Fri 23 Mar 2018
INQUIRY from Matthew Bradley: The Case of the Missing PI’s.
Posted by Steve under Inquiries , TV mysteries[6] Comments
The Case of the Missing PI’s.
As I mentioned in my recent post about writing Richard Matheson on Screen, several of the more obscure Matheson-related television episodes continue to elude me to this day. They include “Iron Mike Benedict†(The D.A.’s Man, 2/14/59), “Act of Faith†(Buckskin, 3/23/59), “Time of Flight†(Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, 9/21/66), “No Such Thing as a Vampire†(Late Night Horror, 4/19/68), and “L’Esame†(The Test; Racconti di Fantascienza [Tales of Fantasy], 1/31/79).
But even more frustratingly, while he recalled contributing to them in some capacity, I’ve never turned up any information regarding his involvement with two P.I. series, Richard Diamond, Private Detective and Philip Marlowe.
So how’s about it, Mystery*File readers/writers? Anybody knowledgeable enough about them to shed some light on this real-life mystery or, by some miracle, able to provide me with copies of any of these mini-Grails? You never know, there may be a second edition!
March 23rd, 2018 at 7:22 pm
As far as I know only one episode of PHILIP MARLOWE exists. Several Richard Diamond episodes are available but none I know of with Matheson’s name in the credits.
March 23rd, 2018 at 11:33 pm
I did a review of Philip Marlowe here https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=12788
There are two episodes available to watch on YouTube – Ugly Duckling and Murder Is a Grave Affair.
You might find some information through the companies and people involved.
Goodson-Todman had been hired by NBC to produce 39 episodes of Philip Marlowe. William Froug was hired to produce.
William Froug tells the story in his interview at Archive of American Television (at around the 47 minute). He also tells it in his book about TV.
He hired a group of writers who wrote several episodes. Goodson hates the scripts and fires Froug replacing him with Gene Wang. Wang has his own writers (he worked on Perry Mason among other series) and dumped all the original scripts.
Only 26 episodes were filmed of the planned 39.
At one point NBC cancelled plans to put in on its lineup and turned it over to its syndication company California National Productions. It was then picked up by ABC. Goodson-Todson was still producing.
UCLA TV/Film Archives has a large selection of ABC TV shows and may have some Marlowe episodes.
Looking into the records of CHP, NBC, ABC and Goodson-Todman might uncover a paper trail such as old contract.
There was other attempts to get Marlowe to TV including a 1957 attempt that was to involve Raymond Chandler. Matheson might have been involved with that.
As for Richard Diamond, I believe all of the episodes survive thanks to syndication. But Matheson could have written a script that for one reason or another did not get filmed.
March 24th, 2018 at 1:15 am
There was a television adaptation of THE LONG GOODBYE with Dick Powell, could Matheson have been involved there?
March 26th, 2018 at 11:50 am
David, I think I can say with some confidence that he was not, but appreciate your making me aware of his version of The Long Goodbye, which I would presumably prefer to the Altman travesty! In 1954, when that episode of Climax! aired, Matheson was still a struggling L.A. author trying, without success, to sell some scripts to television; ironically, he cited the Dick Powell Theatre as an example. That very year, in dire financial straits that his elder daughter Bettina later recalled in The Richard Matheson Companion, he returned to New York to write The Shrinking Man, ready to pack it in if the novel were not a success. But by the time it was published in 1956, Matheson had already been hired to make his screenwriting debut with Jack Arnold’s 1957 version, and the rest is history. Also, he specifically recalled that he and Charles Beaumont had worked with William Froug, the producer of the weekly Philip Marlowe series (and later, to Matheson’s regret, The Twilight Zone, for which he rejected the previously approved “The Dollâ€).
March 26th, 2018 at 1:16 pm
David and michaels, thank you both so much for your thoughtful feedback. Years ago, someone very kindly burned a set of DVDs for me that contained most, but not quite all, of the Richard Diamond episodes, presumably all that are still available. Poring over the credits, I spotted Matheson’s name nowhere. I did find a nice overview of the Philip Marlowe series in Al Clark’s book Raymond Chandler in Hollywood, but nothing Matheson-related, although as noted, Richard specifically recalled working with Charles Beaumont on the series.
Amusingly, he once told me in an interview for Filmfax, “when I was collaborating with Chuck Beaumont, I made the mistake of saying, because I didn’t like to go out, ‘I’ll do the first drafts, and you go out and do the office meetings.’ So because of that, everybody got the impression that I was like the retarded country cousin he was supporting out in the sticks. And Froug, the producer who we did Philip Marlowe for, was totally convinced of that.†There was no suggestion that his work for the series was unproduced.
The IMDb credits Beaumont with one episode apiece of Marlowe (“The Hunger,†presumably not about vampires!) and Diamond (“East of Dangerâ€), and Matheson with none. It is, of course, well known that Beaumont charmed producers into giving him more screenwriting assignments than he could handle—especially as his health deteriorated—and ended up having some of them ghosted by such up-and-coming friends as George Clayton Johnson, Jerry Sohl, and John Tomerlin. But here’s the thing.
When they entered the brave new world of television, he and Richard were equally well established (Matheson more so, if anything), and thus saw no need to collaborate on The Twilight Zone, which was firmly in their comfort, uh, zone. For mutual support, they did work together on several series in other genres, and share credit on “Iron Mike Benedict†(The D.A.’s Man), “Act of Faith†(Buckskin), “The Marble Face†(Markham),“The Healing Woman†(Wanted: Dead or Alive), and “The Lady on the Wall†(Have Gun—Will Travel).
I am unaware of a single collaboration on which Matheson was uncredited, which would have made no sense anyway, so it seems unlikely that he had a hand in either of those Beaumont-credited episodes. Perhaps the ultimate archivist of Matheson’s work, friend and colleague William F. Nolan reports that he and Beaumont wrote a second script for The D.A.’s Man, but neither the title nor whether it was filmed is known.
March 26th, 2018 at 7:46 pm
If he wrote for the Froug produced Philip Marlowe episodes I can say they were not produced unless they were rewritten for another series (common in those days).
The story has been told by Froug that Goodson hated the scripts (apparently not violent enough) and fired Froug because of this and because Froug has said something that upset Goodson.
Gene Wang replaced him. I am a fan of Wang’s work. I can’t remember where I read it but Wang comment about Marlowe was he had hired all new writers as all the Froug writers were dumped with him.
The book where Froug writes about his Marlowe time is “How I Escaped from Gilligan’s Island: And other Misadventures of a Hollywood Writer-Producer” (2005).