Fri 6 Aug 2010
Movie Review: LADY CHASER (1946).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Pulp Fiction , Reviews[3] Comments
LADY CHASER. Producers Releasing Corporation, 1946. Robert Lowery, Ann Savage, Inez Cooper, Frank Ferguson. Based on the story “Lady Killer,†by G. T. Fleming-Roberts (Detective Tales, July 1945). Director: Sam Newfield.
It’s surprising, when you stop to think about it, that more movies weren’t based on stories that appeared in the pulp magazines, or at least those of the B-movie variety, either mysteries or westerns and even love stories.
Both genres are based on quick action and minimal characterization, they’d be a natural for each other, and probably there are more adaptations than I’m thinking of, speaking off the top of head as I usually do when I sit down to write a review.
A quick synopsis of Lady Chaser ought to be what I really begin with, seeing that there isn’t one on IMDB, nor any comments either, at the present time. The movie begins with two women writing letters across from each other in a room designed for that purpose in a downtown department store. One’s a blackmailer (Ann Savage), the other (Inez Cooper) is writing a letter to her fiancé (Robert Lowery).
The latter has an uncle who’s opposed to the marriage, the former is, unfortunately, in over her head. The latter has a headache; the former gives her an aspirin. The latter gives the aspirin, unused, to her uncle, who dies. The aspirin was poisoned.
You can figure out what happened, can’t you? And so can the fiancé, eventually, only he can’t prove anything, nor can he can convince the dunderheaded head of homicide (Ralph Dunn) that there’s anything to her story, and with the lack of a better one, she’s quickly convicted of the crime. Amateur detective work is always better than that of the police, in stories like this.
There are a surprising number of twists that occur in Lady Chaser, especially when you consider that it’s only 58 minutes long. The problem is that to get to the twists there are some awfully creaky plot devices that have to be swallowed whole, or if not, there’s no other alternative but to throw up your hands and say Enough.
I’d also have tried to conceal the killer’s identity a little while longer, but neither can I think of a way to avoid it, so we’ll have to call that a draw. My recommendation, if this movie should ever come your way, is to simply sit back and enjoy it, warts and all.
NOTES: Previously reviewed on this blog was The Limping Man, by Frank Rawlings, a pen name of G. T. Fleming-Roberts.
For a complete bibliography of Fleming-Roberts, including several articles and reviews, check out this page on the primary Mystery*File website.
August 6th, 2010 at 11:27 pm
The failure of more pulp work to make it to the screen is even more surprising when you consider how many of the pulp writers worked in movies and television: Frank Gruber, Hammett. Chandler, Eric Taylor, John Butler, Charles Booth, Horace McCoy, Max Brand (the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood), George Bruce, W. T. Ballard (who even wrote a book, PACKAGE DEAL, about his tout of duty writing for the DICK TRACY television series with Ralph Byrd), Robert Leslie Bellem, Philip Wylie, Peter Ruric (Paul Cain), Richard Sale (who was also a director and producer), and Fred Nebel among others, but for whatever reason more stories from the slicks made the transition than pulp stories.
It’s even odder when you realize that pulp stories are often ideally suited to the needs of B films. Most likely it was a combination of snobbery and the fact the crew who bought the story just didn’t read the pulps.
August 9th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
You’re probably right on the money in your last sentence, David. This is a question that never quite occurred to me before, but the pulps were considered cheap fiction and even B-movie movers wouldn’t stoop so low.
August 9th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Steve
That last was just a guess, but a lot of the young men working in the story departments of the studios were educated and likely saw themselves as budding Hemingway’s and Fitzgerald’s. The pulps were tapped for story material and certainly many pulp writers (and genre writers in general) were brought in, but snobbery (or ignorance) seems the only thing to explain why so little material from the pulps made it to the screen considering the need of the studios.
But then too, original stories provided by their own staff were even cheaper to acquire, so it was cheaper to hire the pulp writer for new material in the long run than buy his story (John K. Butler, Steve Fisher, Eric Taylor, Peter Ruric, Horace McCoy), and stories taken from the slicks came with much larger readership and built in publicity from the magazine where the story had first appeared.
Though looking back, there was at least one Dan Turner movie, a couple of Flashgun Casey films, and films based on work by Carrol John Daly, Nebel, Raoul Whitfield, and many others made, but certainly the pulps were considered to be cheap fiction (Hammett’s success at BLACK MASK gave those writers a cachet other pulps and pulp writers didn’t have) and not quite respectable.
Likely Nebel’s Torchy Blaine series would never have come about if not for his hardcover novels SLEEPERS EAST and FIFTY ROADS TO TOWN (both filmed). Frank Gruber’s hardcover westerns brought him the attention of the studios, not his many pulp stories. Harold Lamb had graduated from the pulps to his popular history works when Cecil B. De Mille came calling.
But I do suspect that most of the pulps just weren’t read by the people who bought stories for the studios, with the added caveat that the slick magazines, and most publishers and writing agents whose writers sold to them, made a concerted effort to sell stories to the studios while the pulps did not. It may be that lack of marketing was as important a factor as snobbery. A story taken from the SATURDAY EVENING POST (like “Lassie Comes Home”) not only had a built in audience, but received considerable free publicity from the magazine when it was released as a film. I doubt even the top pulps could compare with the demographics for the top slicks.
But then as now whenever a book or writer gets any attention at all Hollywood comes calling no matter where his work appeared. That much has stayed the same.