MATSON, Norman (Haghejm)

(1893-1965)

   US writer now best known for his completion, after the death of Thorne Smith (1893-1934), of the latter's The Passionate Witch (1941), capturing Smith's melancholy, mildly madcap, sentimentally erotic style very neatly. NM also wrote a sequel, Bats in the Belfry (1943). A film, I Married a Witch (1942), and the tv series Bewitched (1964-72) were basedon the books. Earlier NM wrote a fantasy, Flecker's Magic (1926; vt Enchanted Beggar 1959), also concerning a witch, and an sf novel, DoctorFogg (1929). Fogg, having constructed a radio receiver capable of listening in on other worlds and attracted the interest of a young woman who has (perhaps coincidentally) been sent via MATTER TRANSMISSION to Earth from a distant planet, falls in love with the girl while extractingmessages and information from space. But, when the US Government decides it must control all these scientific findings for security reasons, he destroys his device.

   JC