THE NARROW MARGIN. RKO Radio Pictures, 1952. Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor, Jacqueline White. Directed by Richard Fleischer.
A cop from Los Angeles goes to Chicago to bring back a key witness in a grand jury investigation. The woman, the widow of a slain mobster, has a copy of the payoff list, and the syndicate is going all out to stop her from testifying.
Most of the movie takes place on a train heading back to the Coast, As the cop, McGraw talks tough, and for the most part, although no great thinker, he can back it up. Marie Windsor is even better in her part, and I think I’d have given her another ending.
DESTINATION MURDER. RKO Radio Pictures, 1950. Joyce Mackenzie, Stanley Clements, Hurd Hatfield, Albert Dekker, Myrna Dell, James Flavin, John Dehner, Suzette Harbin, Franklyn Farnum. Story & screenplay: Don Martin. Director: Edward L. Cahn. Streaming online here at the Internet Archive.
When her father is killed in his doorway by a messenger boy, a young woman (Joyce Mackenzie) thinks that the police are working too slowly on the case, and she decides to some detective work on her own. Feeling the cops aren’t showing enough interest in the fellow she picked out of a police lineup, she begins a phony romance with him.
This leads to her getting a job as a hatcheck girl at the club run by a known gangster (Albert Dekker), which of course gets her into even more danger, not to mention yet another romantic entanglement, this time with the club’s manager (Hurd Hatfield). Even though the movie is only 70 minutes long, this short summary includes only the minimum of the story line, not including a tremendous twist about two-thirds of the way through.
And I do have to mention the brassy blonde presence of Myrna Dell as the gangster’s girl, or so he thinks. She definitely has different ideas about that.
Joyce MacKenzie, a new face to me, is a brunette in the Jane Wyatt or Barbara Hale mode, while Stanly Clement as a wise-ass but mostly dopey killer-for-hire, went on to lead the Bowery Boys after Leo Gorcey retired. He was probably typecast in many other similar roles.
The ending falls a bit flat, or so it seemed to me, but otherwise the players all had some name value and turned in more than adequate performances. No weak links in this one.
The film itself is sometimes lumped into the film noir category, but if so, it’s only marginally. It’s a straight forward detective thriller in the nightclub and other nightlife vein, and for the time, it was (and is) one of the better ones.
DANGEROUS MONEY. Monpgram Pictures, 1946. Sidney Toler (Charlie Chan), Gloria Warren, Victor Sen Young (Jimmy Chan), Rick Vallin, Joseph Crehan. Willie Best. Screenplay by Miriam Kissinger, based on characters created by Earl Derr Biggers. Director: Terry Moore. Currently streaming on YouTube (see below),
Charlie Chan is en route by boat to Australia, when a treasury agent on the trail of some “hot money” is murdered. With a ship full of suspects, plus two “assistants,” one his number two son, Charlie fuddles around for a while and then nabs the killer.
I take back the remarks I made about the Mr, Moto series. I think I am an intelligent person, but I didn’t understand anything after the first 15 minutes. I assumed all would be made clear later, but the movie’s over, and here I am, without a clue.
THE DARK CORNER. 20th Century Fox, 1946. Lucille Ball, Mark Stevens, Clifton Webb, William Bendix, Kurt Kreuger, Cathy Downs, Reed Hadley, Constance Collier, Eddie Heywood. Directed by Henry Hathaway. Currently available on YouTube. (See below.)
PI Brad Galt has a problem. Ge has a past that includes a stretch in a California prison for manslaughter – a crime he was framed for by a former partner, a romeo who specializes in blackmail om th side. They’re both in New York now, the fur about to fly.
Galt also has a good-looking secretary who believes in him, but who intends to wait for a wedding ring before fooling around. Stevens looks too soft to be believable to be a tough private eye, but Lucille Ball is delectable. She could work in my office any time.
THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS. Universal, 1971. George C Scott, Joanne Woodward, Jack Gilford, Lester Rawlins, Al Lewis, Rue McClanahan, Oliver Clark, F. Murray Abraham, Paul Benedict and M. Emmet Walsh. Written by James Goldman. Directed by Anthony Harvey. Currently streaming on YouTube (see below).
A promising misfire.
I use the word “promising” advisedly. Well, that is to say, no one actually advised me to call it “promising, “ but I couldn’t help thinking how aptly it applied to a film with an intriguing premise and a story-line strewn with clues that seem to be leading up to something that turns out to…..
For starters, Giantscenters around George C Scott as a paranoid psychotic who believes he is Sherlock Holmes, and sees the hand of Moriarty at work in everything that happens his way. He is also a man of considerable personal charm — distressingly rare in actual paranoids — and persuasiveness — distressingly common in paranoids who run nations, but I digress.
As the film opens, Scott’s brother is trying to get him committed for venal reasons of his own, and Psychiatrist Mildred Watson (Joanne Woodward) is called in to evaluate him and sign the papers. When her boss at the Mental Hospital pressures Dr Watson (get it?) to skip over the evaluation, she digs her heels in and takes time to really get to know a clearly delusional man who refuses to act like a patient. And as the film progresses, she gets drawn further into his fantasy… or is it fantasy?
Okay I better post a (WARNING!!) because I’m gonna hint at some plot developments here. And the problem is, there are plenty of developments, but they only lead to other developments. The story seems to be going somewhere, but it never actually gets there — or much of anywhere. Every clue leads to another clue instead of a solution, every action runs to a dead end, and every climax turns to anticlimax, leaving the film meandering and irresolute.
Perhaps it’s all the more frustrating because there are some clever ideas and good lines here: a pithy comment on Westerns, “There are no masses in Dodge City, only individuals taking responsibility for their own actions.” Scott’s assessment of Woodward’s usefulness, “Just keep saying to yourself, ‘I’m adequate. ‘ “ or “I think if God is dead he laughed himself to death.”
I could go on. The movie itself sure does. But basically all that cleverness is just elegant gift-wrapping on an empty package.
THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T DIE. 20th Century Fox, 1942. Lloyd Nolan (Mike Shayne), Marjorie Weaver, Helene Reynolds, Henry Wilcoxon, Richard Derr, Paul Harvey, Billy Bevan, Olin Howlin, Jeff Corey, Charles Irwin (as The Great Merlini; uncredited). Based on the character created by Brett Halliday and the novel No Coffin for the Corpse by Clayton Rawson. Director: Herbert I. Leeds. Currently streaming on YouTube here.
This was the fifth of seven Michael Shayne movies starring Lloyd Nolan that were produced by Fox between 1940 and 1942, and to tell you the truth, right up front, this isn’t one of he better ones. To start with, to me, while he was a very fine actor, Lloyd Nolan is about 180 degrees the reverse of what Brett Halliday’s Miami- and New Orleans-based PI Michael Shayne should look and sound like.
That’s a handicap for all seven films to overcome, right from the start. But playing it to the extreme for comedy effect, as they do in this one is, to my mind, all but sacrilegious.
On the other hand, though, there are others in these early Nolan films which not bad. (Sleepers West is one I can easily recommend, but it is difficult to make a bad movie that takes place on a train.)
There is no train in this one, only a silly plot about a man (supposedly) coming back to life after being accidentally killed in an old manor house (one of those), then surreptitiously buried at the dead of night in a shallow grave.
Shayne is hired by the daughter of the man who owns the house after she is awakened at night by an intruder and a shot is fired at her. To explain his presence she introduces him as her newly obtained husband.
That the real husband shows up later, to much confusion and hilarity, needs not be mentioned.
Meanwhile the local cop, the kind of country lunkhead who seems to always show up in movies such as this, is obviously in way over his head, giving Mike Shayne all the room he needs to solve the case, which he explains in the end in great detail. When asked how he found out all the facts be brings up, he says, well, like a good magician, a good detective never reveals his secrets. Pfui!
A movie only for fans of comedy films, not hard-boiled detective movies. (And look, I didn’t even bring up the secret laboratory in the basement, much less the villain whose eyes seem to glow in the dark.)
THIRTEEN WOMEN. RKO Radio Pictures, 1932. Irene Dunne, Ricardo Cortez, Jill Esmond, Myrna Loy, Mary Duncan, Kay Johnson, Florence Eldridge, C. Henry Gordon, Based on the novel by Tiffany Thayer. Directed by George Archainbaud.
Rejected by the other girls in a sorority during her seminary days, a half-caste Hindu woman plots a murderous revenge. Using a series of forged horoscopes and a mysterious hypnotic power (plus the power of suggestion), her plot nearly succeeds.
Not nearly as bloody as today’s thrillers (but certainly in the same vein), what does this movie in is not so much its overly developed sense of melodrama, but the minor gaps in logic. Myrna Loy is simply fine as the villainess, however. No one else comes close.
THE LONE WOLF SPY HUNT. Columbia Pictures, 1939. Warren William (Michael Lanyard), Ida Lupino, Rita Hayworth, Virginia Weidler, Ralph Morgan, Tom Dugan, Don Beddoe. Screenplay: Jonathan Latimer, based upon a story by Louis Joseph Vance. Directed by Peter Godfrey.
This was the first in a series of nine films that Warren William starred in as the reformed safe-cracker widely known as The Lone Wolf. There were eleven before this one, including six from the silent era. I don’t know how consistent these movies were in terms of continuity, but this one starts off with Michael Lanyard “burdened” down with a daughter (possibly adopted), played most energetically by as extremely tomboyish Virginia Weidler. (*)
You may have also noticed the presence of both Ida Lupino (as an extremely jealous and overly clingy girl friend) and Rita Hayworth (as a villainess I’d love to have seen more of). Both were in the early stages of their respective careers. Who knew, back in 1939, how famous the two of them would turn out to be?
Warren William plays his role in the most urbane and cultured way possible, and of course his usual demeanor on the screen, as he deals with the considerable domestic uproars he faces in this film as easily as he does with the spies he is hunting, per the title.
At this late date the plot doesn’t amount to much: spies trying to obtain some secrete military plans. One way of doing so, they hope, is to frame Lanyard into working for them by leaving one of his signature cigarettes at the scene of another crime.
There is more emphasis on the comedy this time around than there is an actual mystery, including the aforementioned domestic uproars, a hapless butler, and a couple of hardworking but dumb cops. All in fun, of course, and a good time is had by all.
Including me.
(*) I note for the record that there was a silent film from 1919 entitled The Lone Wolf’s Daughter. Any connection? I have no idea. I await enlightenment.
THE MIGHTY QUINN. MGM, 1989. Denzel Washington (Xavier Quinn), James Fox, Mimi Rogers, M. Emmet Walsh, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Esther Rolle, Robert Townsend (Maubee). Based on the book Finding Maubee by A. H. Z. Carr. The title of the film is derived from the song “Quinn the Eskimo” by Bob Dylan. Director: Carl Schenkel.
I’d seen The Mighty Quinn before (reviewed here by my father a couple of years ago) and thoroughly enjoyed it. It must have been on DVD. This time, however, I decided to watch it on VHS on my 9” Sylvania TV/VCR combo.
And while the small screen did inevitably detract from the very scenic aspect of the film, watching it as I did allowed me to appreciate the plot even more than during my first watch. Plot, or should I say, anti-plot? Because at the end of the day, The Mighty Quinn is, in many ways, a plotless movie.
True, you have Denzel Washington portraying Xavier Quinn, a Carribean police chief, tasked with tracking down his childhood friend Maubee, who is now the prime suspect in a murder. But really, when you take the whole movie in, you come to realize that it’s a journey movie; not a plot one. That the movie’s force – and what makes it a personal favorite to a small group of people – is the myriad characters that Quinn meets along the way.
In that sense, The Mighty Quinn is far more like 1950s noirs like Kiss Me Deadly (1955) than it is other Denzel Washington action/crime vehicles such as the ones he did with directors Tony Scott and Antoine Fuqua. Still, the movie isn’t noir. It’s not remotely hardboiled. If anything, it’s a little light and comedic at times. Which all works to its benefit.
SHERWOOD KING – If I Die Before I Wake. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1938. Mystery Novel Of The Month [no number], digest-sized paperback, 1940. Ace Double D-9, paperback, 1953. Curtis, paperback, 1965. Penguin Classic, softcover, 2010. Film: Columbia, 1947, as The Lady from Shanghai. (Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, who also directed).
Another from James Sandoe’s hardboiled checklist , this novel formed the basis of the Orson Welles film The Lady from Shanghai, which is one of my favorite noirs.
The experience of reading the novel was similar to reading In a Lonely Place after seeing Nicholas Ray’s great film. That is to say, there’s a strange cognitive dissonance. The film is so vividly done that it stays with you. And now you read a story with the same characters in the same time and place, and they act completely differently, resulting in a starkly different experience. It’s weird. Rifted from one universe into another like a car crash jettisoning you out the window, shards shattering, thrusting you through the looking glass.
It makes it hard for me to judge the book without a bit of resentment. And the resentment is utterly unfair because the book came first. But the images of the film are so entrenched that I simply cannot accept the story presented by the book.
First of all, the first person protagonist is named Laurence Planter — not Michael O’Hara. Though in both he’s a sailor. In the film Orson Welles gives us a robustly distracting Irish brogue. Planter is no more Irish than Welles. So the choice to turn Planter to O’Hara is pretty odd. Welles must have just wanted an opportunity to show his range or something. There’s very little background so his nationality is irrelevant to the narrative.
Planter gets sucked into the lavishly unseemly seaminess of Mr. and Mrs. Bannister. In the film he enters rescuing Mrs. Bannister from Central Park muggers. In the book, he’s hired as Chauffeur on the spot when Mr. Bannister spies him swimming up to their Long Island shore. Marvelous tanned physique in tow.
Mr. Bannister’s stuttered gait (in both film and book) is horribly maimed lame by a wartime missile. This causes Bannister to be forever angry at his loss of youth, and at those that have it and don’t appreciate it. They die before they wake.
Bannister leverages his disability into guilt subjecting his wife Elsa into a life of sad subjection. Without objection. And yet Bannister wants to tempt his wife and to spy upon her, looking and luring her with opportunity for alienated affections, the better to guilt her with and rail upon her for her rancid heart. Planter/O’Hara was drawn up by central casting as the perfect lure. Handsome, winsome, and nitwit.
Bannister is a great criminal defense attorney, as is his law partner Grisby. Grisby hires our fair sailor for a dirty deed. Grisby wants to disappear. He wants our sailor to pretend, in plain sight, to murder him and pretend to throw his body into the sea. Corpus delicti — without the body you can prove no crime. Meanwhile Grisby will escape safe to sea, via speedboat, presumed dead — while our sailor cannot be held to blame. And five grand the richer for really doing nothing wrong.
But Grisby isn’t just using his fake death to escape the world’s travails. He’s using it as perfect cover for the perfect crime. Once he’s ‘dead’, he will murder Bannister. There’s partnership insurance for $100 grand. And with both he and Bannister dead, the suddenly single Mrs. Bannister will join Grisby in the south seas, $100,000 the richer.
I don’t remember from the movie this part at all, frankly (it has been a while). But I do recall a confused sense of fuzziness at why Grisby wanted to fake his own death and murder Bannister.
In the book the murder plan makes perfect sense when it becomes clear that Grisby is in love with Elsa Bannister — he has every reason in the world to want to kill her husband and take his place. But in the film Grisby comes off quite pervy and queer and displays not the slightest interest in the breathtaking Rita Hayworth (Elsa Bannister). He seems more attracted to Orson Welles’s sailor. As a result the Grisby’s motive has always confused me til now.
Another note about Rita Hayworth, Elsa Bannister, and the adaptation. Rita Hayworth was famous for her flaming red hair. As was Elsa Bannister. Yet in the film Welles made Hayworth dye her hair blonde. Another odd dissonance. And she’s never been to Shanghai!
In any case, in both film and book it is Grisby’s body found slain, our innocent sailor bound to blame.
I won’t get into the ending — but while the result is the same, the manner of getting there is completely different. There’s no thrilling escape from custody, there’s no scene in the abandoned funhouse, no shooting shattered funhouse mirrors, shards splayed in bodies lain.
And so frankly, after the thrilling film, the book’s ending is relatively quiet and staid. Again — it’s the same result. But the joy is in the ride and the ride is not nearly so wild and dipsy doodle and crashing as the film.
So read it if you want. It’s good but not great. And not nearly so great as the film. Which, sadly, is diminished rather than enhanced with the reading of the book. It’s a book whose esteem would be greater had it never been adapted by a greater genius than the author of the book.
