Wed 2 Jun 2010
Reviewed by Dan Stumpf: ELEAZAR LIPSKY – The Kiss of Death (Book and Films).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[9] Comments
ELEAZAR LIPSKY – The Kiss of Death. Penguin #642, US, paperback original, 1947. Reprinted as The Hoodlum: Lion #161, paperback, 1953. Also reprinted by Dell (D396) under its original title, 1961.
● Film: Twentieth Century-Fox, 1947 (with Victor Mature, Brian Donlevy, Coleen Gray & Richard Widmark; screenwriters: Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer; director: Henry Hathaway).
● Film: Twentieth Century-Fox, 1958, as The Fiend Who Walked the West (with Robert Evans, Hugh O’Brian, Linda Cristal and Stephen McNally; screenwriters: Harry Brown and Philip Yordan; director: Gordon Douglas).
Following the two Errol Flynn books [reviewed here ], I moved on then to a sub-sub-genre known to cineastes as “Re-makes of Old Victor Mature Movies” starting with Kiss of Death (Fox, 1947) which was reincarnated as The Fiend Who Walked the West (Fox, 1958).
Kiss of Death comes from a 1947 novel of the same name by Eleazar Lipsky, a former prosecutor who turned to writing and did rather well at it. It’s a taut, unglamorous tale about a professional crook betrayed by his own kind, struggling to keep to his personal code of ethics.
Tightly told, and peopled with characters who seem quite ordinary and very real in Lipsky’s muted but evocative prose, it reads very real at times. There’s even an interesting bit where two of the characters go to a movie that sounds a lot like The Blue Dahlia (Paramount, 1946). Mosty, though, it’s quiet, gritty and very effective.
Filmed the same year at Fox, the movie benefits from vigorous direction by Henry Hathaway, evocative photography on New York locations, and convincing performances all around, including the much-maligned Victor Mature, who projects his greasy machismo with effortless ease against some showy co-stars.
A nice job, particularly since he’s up against Richard Widmark’s star-making debut as a sadistic killer who gets all the best scenes. One of Widmark’s bits has become a movie icon (as you see here) but I was more impressed by a simple scene where the snarling killer is seen through a gap in a curtain, approaching the camera: the nearer he gets, the less we see of his face, till all that’s left is the snarl — like a baleful Cheshire cat from some malevolent Wonderland, ready to devour something. One of the scariest bits I’ve seen outside the monster movies.
Kiss of Death was so successful they re-made it as The Fiend Who Walked the West in 1958, with Hugh O’Brien taking the Victor Mature role, and doing rather well with it.
O’Brien’s stoic acting somehow lends itself to a character trying to keep his emotions in check as he plays cat-and-mouse with a sadistic killer, and things are helped along considerably by punchy direction from Gordon Douglas, who could do anything with a straight face.
Here he provides some explosive action and solid, western-style suspense, despite a somewhat jarring effect from time to time when the soundtrack erupts into back-ground music borrowed from The Day the Earth Stood Still. He also gets to use his action trademark, a violent shoot-out with one fighter returning fire while visibly getting hit. Fun stuff.
Editorial Comment: Dan didn’t mention it, so I didn’t include it in the info above, but the book was made into a film a third time, also by Twentieth Century-Fox, in 1995. This most recent version starred David Caruso, Samuel L. Jackson, Nicolas Cage & Helen Hunt. I wish I could tell you more about it, but somehow I missed this one, and this is all I know.
June 2nd, 2010 at 10:31 pm
The fact that David Caruso’s movie career ended up back on television should tell you something about that third version.
Victor Mature is very good in the film — and in many others. Watch THE ROBE and DEMETRIUS AND THE GLADIATORS, its sequel, some time and note his quiet dignity as the Greek slave blowing some noted British actors off the screen — Richard Burton included, and holding his own with Susan Hayward’s delightfully wicked Messilina.
His best screen role may be in Anthony Mann’s THE LAST FRONTIER where he plays a mountain man civilized by the army. And he’s good in both GAMBLING HOUSE (a remake of MR, LUCKY) and Robert Siodmak’s CRY OF THE CITY.
Mature made his name as the strongman in the Broadway musical LADY IN THE DARK starring Gertrude Lawrence and also introducing Danny Kaye. The film role went to Cornel Wilde, but Mature was brought out to Hollywood and soon made his mark in everything from THE SHANGHAI GESTURE to a good self parody in Peter Sellars AFTER THE FOX near the end of his career. He’s very good in FURY AT FURNACE CREEK (a remake of John Ford’s FOUR MEN AND A PRAYER), BETRAYED, LAS VEGAS STORY, and the screwball comedy STELLA. Truth is he had much more to offer than he was usually credited with.
But that said he did quite a few paint by the numbers roles too.
Richard Widmark resurrected his demoniac Tommy Udo more or less intact for William Keighley’s STREET WITH NO NAME, and to a lesser extent in John Sturges western THE LAW AND JAKE WADE. Though nothing in either film equals pushing that old lady down the stairs, or that sadistic Cheshire Cat grin.
THE FIEND WHO WALKED THE WEST is good, though you can see why Robert Evans ended up in the production end of movie making, he’s more silly than scary in the Widmark role.
Lipsky’s THE PEOPLE AGAINST O’HARA was also a good noir film with Spencer Tracy, John Hodiak, Pat O’Brian, Diana Lynn, and James Arness.
June 2nd, 2010 at 11:12 pm
Re the David Caruso version, I do remember it now, but I never saw the movie. Looking at some reviews, it certainly got panned, but not viciously so — any unhappiness with the movie seems to be that of disappointment rather of actual dislike, although some did!
Nicolas Cage got more favorable reaction than did Caruso, not good when you’re supposed to be the leading man and making a new career in movies for yourself.
Caruso may be a good actor but to me he has a very limited range, with a lot of mannerisms that seem to turn people off.
Getting back into television was most assuredly a good career decision for him.
June 2nd, 2010 at 11:19 pm
Caruso is hard for me to watch. Acting seems physically painful for him, and he certainly communicates that. And it doesn’t help that CSI MIAMI is yet another series where the self righteousness borders on the psychotic. At least William Peterson, Laurence Fishburne, and Gary Sinese act as it they might have been wrong about something at some point in their life.
Even Sherlock Holmes was wrong once in a while.
June 2nd, 2010 at 11:30 pm
I used to watch NYPD BLUE, the first couple of seasons, but I never caught up with CSI MIAMI. You’ve probably encapsulated better than I as to why I haven’t.
June 3rd, 2010 at 1:10 am
Getting back to Lipsky’s book, I admit to being surprised to discover that THE KISS OF DEATH was a paperback original. By US Penguin. How many paperback originals did they do? Any besides this one?
And this was back in 1947, well before Gold Medal came along and shook up the world of publishing by a whole line of paperback originals. That sold like crazy.
And what’s with the movie coming out the very same year, 1947? Later printings of the Penguin books had blurbs on the front covers proclaiming that the book was the basis of the hit movie.
There must have been something going on between Penguin and TC-Fox, some sort of connection that right now I have no idea of what it might have been.
Lipsky was never a big enough name to have books written about him, but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve missed something regarding this book that I should have known about all along.
But I don’t. If anyone knows more, I hope you’ll leave a comment and fill me in.
— Steve
June 3rd, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Another example of this sort of thing was Charles Booth’s THE GENERAL DIED AT DAWN which didn’t come out in the States until the movie was released, making the paperback the true first US edition.
In Lipsky’s case I’m guessing that TCF purchased the book in manuscript form from Lipsky or an agent and then arranged for it to be published.
June 3rd, 2010 at 2:41 pm
You’re right about the Booth book, a paperback original from Pocket, the first US edition. The movie came out in 1936, the UK first was in 1937, and the Pocket edition 1941. That’s the kind of timing that suggests that Booth wrote the story, they made the movie, and Booth expanded the story into a novel.
That’s a guess, but I think it’s close enough, David, to say that you’re right about the Lipsky book, too, that it happened pretty much the same way.
June 3rd, 2010 at 4:12 pm
In Booth’s case since he was a screenwriter the chances are the story may have existed at novel length as a manuscript but was read and made into a movie before being sold as a book, though you have to wonder how it came to first be published in the UK, though I think Booth was a Brit despite his status as one of the original Black Mask Boys.
Since the film was a hit and Booth had several mysteries in print I don’t know why it took until 1942 for the novel to appear in the US, and in a bigger reversal it also got an eventual hardcover publication here — which is also rare.
But then trying to figure out the sometimes complex relation between film and books in print can be a puzzler.
Another ‘novel’ with an equally complex film and book history is Dashiell Hammett’s WOMAN IN THE DARK.
And in a few cases serialized magazine stories were sold as films but had appeared as novels before the movie came out or at about the same time.
I’ll save myself some research and ask a question instead, was DOUBLE INDEMNITY published as a separate novel before the film? It’s a slender little book and fairly hard to find as a stand alone.
Three of Ian Fleming’s books were originally written as screenplays or television scenarios (DOCTOR NO, THUNDERBALL, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY), and most of Alistair MacLean’s novels from WHERE EAGLES DARE on were first written as screenplays. For that matter the final complete Philip Marlowe novel, PLAYBACK, was first written as a screenplay and then turned into a Marlowe novel.
Confusing isn’t it?
June 14th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
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