I’m going to go out on a limb here and say why I don’t think some films embraced as noir really belong there, then saw it off behind me by trying to define what noir is. But first the films that I don’t think really are noir despite having noir elements.

   I’ve already explained why I don’t think The Maltese Falcon is noir — Spade is hardly alienated, doomed, obsessed or the victim of mysterious forces. He’s in control of himself and the situation, and the closest he comes to a touch of noir is a pang of regret at sending Brigid up the river for killing Archer. The only bad nights Spade is going to have is getting Miles Archer’s widow off his neck.

   Laura is a bit more problematic, because the sleuth is briefly obsessed, but in the end he isn’t a noir protagonist either. Clifton Webb’s villain is alienated and obsessed, but in noir it’s the hero and not the villain that counts.

   I Wake Up Screaming would be noir if Laird Cregar’s cop was the hero, but the hero and heroine are PR man Victor Mature and showgirl Betty Grable, and if you remove the murder plot, the two would be perfectly served in a musical (in fact, they were).

   Johnny Eager is a slick MGM take on a Warner’s gangster movie, but again the hero, Robert Taylor isn’t a noir hero (his buddy Van Heflin is though, but that doesn’t count). There is nothing in Johnny Eager’s character different than the general run of gangsters in a hundred similar films.

   All of these films use the shadows and high contrast lighting of noir, but then so does the swashbuckler The Sea Hawk. They all have noir elements, but they lack the core elements that define noir. For that matter I would put Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt as only borderline noir (Teresa Wright is neither alienated, obsessed, nor beset by mysterious forces — she’s Nancy Drew caught in an adult mystery).

   Shanghai Gesture is an old fashioned German Expressionist melodrama, and not a noir though a contributor to the genre. An argument can be made however for You Only Live Once, Street of Chance, Mask of Dimitrios, The Stranger on the Third Floor, and Journey Into Fear.

   I’ll give them their points, and only point out that two of them are spy films and by that nature share elements with noir, and the two spy films are directed by Noir director Jean Negulesco and Orson Welles (though credited to Norman Foster). The elements of distrust, paranoia, and betrayal common to most spy films are noirish to begin with.

   But then what is noir? We’ve beat around the noir bush and come up with some general ideas — as Walker Martin points out it is a style — but it isn’t just a style, or every moody horror film would be noir, so I’m going to try to break down some key elements that I think define noir.

   First of all noir is defined by the protagonist, and the noir protagonist has some distinct characteristics. As often as not he’s a veteran who is having a tough time adjusting to the peace time world, but veteran or not he is always alienated in some way.

   In noir this means he is lost in a darkness he carries inside of him, but which is expressed by the world outside of him. He is inevitably an urban figure, usually in an urban setting (but even in a rural setting — On Dangerous Ground, Un roi sans divertissement — the hero is an urban figure).

   Above all he is opposed by a “mysterious force,” a situation or antagonist beyond his control which leaves him with a sense of fear, powerlessness, and isolation. He is faced with forces of chaos he can’t control and sometimes is even attracted to. The noir hero is at the mercy of forces he can’t control and can only hope to survive.

   The second factor key to most — but not all — noir is obsession. The noir protagonist is invariably obsessed — with the truth, revenge, a woman, power, money, or an impossible dream. He carries that obsession to the point it nearly (or does) destroy him (these definitions all define the female protagonists of noir as well).

   He is set apart by the obsession, and though he recognises the power it has over him he can’t escape. That inability to escape from one’s fate is another key element of noir. You can run from everything but yourself.

   Noir style is also important. High contrast lighting gives objects a certain sinister feel. Traffic lights, street lights, rain-soaked streets, narrow alleys, dark stairwells in cheap apartments, abandoned buildings, fire escapes, the sewers beneath the city, darkened warehouses — all these places and things take on a character of their own.

   The freighter where the final scene of Anthony Mann’s T-Men takes place, the bridge girders Arturo De Cordova flees onto in The Naked City, the tunnels beneath Union Station, the sewers of LA in He Walked by Night, the refineries in White Heat and Follow Me Quietly, the merry-go-round in Strangers on a Train, the office stairwell in Mirage‘s blackout, the bleak snowbound countryside in On Dangerous Ground and Murder Is My Beat, the baseball stadium in Experiment in Terror, the inner works of the Big Clock, the elaborate garden in Night Has 1000 Eyes, the claustrophobic corridors of the train in Narrow Margin, and the carnival fireworks of The Bribe are all as much characters in the film as any human. They are familiar and alien at the same time.

   In their book Film Noir (Overlook Press, 1979), Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward write that Noir “consistently evokes the dark side of the American persona … a stylised vision of itself, a true cultural reflection of the mental dysfunction of a nation uncertain of transition.” They put the classical noir period between the end of WWII and the end of the Korean Conflict when the country is in transition from the war and the influx of returning veterans adjusting to civilian life — and setting off the baby boom.

   Among the other staples of noir is the femme fatale. She is hardly new to literature (lest we forget Delilah or Madame De Winter), but the noir protagonist is uniquely unable to resist or recognise her (Sam Spade on the other hand, not only recognises her, but plays her and ultimately disposes of her).

   To this sexual confusion is added an atmosphere of violence, paranoia, and threat. The hero is vulnerable and beset by grotesque characters that seem to come out of a horror film at times (in The Big Clock Charles Laughton is shot in closeup with a wide angle lens that further distorts his already magnificently ugly features). Many of the characters in noir would be at home in Paris Grand Guignol or Dicken’s novels.

   Certain visual cues are important, high contrast lighting, shadows, disorienting angles, and the sudden threat of ordinary and even benign objects (in The Big Combo policeman Cornell Wilde is tortured by gangster Richard Conte with Brian Donlevy’s hearing aid). There is often a dream scene or a brief use of nightmare imagery, and frequently flashbacks that disrupt the narrative flow.

   Along with the grotesque there are frequently suggestions of perversion — twisted sexuality just beneath the surface (in The Glass Key William Bendix’s Jeff virtually seduces Alan Ladd as he beats him, calling him “Baby”), Clifton Webb’s aesthete villain in The Dark Corner is either asexual or homosexual (homosexuality is inevitably presented as perversion in noir, but then so are most forms of heterosexuality).

   The femme fatale in noir often seems to feed on and desire humiliation, and take a perverse pleasure in destruction like some strange incarnation of Kali or a Dionysian bacchanalia. It’s the old fear of female sexuality sharpened to a knife point.

   The films are also marked by a sort of hyper acuity of the senses. Blacks are deeper, light areas brighter, edges more defined. In Phantom Lady when Elisha Cook Jr.s’ hophead drummer plays a solo it rises in crescendo into a near sexual climax. The interior of the big clock in The Big Clock looks like an alien spaceship. When Philip Marlowe falls into a black pool it swallows him and the viewer. The sharpness of edges in noir is one of the most important visual cues, one that becomes startlingly clear if seen on the big screen or on today’s HDTV’s with superior digital DVD or Blu Ray.

   One last key element of many noir’s is narration. This can vary from the poetic hardboiled voice of Dick Powell’s Marlowe, Tom Brown’s doomed drifter, Chill Wills’ embodiment of Chicago in The City That Never Sleeps, or the dry baritone of Reed Hadley emotionlessly keeping us informed in the docu-noirs.

   The narration is at its most effective in Sunset Boulevard when William Holden’s Joe narrates from his own murder scene. The narration allows us inside the head of characters in ways that dialogue can’t always. At the same time it reminds us we are all to some extent trapped in our own mind.

   Not all of these elements are in every noir film, but enough of them predominate that they can be used to define the genre. There are always going to be films that are on the edge one way or another, and because of its nature I’m not sure noir can be defined precisely, but I’ll name seven key factors I think are vital.

      1. Alienation.
      2. Obsession
      3. Visual Style
      4. Destructive Sexuality
      5. Grotesque characters
      6. Narration
      7. Stylized violence

   Any four of those elements in one film and I think you have to grant it is noir, but three or less is problematic, and unless the psychological elements apply to the protagonist it probably isn’t noir.

   And one last rule that will certainly be controversial — I don’t think you can really claim it is the Hollywood noir school if it is made before at least 1944, though it may be an immediate precursor of the genre (This Gun For Hire, Street of Chance, Journey Into Fear, Citizen Kane …).

   I don’t think true noir exists without the catalyst of WWII and the returning veteran. Like the atomic genie, the war let loose a new twist in the American psyche as defined as Hemingway’s Lost Generation, and it is out of that and many tropes of popular literature and film that film noir arises, as clearly as the detective story comes into focus with Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes in ways it had not in the period from 1841 in Poe’s Rue Morgue until Holmes.

   Many of the elements are there, but until the right moment they don’t become a distinct form.

   I agree the Chaykin and Hutton Nero Wolfe series is not only the best film version of Wolfe, but one of the best adaptations of a fictional sleuth to film (certainly to the small screen).

   Both Edward Arnold and Walter Connolly, who played Wolfe in early films, decided to play him as a jovial and bluff type much like the millionaires and politicians they usually played, and it didn’t help that Lionel Stander (Max on Hart to Hart) was badly miscast as Archie (much less John Qualen as Fritz).

   The sets were faithful to the books, though. (The two films were Meet Nero Wolfe, based on Fer de Lance, and The League of Frightened Men.)

   Television did much better with the pilot film Nero Wolfe (1979) that starred Thayer David and Tom Mason. Based on The Doorbell Rang, it was a superior made-for-television film, and David and Mason were both good. They even did the scene from the book where Wolfe’s client (Anne Baxter in this one) spots the portrait of Wolfe’s father (Sherlock Holmes).

   If memory serves Biff McGuire was Cramer and John Randolph played Lon Cohen. Frank Gilroy directed and scripted. The untimely death of Thayer David postponed the series, which eventually starred William Conrad and Lee Horsley, and the least said about that the better.

   Wolfe did somewhat better on radio where the role was played by Santos Ortega and Sidney Greenstreet. If you’ve never heard them they are well done, and not hard to find. But running only a half hour, the series episodes seldom adapted Stout’s material.

   As to why there is no American equivalent to Mystery or Masterpiece Theater, part of it lies in the fact the BBC is a government operation, and part the commercial nature of network and cable television. We’ll always get another version of Knightrider and seldom get a quality program like Nero Wolfe, and certainly nothing to resemble those adaptations of Lord Peter, Campion, Poirot, or Miss Marple.

   Another factor is that many British series only commit to six to eight episodes a season so budgets aren’t as restrictive, and the actors can do other work while doing a series without having to leave the series.

   That the Jim Hutton Ellery Queen, the Chaykin Wolfe, and the Spenser TV series were as good as they were and ran as long as they did are all minor miracles.

   Eventually there will be a revival of classical tec films (everything comes back to some extent), and we’ll get a new round of American-made Agatha Christie’s with some poor actress as badly cast in the part of Miss Marple as Helen Hayes was, or a Peter Ustinov struggling with diminishing budgets and scripts.

   But the sad fact is, it’s cheaper to generate material based on old series and follow trends than try to do something smart. It’s more cost effective to invent a tec series for the small screen than to buy the rights to a proven product and run afoul of fans’ preconceived ideas and the author’s desires.

   It probably doesn’t help that today’s honchos have a better understanding of comics, science fiction, fantasy, movies, and 80’s television than mystery fiction. Our only hope is that somewhere down the line another cable network decides to gamble on something like the Nero Wolfe series and produces something worthwhile instead of more reality series and tiresome comedies and dramadies. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

   And I know I’m gilding the lily here, but there seems to have been a suggestion that Perry Mason debuted sometime around the creation of the Raymond Burr television series. Of course Mason appeared for the first time in the late 1930’s when Gardner was already a highly successful pulp author. (H. Bedford Jones officially passed the title king of the pulps onto Gardner.) Mason pushed Gardner onto the bestseller list and made him one of the most successful writers of all time.

   Warner Brothers did a series of Mason movies with Warren William, Ricardo Cortez, and Donald Woods as Mason (at least one had Allen Jenkins as Paul Drake and Errol Flynn made his American film debut as a corpse in another). There was also 15 minute radio serial based on Perry, but it was never a particular success.

   It wasn’t until television and Burr’s incarnation of the character that Perry finally conquered another market. Fans will recall a second attempt to do Perry with Monte Markham that met an early and much deserved end, and of course Burr’s return to the role in later years in a series of made for television movies.

   Although Gardner was a major success as a mystery writer without Burr, it can certainly be argued that Burr so embodied the character that he took the whole thing to another level pushing Perry to a level closer to Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, and James Bond than the usual run of mystery icons. There is a good book, Murder in the Millions, that covers the mega sales of Gardner, Ian Fleming, and Mickey Spillane.

THE BIG CLOCK. Paramount, 1948. Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Sullivan, George Macready, Rita Johnson, Elsa Lanchester, Harry Morgan, with uncredited appearances by Noel Neill and Ruth Roman. Screenplay: Jonathan Latimer, based on the novel by Kenneth Fearing. Director: John Farrow.

   I’ve not read the book, or at least not so recently that I remember reading it, but from what I have been able to tell, the movie follows the text fairly closely — except for one thing. In the movie George Stroud, the highly successful editor of a true crime magazine, does not go to bed with the woman whose murder he finds himself framed for.

   Otherwise the story apparently stays very much the same. The big kicker in both the book and the movie is that Stroud is put in charge of the ensuing investigation; that is, of finding the “killer,” himself, by his publisher, Earl Janoth, who in actuality — and in a sudden burst of abhorrence — really did commit the murder. The dead woman was Janoth’s mistress, and their relationship had been going sour for several weeks.

   If I’m wrong about the book, let me know, but Jonathan Latimer’s screenplay can stand on its own, regardless. Ray Milland plays George Stroud, a very capable, self-assured fellow, but a very foolish guy in hanging around with Pauline York (Rita Johnson) when he has a wife (Maureen O’Sullivan) who is still waiting for a honeymoon after seven years of marriage.

   Milland is very good as the man who finds himself more and more trapped in a web partly of his own making, as his own team of reporters continues to close in on him at Jaroth’s command.

   Even better is Charles Laughton as that very same fastidious publisher, prig and interminably stuffy, a haughty person obsessed with time and efficiency and minimal cost, only to startle himself (momentarily) into becoming a normal person afraid of being caught at something he later can’t comprehend having done.

   Maureen O’Sullivan doesn’t have a lot to do as Georgette Stroud, only to nag him (and rightfully so) and then stand beside him (at last) when he needs her most. Most viewers call this a classic noir film, and even if you haven’t seen it yourself, I hope my description of it will have you nodding your head and saying yes.

   Occasionally disrupting the dark and desperate mood, though, are a few moments of comic relief, mostly (but not solely) at the hands of Elsa Lancester as a wacky, bohemian artist with a flat full of kids who can identify Stroud, but for (very good) reasons of her own, decides not to.

   I certainly didn’t mind the comic interludes, but I wonder if purist noir aficionados do. The ending is a doubly happy one (I think), preceded by some very good detective work. Most entertaining, with emphasis on the “most.”

   I watched this movie about several weeks ago, and I just watched it again before writing up these comments. I enjoyed it immensely both times, but there is a lot going on in this movie that I haven’t even begun to mention, and it takes more than one watching to appreciate it all.

   I have it penciled in on my calendar to see it again in about a month from now.

PostScript: Ray Milland, Jonathan Latimer and director John Farrow teamed up at least one other time in Alias Nick Beal (1949), which I reviewed here last summer.

THE BLAZING TRAIL. Columbia, 1949. Charles Starrett, Smiley Burnette, Marjorie Stapp, Fred Sears, Jock Mahoney, Trevor Bardette, Hank Penny, Slim Duncan. Screenplay: Barry Shipman. Director: Ray Nazarro.

   You’ve probably anticipated me by now, but there’s no trail to be blazed (or on fire) in this one either, still another Durango Kid movie.

   But like Phantom Valley, the earlier entry also directed by Ray Nazarro, this one’s also a decent mystery puzzler, complete with voiceover narration by Charles Starrett.

   At issue here, after the shooting death of old Mike Brady, is the matter of his will, which leaves the bulk of his estate to the “wrong” one of his two surviving younger brothers. The will was signed and witnessed (but not read) and sealed securely. How was the document altered? If it was, of course.

   As the dead man’s attorney, Luke Masters (Fred Sears) vouches for it, and while his daughter Janet (Marjorie Stapp) acts rather suspiciously about it, especially in the beginning, so does she. (See the photo to the right to get a good look at both Sears and Ms. Stapp.)

   Smiley Burnette runs a one-man newspaper in this one. He’s both the reporter for the Bradytown Bugle and the editor and the publisher, which makes for very funny problems as he tries to manipulate the movable type and generally get his printing press running. (He has no capital “D,” which makes it hard to spell Durango in the headlines.)

   The two brothers are obvious suspects, and so are the local gambler “Full House Patterson” (Jock Mahoney, who later of course became TV’s “Range Rider” as Jack Mahoney, not to mention a couple of Tarzan movies) and Brady’s long-time foreman, Jess Williams (Trevor Bardette, who according to IMDB, made 228 movie and TV appearances, many of them in crime or western roles just like this one).

   Steve’s last name in this one is Allen, and yes, I know. While the immediate investigation is clumsily done – how smooth could things go with Smiley involved? – the secret of how the will got altered is an impossible crime that’s worth double the price of admission. (Easily. What did it cost to go to the movies in 1949? For someone my age at the time, no more than 10 or 12 cents.)

   And while I know you are probably not wondering, there’s no romantic interest at all. The songs are pretty good, though.

PostScript: I was just thinking. If you took these three movies and worked out just how much screen time Starrett got versus how much Smiley Burnette did, I have a feeling that… Have you ever watched one? What do you think?

   In one of the comments that he left following my recent review of a Jessica Fletcher novel, David Vineyard asked the following question:

    Here’s the present entry for the book as it appears in the Revised Crime Fiction IV:

   I sent David’s question on to Al Hubin, and here’s his reply. While it’s certainly not conclusive, it is informative:

[PostScript.]   Lee Goldberg recently left two or three additional comments about TV and movie adaptations and tie-in’s following that Murder, She Wrote review. Since he’s the man in the know, if you haven’t already read what he has to say, then by all means do.

MAD HOLIDAY. MGM, 1936. Edmund Lowe, Elissa Landi, Zasu Pitts, Ted Healy, Edmund Gwenn, Edgar Kennedy, Raymond Hatton. Suggested by the story “Murder in a Chinese Theatre” by Joseph Santley. Director: George B. Seitz.

   I’ve looked, and I can’t find a record of the story just mentioned, nor even a mention anywhere of the author, Joseph Santley. If anybody knows anything more, let me know. [See the UPDATE below.]

   Another curiosity is that the name of the “detective” in this film is Philip Trent, but the character has nothing to do with the detective of the same name in the works of E. C. Bentley. This Philip Trent is a movie actor who plays a detective by the name of Selby James in a series of films based on the books written by Peter Dean. (Still with me?)

   Tired immensely of the role, claiming that the situations he’s been put into over the years to have been unrealistic and utterly unbelievable, Trent declares himself finished with the role and takes off on a sea-going vacation.

   And what does he run into? Murder and a stolen diamond. (How did you know?)

   He also discovers that “Peter Dean” (played by Elissa Landi) is someone he wouldn’t mind being handcuffed to, once he meets her and is accused along with her of doing away with the owner of the diamond.

   As you can guess, any film with Zasu Pitts in it, or any movie featuring Ted Healy (mentor and leading instigator of The Three Stooges) is not bound to be taken very seriously. Nonetheless, there is some body to the plot (besides the body, I mean). And while it’s not exactly a high-class production, this strictly B-version of a detective mystery story still provides a full 70 or 75 minutes of entertainment.

[UPDATE] 01-23-09.  This review was written well before the Internet was in full swing, and in particular before the online IMDB was readily available. Joseph Santley was the director of 89 films, starting in 1928; in the 1940s he seems to have worked primarily for Republic, putting out small trifles like Rosie the Riveter (1944, with Jane Frazee) and Hitchhike to Happiness (1945, with Dale Evans).

   Santley was either the screenwriter or wrote the story for 15 other films in the 1930s, but where the story that Mad Love was based on was published, if ever, has still never been determined.

   Elissa Landi was only 32 when she made Mad Holiday, but she appeared in only three movies afterward, including After the Thin Man, also in 1936. (The photo you see of her to the left was taken from that film.)

   As for Mad Holiday itself, I have absolutely no recollection of ever seeing it. My only hope is that someday I’ll come across the video tape that I saved it on.

THE NUMBER 23. New Line Cinema, 2007. Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, Logan Lerman, Danny Huston, Lynn Collins. Screenwriter: Fernley Phillips. Director: Joel Schumacher.

   What this is, when you get down to it, with the dirt ground in deep beneath your fingernails, is a movie about obsessive numerology:

   You get the idea? There’s more:

    “Parents each contribute 23 chromosomes to their kids; the Earth’s axis is off by 23.5 degrees (and 5 = 2 + 3); the Mayans predicted the apocalypse on December 23, 2012 (20 + 1 + 2 = 23).”

   And still more:

   You see what I mean?

   Who’s Walter?, you ask. He’s Walter Sparrow, the obsessive, semi-nerdy protagonist of The Number 23, an animal control specialist, happily married (Virginia Madsen), with one well-adjusted son (Logan Lerman). Things are fine until his birthday (see above). A loose dog named Ned (see above) keeps Walter from meeting his wife on time. Loitering in a bookstore, she comes across a hand-produced book titled The Number 23, by Topsy Kretts, and she buys it for Walter as a gift.

   That’s when things go bad. Very bad. Walter begins to identify more and more with the protagonist in the book, a homicide detective named Fingerling. Noirish nightmares follow. A entire world filled with doppelgängers. A world filled with noir symbolism: rainy streets, saxophones playing in the background, beautiful suicidal blondes, knives, blood, death. A world of paranoia. Who do you trust? Are the dreams real?

   Many reviewers seem to have thought that since Jim Carrey is the star of The Number 23, that the movie is a comedy. They are wrong. Since they, the reviewers, didn’t laugh, except to ridicule, they decided that this is a black comedy. They are wrong.

   This is, believe it or not, a straightforward detective movie, and it is up to Walter Sparrow to determine, first of all, who died, and when, and then, finally, who did it. The story doesn’t get there in straight-forward fashion, though, and I admit it’s easy to lose track of what’s happening. (Some people who’ve left comments on IMBD were so totally confused after 20 minutes that they simply stopped watching. Why they want others to know this, I do not know.)

   This movie is a visual treat for the eyes, if you don’t mind skrunge, if you don’t mind madness occurring right in front of you, if you go with the movie instead of fighting it.

   I do wish, though, that the makers of this movie had chosen another ending. This one’s flat. It took a lot of work to build up to a suitable climax, but this one isn’t it.

   The mystery’s solved, the culprit’s named, but the sudden swoosh of air out of your lungs is less a release of tension than one of disappointment.

   Not that the ending isn’t the one the movie was pointing to all along. It’s not that. It’s that it could have – should have – been more. Not happier, not sadder, just one with a little more edge to it. That’s all I’d ask. (I’ve read that the DVD contains an alternative ending, but so far I’ve not been able to confirm that.)

      ______

    Please note: ● Friday’s the 6th day of the week, January’s the first month of the year, and this is the 16th. 6 + 1 + 16 = 23. ● If you were to copy this review into WordPerfect, the images would each appear as three words: The Number 23. There are 23 paragraphs in this review. ● There are 828 words: [2 + 3] + [8 + 2 + 8] = 23.

CRIME AGAINST JOE. Bel-Air Productions/United Artists, 1956. John Bromfield, Julie London, Henry Calvin, Patricia Blake, Joel Ashley, Robert Keyes, Joyce Jameson. Screenwriter: Robert C. Dennis, based on a story by Decla Dunning. Director: Lee Sholem.

   Crime Against Joe is a flick with some nice moments; those who classify it as film noir, however, overstate the case. It should be of interest to many of you mainly because it is a whodunit.

   Joe (John Bromfield) is an unsuccessful artist (who would be a starving artist if his mother didn’t support him); he gets rip-roaring drunk one night and motors to a local drive-in restaurant where young and attractive “Slacks” (Julie London) works. She talks him out of any more drunk driving; Slacks calls for their mutual friend Red the cabbie to take Joe home.

   Instead, Joe insists on being taken to a local nightclub, where he has a brief encounter with the chanteuse. The barkeep hauls him outside and punches him, and he collapses in a dusty heap; Joe is barely aware of a man later known as “the cowboy” who helps him to his feet.

   Without a car, Joe staggers off and encounters a young woman walking in a daze; he helps her to her house nearby, where her father expresses his gratitude. Still thoroughly drunk, Joe wanders away before the father returns to the front door.

   The next morning, Joe, nursing the mother of all hangovers, is confronted by a police lieutenant; it seems that at the same time Joe was out and about, the chanteuse was getting herself murdered. Joe is now the prime suspect; down at the station, he can’t believe it when just about everyone he encountered that night — but especially the barkeep and the father of the dazed girl — lies about having seen him.

   Only Slacks is willing to alibi him, but she tells a lie in doing so. At least it gets Joe out of the clink; he turns (not very good) amateur sleuth and along with Slacks begins narrowing down a list of 87 possible suspects to just four. What he doesn’t know until it’s almost too late is that the real killer isn’t one of those four ….

   Clearly this was a low-budget production; every scene was filmed in an actual location, and I doubt if any money was spent on set construction. The lack of money may or may not explain the muddled script; an attempted murder is shown and never referred to again. And the director does a poor job at times: When the killer is confessing, instead of a closeup showing that person’s remorse we get a medium-longshot in profile (not much information content).

   The violence content is also low: We never see the murder or even the face of the victim. A later scene with the killer is actually more effective because of the way it is shot: Someone is climbing a staircase and the audience sees the killer only in silhouette raise a club and bring it down out of camera range; this victim then tumbles noisily down the stairs, giving Julie London an opportunity to emit a piercing scream.

   Crime Against Joe could have been a great film, but the low budget sabotaged it. Still, it is a whodunit; the murderer’s identity is withheld until the last possible moment. And how many mysteries — filmic or otherwise — have been solved by the sleuths rummaging through the permanent academic records of high school students?

      * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

   I remember John Bromfield primarily from his TV series Sheriff of Cochise (1956-58):

   Beside recording 32 albums as a singer, co-star Julie London had a long Hollywood career:

      * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“What’s your attitude about girls, Joe?”
“I think they’re here to stay.”

      * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“Slacks, are you a nice girl, Slacks?”
“Well, either way I wouldn’t want it known.”

      * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

MR. AND MRS. NORTH. MGM, 1942. Gracie Allen, William Post Jr., Paul Kelly, Virginia Grey, Tom Conway, Millard Mitchell, Keye Luke, Jerone Cowan. Based on the stories by Frances & Richard Lockridge. Director: Robert B. Sinclair.

   For starters, you could refer back to my review of The Patient in Room 18 – you know, my comments about Hollywood and detective mysteries. Gracie Allen gets a solo lead billing in Mr. and Mrs. North, and you know what that means. Disaster, in a word.

   As Pamela North, unlike the stories, she is a chattering nitwit, charming but still a nitwit. George Burns at least had the strength of personality that made it seem reasonable that he could survive living with her for more than a week. William Post, Jr., whom I don’t know — I can’t think of another movie that he was in — is, in contrast, rather bland and ineffectual in the role of Jerry, her greatly put-upon husband.

   What the movie’s about is a good question, and it may even be relevant. After both Pam and Jerry have been out of their apartment for a day — he on a business trip, she to visit her mother (or so she says) — they return home to find a corpse in their closet. (They open the door, and out he falls, on his face.)

   They don’t know the man, at least at first, but then it seems that the paths of the dead man and several of the Norths’ closest friends seem to have been intricately tangled. It takes a while to untangle all of the relationships, none of which (unfortunately) are very interesting.

   That Jerry North is, at several points of time, the number one suspect, means that his close relationship with Lt. Weigand has not yet developed, but by movie’s end, you can see that it’s in the works. This is mostly a comedy picture, though, and if you’re not a fan of Gracie’s, you can easily pass it by.

[UPDATE] 01-07-09.  A few comments, in no particular order. First of all, nothing that I’ve ever read suggests that this movie was based on any one of the Lockridges’ books, only that it was based on their characters.

   Looking back over this review, I see that I made a big assumption. That the people reading it actually knew who George Burns and Gracie Allen were.

   Maybe it was true in 1991, but even if it was, it has to be even less true now. If you’re more than 10 years younger than I am, follow this link for more information.

   As for William Post, Jr., the all-but-known chap who played Jerry North in this movie, thanks to IMDB, I can now tell you more, but not a lot, since there isn’t a lot to tell.

   Of interest to mystery fans, he appeared in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943), Experiment Perilous (1944), The House on 92nd Street (1945), and Call Northside 777 (1948), but I can’t say that I remember putting a name to his face in any of them.

   It wasn’t until TV came along that there was any other attempt to bring the Mr. and Mrs. North to the screen again. Richard Denning and Barbara Britton played the couple for two seasons, starting in 1952, and they were quite good at it.

THE PATIENT IN ROOM 18. First National Pictures, 1938. Patric Knowles, Ann Sheridan, Eric Stanley, John Ridgely, Rosella Towne. Based on the novel by Mignon G. Eberhart. Directors: Bobby Connolly & Crane Wilbur.

   It’s always been a puzzle to me why early Hollywood, with all its marvelous powers of decision making, seemed to consider the term “detective mystery” to be totally synonymous with the word “comedy.”

   Not that I’ve ever read the book this half-witted movie was based upon, but even if the story that Miss Eberhart wrote was meant to be light-hearted if not funny, I’m sure that it made some sense, and there’s not a lick of it in this film.

   Think of the Charlie Chan films and then the Hildegarde Withers movies and when you have, combine them all together in your mind and throw out the plot. Then you’d have something that would resemble this movie. (If watching B-westerns will turn your mind to mush, watching movies like this will turn it to soup.)

   Here’s the story. (If anybody’s read the book, let me know how much resemblance it bears.) As the movie opens, auxiliary police investigator Lance O’Leary (I don’t know what other job title it might be that he has) is having a nervous breakdown, caused by his first known failure on a case, and causing him to go sleepwalking through the streets in a pair of impressively loud pajamas.

   Committed to the very same hospital where his girl friend works (head nurse Sara Keate), O’Leary soon finds himself confronted with the mysterious murder of the wealthy patient in room 18, being treated with an external dose of $100,000 worth of pure radium. Which naturally is now missing.

   All of the doctors, interns, nurses, wives and other close relatives seem to be having affairs with each other, so even though Lance and the dead man seem to be the only patients in the entire hospital, there are plenty of suspects.

   The clues and other evidence are played free and easy with, and oh, did I forget to mention that the murder takes place on a dark and stormy night?

   And yet, maybe the Hollywood guys knew what they were doing. I enjoyed this sappy movie anyway. If my brain is now soup, I guess it might be clam chowder. As it happens, I like clam chowder.

[UPDATE] 01-02-09.   I don’t remember this movie all that well, but what I do recall seems to agree pretty well with my comments above. I must have taped this off cable TV, as there’s no commercial version of it available right now.

   Nor have I been able to come up with any suitable scenes from the movie. The photos of the two main stars are close to the right time period, but that’s about all. (In Ann Sheridan’s case, the photo’s from 1939. As for Patrick Knowles, he looks the right age, but I may be completely off.)