunken, bawdy, and occsionally fantastic romps through the 1920's Americas, I quickly decided to do some immediate research on him and pick up some of his stuff. The best sounding book is The Nightlife of the Gods, in which a young inventor runs into a 900 year old god who tells him the secret of turning stone into flesh, so naturally he comes up with the most brilliant idea possible:

Let's go down to the museum, turn all the statues of the Greek gods to life, and then go out drinking with them.

Just the idea of it is so absurd that it makes me smile. 'Course, it's also the 20's, a period I have a soft spot for, what with prohibition and flappers and everything, and his books just sound like a great time.

Here's a few sites that I found fascinating on him, but it seems like no one has any idea who he is anymore:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorne_Smith

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A650657

EDIT: Actually, you know what, I just found a place that has all of his stuff online. I'm going to take a look at it. Here's the URL for Gods:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/forgottenfutures/smith/nightlf/ntlf-01.htm

Howdy! I wasn't quite sure if Smith was supposed to go in fantasy or humor, but I threw caution to the wind and did humor as it seems to lack the requisite goblins and three-sided dice. Most of its fantasy is used just for the purpose of humor.

See: Cary Grant as horny ghost.