Sun 18 Oct 2020
SLEEPERS WEST. Twentieth Century Fox, 1941. Mike Shayne #2. Lloyd Nolan (Michael Shayne), Lynn Bari, Mary Beth Hughes, Louis Jean Heydt. Based on the novel Sleepers East by Frederick Nebel and the character created by Brett Halliday. Director: Eugene Forde.
To answer your first question first, yes, they changed the title of the film from that of the book, but there’s an easy explanation. In the book the train all of the characters are on are going to New York City from someplace in the Midwest, Ohio perhaps, and in this second filming of the book, they’re going from Denver to San Francisco.
And, yes, they changed that, too. Instead of PI Mike Shayne home base being either Miami or New Orleans, as the books he was in would have it, they made it San Francisco. And, truthfully, I see no resemblance between Brett Halliday’s character and the one Lloyd Nolan plays in this movie. (I am somewhat reluctant to point this out, since he does such a good job playing a PI trying to escort a young blonde witness across country without anyone knowing about it that I am willing to forgive and forget and just go along for the ride.)
And if you enjoy detective mysteries taking place in the movies on trains, then this is the movie you have you see, if you haven’t already. Well over two-thirds of the movie takes place on a train, and until a crazed engineer trying to make his last run come in on time causes a huge accident, I think the whole movie could have taken place on it.
Jamming up the works for Shayne is Lynn Bari’s character, a former friend of Shayne who’s now a reporter for a Denver newspaper. Playing the young blonde witness-to-be is Mary Beth Hughes, who really couldn’t care less about being a star witness in an upcoming trial.
There are more complications in this movie than there are in most other detective movies of the same era, including the friendship the young blonde witness surreptitiously makes with a man who is also looking to escape from a life he longer wants to live.
The only flaw in this film, to my way of thinking is how quickly it wraps up and ends. I could have watched another 15 to 20 minutes of this one, easily.
October 18th, 2020 at 8:30 am
The Fox Shaynes are all enjoyable, despite a rather forced light-heartedness, thanks to Nolan’s assured playing and good source material. TIME TO KILL does much betterby Chandler’s THE HIGH WINDOW than the official version, THE BRASHER DOUBLOON.
October 18th, 2020 at 2:37 pm
Big Shayne fan, big Chandler fan here. You nail the film with this review, Steve. One of my favorite “B” programmers that I’ve watched enjoyably several times over the years. Nolan ain’t Halliday’s Shayne but it’s a perfect film anyway. TIME TO KILL is also a good one though I prefer THE BRASHER DOUBLOON which, it’s true, has a lame Marlowe but is otherwise a top notch film(and I’m in love with Nancy Guild).
October 18th, 2020 at 5:49 pm
It’s a terrific B film that could easily be an A with a little tweaking. If you have read the Nebel book you know a lot was changed, but the heart of the book remains, and Nolan personifies that heart.
A print of the Preston Foster film SLEEPER’S EAST still exists and was once shown at a mystery convention. Why it never shows up I can’t imagine.
TIME TO KILL and THE BRASHER DOUBLOON both focus on different aspects of the Chandler novel, the former more concerned with the plot and the latter the characters, actually a fascinating look at how different two movies based on the same book can be (THE FALCON TAKES OVER really isn’t that different plot wise than MURDER MY SWEET) and both work.
December 22nd, 2020 at 9:45 pm
I don’t have much experience with Michael Shayne movies. But I’ve listened to a fine Michael Shayne radio serial starring Jeff Chandler as Shayne, set in New Orleans. Fast-paced and sharp-tongued; the talented Chandler gives an excellent turn.
Unusual twist: Jack Webb is the bad guy for once! He plays the heavy-handed police lieutenant who dislikes private detectives in general and Shayne in particular. Webb is always ‘coming down hard’ on a protesting Chandler. Always giving him, “just twenty-four/sixteen/eight/six hours to bring in the murderer, Shayne –or it’s your neck!”
December 22nd, 2020 at 10:04 pm
The MICHAEL SHAYNE shows with Jeff Chandler are among the best hardboiled detective shows Old Time Radio has to offer. Exactly as you say: Top notch all the way. I’ll going to find a few to listen to now, very very soon.
December 22nd, 2020 at 11:36 pm
I think I will follow suit. Chandler is a lot of fun as a voice-actor. His take on Shayne (in conjunction with the show’s writers of course) is to give this PI an affable, self-deprecating and wry aspect. Anytime he gets a bruise, he’s ready to blame himself. It’s a disarming modesty not found in any other major PI I’m aware of (though my knowledge of PI history is thin-end-of-the-wedge on this learned website).
In terms of acting, I have nothing against wonderful Lloyd Nolan but I have a much easier time picturing Chandler as Shayne than Nolan. Chandler’s physique lends itself to the Shayne character who seems like he gets tossed down a flights of stairs at least once every episode.
Otherwise, (apart from this serial) I’d admit to possessing only a poor and fragmented conception of Jeff Chandler, Big Hollywood star. I know he became one of the biggest names of the classic era but somehow the movies he appeared in, never appealed to me. I always glimpsed him made up as a grimacing, warpaint-striped Native American warrior or as a grimacing WWII naval commander, going down with his ship. And then there’s the cartoon-treatment he received in ‘Johnny Quest’. At the end of the day he was always a too-intimidating macho presence in any media I ever spotted him in; and it (unfairly) ‘put me off’ him.
But as a voice actor in radio’s heyday, he is wunnerful and charming and that is where I wound up appreciating him best. Not only does he romp as Michael Shayne but he’s hilarious as the shy, dim-wit, mild-mannered biology teacher in the ‘Our Miss Brooks’ comedy.
Finally, he also has some nifty one-off appearances in shows like ‘Escape!’. Some real corkers. I remember in one, he plays brutal prison convict leading fellow-escapees from a Southern penitentiary during a river in flood; which is simply riveting (as most episodes of ‘Escape!’ were). But that’s a particular standout.
I’m running on at some length here (beg pardon) but taking advantage of an opportunity to ruminate on some dusty names.
January 10th, 2021 at 1:01 am
Going through the radio serials now, one every few evenings.
Best use of a dame: ‘Case of the Carnival Killer’. Set on a New Orleans fairground. All the usual tropes, but good use of dialects and for once, an audibly black character. Shayne is tempted into the case by a torn half $50 bill promised as his fee.
Fastest-paced: ‘Case of the Grey-Eyed Blonde’. Sultry blonde asks Shayne to deliver a ransom payoff. Simplistic, hoary old chestnut but still effective. Shayne is framed as the thief of the money. He must hunt through New Orleans bars to find her in 15 hours. So far, this is my favorite installment. Shayne is disgusted with himself the whole episode, for ‘being such a dope’.
‘The Model Murder’, a wealthy gourmand gives him eight hours to bring back his daughter from New York before she turns 25 and drains his income. A quick cross-country plane flight slickly woven into the tale.
‘Case of the Phantom Gun’, most cerebral so far. Shayne’s gun is stolen from his office, and mailed back to him parcel-post. Ballistics confirms that bullets from his gun were fired into a victim when Shayne insists it was in a post office somewhere.
Theories of mine which failed: could a killer steal just the gun barrel of a revolver, commit a murder with it (screwed onto another revolver), so as to point ballistic evidence on to someone else?
Or: could a killer steal the hero’s revolver for a few hours, fire it into a hog, then save the bullets? Then, swap them into the bullet holes in a human victim of his own choosing? [Would a coroner be able to convince a jury that a slug discovered down deep in a mortal bullet wound was really not fired from the gun which matches up with it?]