Wed 4 May 2016
A Movie Review by David Vineyard: TWENTY PLUS TWO (1961).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[9] Comments
TWENTY PLUS TWO. Allied Artists, 1961. David Janssen, Jeanne Crain, Dina Merrill, Brad Dexter, Jacques Aubachon, Robert Strauss, Agnes Moorehead, William Demarest. Screenplay by Frank Gruber, based on his novel. Directed by Joseph M. Newman.
Julia Joliet, who runs a clipping service in Hollywood whose chief client is movie star Leroy Dane (Brad Dexter), is brutally murdered and her offices searched. It seems like a pointless crime, but among her clippings is one on Doris Delaney, a debutante who went missing over a decade earlier from her exclusive school and wealthy home in New York, and that catches the eye of Tom Alder (David Janssen) who makes his living finding missing people, and for whom the Delaney case is a sort of obsession.
When Alder casually arranges to run into Dane at a bar he also coincidentally is spotted by Linda Foster (Jeanne Crain), the girl who sent him a Dear John letter while he was in the service in Tokyo recovering from a wound that has healed better than his heart. Linda is there with her latest fiancé, but not averse to reopening the relationship with Tom, and also accompanied by her friend Nikki Kovacs (Dina Merrill) and her wealthy fiancé.
When Alder finds a clue that was meaningless to the police in Joliet’s place it puts him on a plane to New York, surprisingly along with Nikki Kovacs who is getting off in Chicago to see family. There is something about her Alder can’t quiet shake, but he hasn’t time to pursue it. He is also, unknown to him, being followed by a mysterious cultured fat man who he saw outside Joliet’s apartment.
In New York he begins to piece together the pieces of the Delaney case with the help of a drunken reporter (William Demarest), a private eye buddy (Robert Strauss), and Mrs. Delaney (Agnes Moorehead) who suspects he is nothing but another opportunist until he makes the first real break in the case in over a decade. Meanwhile things are moving along on other fronts.
The mysterious fat man is Jacques “Big Frenchy†Pleschette (Jacques Aubachon), a former con man who has spent most of his adult life in prison, and who is willing to pay $10,000 to find his estranged younger brother Auguste who he has not seen since the war. Linda Foster has shown up too, concerned about Nikki Kovacs, who has gone missing and it turns out has no family in Chicago, and also looking to renew romantic relations with Alder. Even Leroy Dane shows up on a publicity tour.
With the pressure on Alder recalls in flashback a girl he met in Tokyo, Lily Brown, while he was recovering from his wound, and fell for.
And as he pieces together all the diverse bits of information he gathers in his investigation it all begins to dovetail together in dangerous ways.
I won’t go any farther, you probably have figured it out anyway. Despite the noirish elements Twenty Plus Two is really just a pretty good little mystery and not film noir. Alder is only mildly haunted and obsessed, and everything falls together a bit too neatly. The film plays mostly as a made for television movie and not a feature, a fact enhanced by the kind of guest stars and cast you would expect on television in the period.
That said, this film, produced by Frank Gruber, from his own novel and screenplay, is still pretty good in a low key way, and notable in that much of the sub plot is borrowed from Eric Ambler’s A Coffin for Dimitrios, which became a film, Mask for Dimitrios, with a screenplay by Frank Gruber. Big Frenchy Pleschette is Mr. Peters, the character played by Sidney Greenstreet in the film, and his brother Auguste the Dimitrios figure he wants to find — and blackmail.
Many of the plot elements were updated and moved from Hollywood and New York to Hong Kong, for The Gold Gap (reviewed here ) another Gruber novel from late in his career, and the missing heir who has changed their life also appears as a key element in Gruber’s Bridge of Sand.
Pulp writers never let anything go unused.
Twenty Plus Two was a better book than film; it plays too much like a two-part episode of a television anthology series to ever really gel as a feature, and noirish elements don’t make noir, but it is professionally done all around, attractive, well written, cogent, and all the elements do tie together neatly even explaining why Julia Joliet had to be killed.
There is nothing exciting about it, but it is a satisfying little mystery film that crosses and dots all the right letters, thanks to Gruber’s expertise in the field, even if the long arm of coincidence in this one at times seems to belong to Plastic Man.
May 4th, 2016 at 5:21 pm
I see that this one is available on DVD from Warner Archives in the $12 range. If I’d connected the title to the Frank Gruber novel, I’d probably already own it.
Considering the cast, I also thought it was originally an ABC Movie of the Week, and as such, hardly worth $6 much less $12.
Now I’m thinking about it.
May 4th, 2016 at 9:21 pm
This is a good review.
I like this film too. It is low key, but thoughtful and satisfying.
My analysis of director Joseph M. Newman and this film:
http://mikegrost.com/newman.htm
May 5th, 2016 at 2:30 pm
I suspect this was made for television and then good enough they released it to theaters instead, or it was considered too strong for prime time television.
That happened with a number of films like CHAMBER OF HORRORS, DARK INTRUDER, WARNING SHOT (another Janssen), and STRYKER. Also it wasn’t unusual for material originally shot for television to have a theatrical version aimed at the overseas market, and occasionally to be released here theatrically first.
Mike,
Thanks.
Steve,
Though coincidence plays too much of a role and it is pretty low key this one is mostly well acted (Janssen, as usual, could use a dose of NO DOZE),and the script is good, especially some of the by play between Janssen and Aubachon and Janssen and Moorehead and Merrill.
If the mystery is obvious as it unfolds the detection is, for once, believable, and fair play. Outside of coincidence, and I can’t tell you how many cases are actually solved by that in real life, it’s almost documentary like in the actual methods the hero employs to solve the case. No one hits him over the head or spills the beans while he is tied up and no elaborate con games are used to trip anyone up into confessing.
Like most real detective work it is a combination of research, good resources and contacts, observation (the major breakthrough on the missing girl case is a clue worthy of Ellery Queen or Agatha Christie and yet so simple you can believe no one ever caught it the only flaw being we don’t physically see the clue because it would give the game away if we did),dumb luck, and sheer stubbornness. Much of the plot turns on a piece of luck involving the bad guy that is totally believable — though almost impossible today.
The one dumb move on the hero’s part is totally acceptable under the circumstances. True love can even make detectives a little stupid. Up to that point he is one of the smarter sleuths you’ll encounter on screen.
Though to be fair, this is one time you probably ought to just watch it on YouTube for free rather than buy it first.
June 5th, 2017 at 2:28 pm
Loved the movie and the book! Janssen played it RICHARD DIAMOND and Dina Merrill was so in character (vulnerable behind her mask). To this day I actually order a T-bone just the way Brad Dexter did in the movie! Dina Merrill made her transition a few weeks ago so I am watching it again. I have enjoyed the review by Vineyard immensely!
July 10th, 2018 at 6:23 pm
the funny thing about this movie is that, although i’ve seen it many times, i’ve never seen it in its entirety until today. in previous viewings, i had picked up (and dropped it) in various places so i didn’t realize what movie it was until it got to the very end. as vineyard wrote, it’s noir without all the cliche gumshoeing and flat-footing. janssen searched much more like a 21st century skip-tracer than a 20th century shamus.
sure, it took six degrees of separation down to one, and a host of other chance encounters, but they were forgivable given the overall strength of the movie. i dvr-ed it so i’ll watch it again in a few days, just to clear up a couple fuzzy plot points, and i’ll pick up the book as well.
October 1st, 2020 at 5:28 pm
I haven’t seen an explanation of what the title refers to.
All I can think of is that from 20 years ago. he has now been reunited with the 2 women he loved.
October 1st, 2020 at 5:59 pm
Rose, while the movie on DVD is high on my “to be watched” pile, I haven’t seen it myself yet. Your suggested answer sounds like a good one, though.
Here’s a reviewer on IMDb, whose suggestion may help:
Frank Gruber wrote and produced “Twenty Plus Two”, which was released in 1961.
Gruber also wrote a novel version of the film that was published the same year.
The novel was set in 1960.
The central mystery of the novel involved the disappearance of 16-year old Doris Delaney in 1938.
Wealthy young Doris vanished without a trace “twenty plus two” years ago.
If Doris is still alive she would be 38 years old in 1960.
Forty-one year old Tom Alder is an investigator who follows the case as sort of a hobby. Or is it an obsession?
Alder was an infantry captain who was severely wounded in World War II.
While Alder was recuperating from his injuries in Honolulu in 1944, he meets a prostitute who may be key to unraveling the Doris Delaney mystery.
David Janssen (“Richard Diamond”) was cast as investigator Tom Alder.
Janssen was born in March 1931.
He would have been 29 in 1960. He wasn’t old enough to have served in World War II.
Gruber changed the movie so that Alder was a veteran of Korea rather than WW II.
In the film Alder recuperated in Tokyo rather than Honolulu.
Doris now disappeared in 1947, not 1938. That would make Doris 29 in 1960, if she is alive.
The changes weren’t really necessary.
Janssen was a mature looking guy who could have passed for older. In 1962 he convincingly played a troubled World War II veteran in an episode of “Route 66”.
Jeanne Crain, Dina Merrill, Agnes Moorehead, and Brad Dexter were all close to the 1960 ages of their characters in the novel.
Frank Gruber was a veteran pulp fiction writer who wrote hundreds of western and detective stories. He even wrote for “Black Mask”. At one time he was writing four novels a year. He is credited with 60 novels. Gruber was a creator of “Tales of Wells Fargo” with Dale Robertson, “Shotgun Slade” with Scott Brady, and “The Texan” with Rory Calhoun.
October 3rd, 2020 at 9:25 am
Twenty Plus Two was a much better film than 1960 production values allowed. There is an odd but easily identified look to moderate budget films in the 1957-63 years. It’s a flatness, a lack of energy, of sensualism that marked all of America in the Ike-to-JFK transition overlap. A lot of movies in that time look more like episodes of late season Perry Mason or The Twilight Zone. I suspect it has to do with an evolution of some kind in film technology as well as America’s post-war society’s boredom with itself.
Made ten years earlier, with a little violence added (the hero taking a beating)and a bit of femme fatale built into Merrill’s character (the seeds are there – a nineteen year old B-girl – read, hooker -in Tokyo? That’s criminally unexploited – or an under-used Craine as more of an alley cat) and this would have been a neat little noir.
Made ten years later and the grittiness and sex of early seventies film could have created a neo-noir, Chandlerish classic.
As it stands its crisp dialog and very efficient low-budget production scheduling skills make it ok-plus but not really good.
Of note, Twenty Plus Two has William Demarest’s best scene of his career.
October 3rd, 2020 at 5:52 pm
I’ve been looking and have just found my copy of this on DVD. You’ve convinced me. Tonight’s the night!