The Old Reliable: Summary & Reading Guide

Bill Shannon keeps a Hollywood household from falling apart

Adela Cork buys a Hollywood house once owned by the late film star Carmen Flores. Her brother-in-law Smedley hopes that Carmen’s missing diary is still somewhere on the premises. The diary’s revelations about other stars could, he believes, make him rich enough to escape Adela’s rule. A safe-blowing butler, a movie mogul and unemployed scriptwriters bring their own abilities and expectations to the search. Adela’s sister Wilhelmina Shannon, known as Bill and as the Old Reliable, is the person most likely to make sense of the resulting disorder. I enjoy a Wodehouse heroine whose nickname advertises competence before the first crisis is solved.

The lost diary is a clever Hollywood object. It might be worth money because celebrity reputations could be damaged, not because its paper or binding is valuable. People who have never seen it can still fear, desire or plan around it. Smedley is not conducting a literary investigation: he imagines a sale that would give him independence. Adela’s ownership of the house makes every search awkward. One cannot simply turn over another person’s rooms because an absent star may have hidden something there. The tension between property and information keeps the comedy moving.

Bill’s reliability is most visible against the other people’s incomplete plans. Smedley wants an exit, the butler’s technical skill suggests a less respectable route, and film people are practiced in making persuasive appearances. Adela herself has the power to stop an operation by insisting on her own rules. Bill has to attend to actual personalities rather than only to the missing object. She is a welcome change from a protagonist whose only contribution is falling in love and waiting for a helpful uncle. I like watching an effective person steer a cast that is confident for reasons other than effectiveness.

Wodehouse’s Hollywood is a place of expensive houses, manufactured reputations, writers who need work and magnates who want control. The diary threatens this ecosystem because it offers private accounts behind public images. The satire has a specific local setting even though its machinery is recognizably Wodehouse: a valuable object, a crowded property and people who cannot explain their real objectives to one another. A former star who does not appear in person can nevertheless drive the action through what she may have left behind. The house retains an afterlife of its earlier occupant’s secrets.

The British book was published by Herbert Jenkins on 18 April 1951; Doubleday followed in America on 11 October. A Collier’s magazine serial appeared in 1950 under the title Phipps to the Rescue. That title belongs to the serial, not to a separate original novel. The story’s earlier creative history is also worth distinguishing. Wodehouse transformed material from an American-set play he had developed after Spring Fever, then made this Hollywood novel. Guy Bolton later rewrote the play, but that version did not reach the stage. Spring Fever and The Old Reliable therefore have a relationship of development, not identity.

A 1988 television film adapted The Old Reliable, with Lynn Redgrave as Bill Shannon. That specific casting is recorded by the specialist bibliography. A screen adaptation is another telling, with its own date and personnel; readers should not infer the film’s precise sequence of scenes from the book’s publication record. I would meet Bill in prose first, where Wodehouse can position us among the competing plans and let her practicality cut across them. The film is an interesting branch for anyone following the novel through later media.

This book works particularly well as a comparison with Spring Fever. That novel’s Earl seeks a small financial escape from his household; here Smedley hopes an elusive diary will free him from Adela. Both wishes are understandable, and both are complicated by people with stronger voices and contrary interests. The locations, central women and valuable objects differ enough to make a second reading worthwhile. I return to Bill’s capability, the odd economy of a star’s private memories and the sight of people mistaking a plausible plan for a completed result.

Choose The Old Reliable when you want Hollywood rather than Blandings, a diary rather than a pig, and a heroine prepared to deal with the mess made by everyone else. The novel is self-contained despite its creative connection to an earlier Wodehouse plot. A reader following editions should keep the 1950 serial title and 1951 books separate, and a reader following adaptations can look for the 1988 film. For a first visit, the essential attraction is simple: Bill Shannon is exactly the person one hopes to find when the whole house is hunting for something it cannot safely mention.

The diary might expose stars who have carefully tended a public persona, but the novel’s own interest is in those chasing it. Smedley’s hunger for independence, Adela’s commanding habits and Bill’s competence give the mystery its human shape. The safe-blowing skill of a butler is funny precisely because the household expects a different kind of service from him. Wodehouse keeps turning a familiar role to show what its occupant might do when another reward beckons.