Skin and Bones

James Thorne Smith, Jr. (1892-1934) was an American writer of humorous supernatural fantasy fiction under the byline Thorne Smith. He is best known today for his two Topper novels, comic fantasy fiction involving sex, much drinking, and ghosts, the racily illustrated editions of which sold in their millions in the 1930s, becoming equally popular when released as paperback editions in the 1950s. The son of a Navy commodore, Smith attended Dartmouth College, spent time in Greenwich Village as a part-time advertising agent, and then achieved meteoric success with the publication of Topper (also known as The Jovial Ghosts) in 1926. As hard-drinking as his famous characters, he was an early resident of Free Acres, a social experimental community in Berkeley Heights, NJ, and died of a heart attack while vacationing in Florida. Skin and Bones (1933) is a comic fantasy in which a freak accident in his darkroom produces a chemical concoction causing photographer Quintus Bland (and his dog) to switch randomly back and forth between normal and X-ray (skeleton) versions of themselves. In common with Thorne Smith's other works, much drinking and cavorting ensues as Bland finds people able to see beyond his appearance and accept him for who he is, whilst inadvertently terrifying those who cannot.