The centenaries have come thick and fast lately: Woolrich in 2003, Fred Dannay and Manny Lee in ‘05, John Dickson Carr last year. Now we celebrate one of the great masters of English detective fiction, Christianna Brand. She was born Mary Christianna Milne in Malaya – on December 17th of, as if you hadn’t guessed, 1907 – began writing whodunits a couple of years after the start of World War II, and is best known as the author of Green for Danger (1944), a classic of fair-play detection set in a military hospital in Kent during the Blitz.

   I got to meet her when she was around 70 and quickly discovered that she was as perfect in the role of the dotty English lady as was Basil Rathbone playing Holmes. Who can ever forget the MWA dinner where she was asked to present one of the Edgar awards? “The nominees are: Emily Smith, James Quackenbush….Hahaha, Quackenbush, what a funny name!” The audience, except perhaps for poor Quackenbush, was left rolling in the aisles.

   On my first visit to England, to serve as an expert witness at a trial in the Old Bailey during the summer of 1979, Christianna and her husband Roland Lewis, one of England’s top ear-nose-and-throat surgeons, took me to dinner at Simpson’s in the Strand, the famous old eatery where one tips the server who carves your roast beef tableside. A few years later I edited Buffet for Unwelcome Guests (1983), the first collection of her short stories published in the U.S. On my next visit to England after the book came out I could hardly lift my suitcases, which were packed to bursting with copies for her. She died on March 11, 1988, and everyone who knew her still misses her.

   The 1946 movie version of Green for Danger, starring Alastair Sim as the insufferable Inspector Cockrill and featuring superb English actors like Trevor Howard and Leo Genn, has long been considered one of the finest pure detective films ever made, but it’s been very hard to access over here until just a month or so ago when, in a miracle of perfect timing, it was released on DVD. If you love the classic whodunit but have never seen the film nor read the book, you have a double treat in store.

   The tale of fair-play detection has become a dying art, but each of two recent issues of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine has featured at least one specimen worthy of the Golden Age. Jon L. Breen’s “The Missing Elevator Puzzle” (February 2007) is quite simply the finest short whodunit with an academic setting that I can recall reading, with a puzzle that might have fazed Ellery himself: Why was a visitor to the campus, just before being murdered, searching for the elevator in a building that had none?

    “The Book Case” (May 2007) by Dale Andrews and Kurt Sercu not only has two authors like the Queen books themselves but returns to center stage their most famous detective, physically frail but mentally spry at age 100, as he tackles a murder with a dying message composed of copies of his own novels. Readers who aren’t well up on those novels are likely to get lost in this tale, but if you’re at home in the canon you’ll have a high old time trying to beat the centenarian sleuth to the solution.

   In most centenary celebrations the subject is dead, but there’s one coming up in just a few months where the honoree is still with us – and, so I’m told, doing well for a 99-year-old. He claims to have written a number of short whodunits published under a pseudonym in his student years but his real significance for us lies in his extensive writing about the genre over several decades and in his connection with the supreme master of pure suspense fiction.

   I am referring of course to Jacques Barzun, distinguished professor at Columbia University, co-author of the massive Catalogue of Crime, and, in the early 1920s, Columbia classmate of Cornell Woolrich, who quit college in third year when his first novel sold.

   My first contact with Dr. Barzun was back in the late Sixties when I arranged to include one of his essays in my anthology The Mystery Writer’s Art (1970). In April 1970, while I was working on Nightwebs (1971), my first collection of Woolrich stories, he invited me to his Columbia office and we spent most of an afternoon talking about what the university was like almost half a century earlier when he and Woolrich were undergraduates together and sat next to each other for several courses.

   We corresponded off and on for several years. After translating from the French (a language I had never studied) an essay about Georges Simenon’s pre-Maigret crime novels, I presumed on my acquaintanceship with Barzun and asked him to look over my draft before I sent it in to The Armchair Detective. He made many small corrections, one of which I still vividly remember: I had rendered a line from an early Simenon as “Marc’s bottle was empty” which he changed to “The bottle of marc was empty,” pointing out to me that marc is a cheap French brandy. But on the whole he was hugely pleased with my translation, saying that he was “truly amazed” that I had done it without ever having taken a French course and that it was “certainly better than much advanced student work in a Romance Language Department.”

   In the early Eighties I became involved with Nacht Ohne Morgen (Night Without Morning), a documentary on Woolrich for German TV, and arranged for the director, Christian Bauer, to interview Barzun. They talked for almost an hour but only about a minute of footage found its way into the finished film. I obtained an audiotape of the entire interview and quoted from it extensively in my own Woolrich book First You Dream, Then You Die (1988). If Jacques Barzun had not been still alive and well and blessed with a vivid memory, we would know so much less about a key period in Woolrich’s life. For that gift to the genre and for countless others, merci beaucoup. May his hundredth birthday be a joyous one and not his last.

   Mary Roberts Rinehart’s character called “The Bat” appeared in many formats over the years. Not only did “The Bat” make a lasting impression and appear in many venues, but Bob Kane, creator of the second most famous comic book character, the Batman, has been quoted as saying that the inspiration for his hero came from “actor Douglas Fairbanks’ movie portrayal of Zorro, and author Mary Rinehart’s mysterious villain ‘The Bat.’”

   This post has been put together from a variety of sources, the first being Michael Grost’s Classic Mystery and Detection website, from which is gleaned the following information about the early career of mystery author Mary Roberts Rinehart:

   From the same page, but skipping over a few sections:

   According to the online Broadway database, The Bat ran for 867 performances between August 23, 1920 and September 1922.

   Film director Roland West next made two versions of the play, a silent film The Bat (1926), and a sound film The Bat Whispers (1930).

   Following the links will lead you to the IMDB pages for each.

   His discussion is far too lengthy to repeat here, but Mike Grost goes into considerable detail in discussing director Roland West’s cinematic techniques in both of these movies, plus a number of his other films. If you’re interested in the early days of movie making, Mike’s website once again is well worth the visit.

   Returning to the play itself, Mike continues by saying:

   It should also be noted that the play itself was later published by French, in a 1932 softcover edition.

   In 1959 The Bat was once again made into a film, this one starring Vincent Price and Agnes Morehead. Of this version, one viewer says: “I found this to be an inventive and disingenuous endeavor full of red-herrings and wrong turns. Figure this one out for yourself. Puzzle the clues, weed out the characters set here as distractions, look past the deliberate contrivances and solve the mystery on your own.”

   By total coincidence, the way coincidences happen, as I was in the process of tracking down the details of all these various incarnations of the character, author Mary Reed sent me the following review of The Bat, the novel based on the play. I think it’s great when a plan comes together like this.

      Review of THE BAT: The Novel, by Mary Reed

   Everyone in the city, from millionaires to the shady citizens of the underworld, goes in fear of The Bat, a cold-blooded loner whose crimes range from jewel theft to murder and whose calling card is a drawing or some other form of expression of bathood.

   We meet wealthy, elderly, and independent spinster Miss Cornelia Van Gorder, scion of a noble family and the last of the line. An adventurous spirit, at 65 and comfortably situated, she still longs for a bit of an adventure. It maddens her to think of the sensational experiences she is missing as she contemplates that “…out in the world people were murdering and robbing each other, floating over Niagara Falls in barrels, rescuing children from burning houses, taming tigers, going to Africa to hunt gorillas, doing all sorts of exciting things!” Why, she’d love to have a stab at catching The Bat!

   Her wish is granted when she takes a house in the country for the summer and discovers it is located some twenty miles from an area where The Bat had committed three crimes. She is soon in the thick of mysterious events, including anonymous threatening letters, lights failing, a face at the window, and Lizzie Allen, her personal maid for decades, convinced she saw a strange man on the stairs. Most of the servants decamp, leaving Miss Van Gorder to manage with just a butler and Lizzie.

   More characters appear: Miss Van Gorder’s niece Dale Ogden, Brooks, the new gardener, local medical man Dr Wells, Detective Anderson, and Richard Fleming, nephew of Courtleigh Fleming, deceased owner of the house and once president of a bank which has just failed. There is talk Mr Bailey, its cashier, has stolen over a million dollars. A man is shot and an unknown party is deduced to be hiding somewhere on the rambling premises. More than one person in the house is concealing facts, and the rising storm outside underlines the increasing fear and tension within.

   Who is trying to scare Miss Van Gorder away and why? What if anything did Lizzie see on the staircase? Are any of the strange goings-on connected with the missing money? Who fired the shot? There is much flitting in and out of the doors and windows of a living room lit most of the time only by candle and firelight before everything is cleared up.

   The Bat is an excellent example of an old dark house mystery, with enough obfuscation to keep the reader guessing, although one or two surprises are less well concealed. The menacing atmosphere events create in the house is conveyed and sustained well. I found it a light, diverting read which held the interest without taxing the attention too much. The Bat is an excellent cold-night-outside read, and indeed, although I know whodunit, I would not mind seeing the play!

   Etext at http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext00/thbat10.txt

   Vince Keenan, my mystical master in all matters movie-wise, recently mentioned on his blog a soon-to-released boxed set of DVDs that is simply said, a must-not-miss. Available on March 20th is a boxed set of four Michael Shayne films from the forties that I have not seen in a long, long time, if ever.

   All four of them star Lloyd Nolan, whom you’d never go too far wrong by casting him as a semi-down-on-his heels private eye, but as Vince says, the perfect fellow would have been Ken Tobey.

   Contained in this set are:

Michael Shayne, Private Detective. 1940. This is one of the very few Mike Shayne movies that was actually based on a Mike Shayne novel. I’ve not checked to see how many of the rest of them were, but in this case it was Dividend on Death (Holt, 1939). [Note that Crime Fiction IV is in error on this point, and a statement to that effect has been made in the online Addenda to the Revised Edition, Part 12.]

The Man Who Wouldn’t Die. 1942. Credit is given to the Brett Halliday characters, but the novel it’s based on was Clayton Rawson’s No Coffin for the Corpse, a classic Great Merlini “locked room” mystery. Having never seen this film, and I’m very eager to, I don’t know how much of the plot line has been preserved, but for what it’s worth, way down in the IMBD credits is Charles Irwin as “Gus, the Great Merlini” (uncredited).

Sleepers West. 1941. This one’s based on Frederick Nebel’s mystery novel, Sleepers East. I don’t know. You tell me.

Blue, White and Perfect. 1942. Credit for the characters was once again given to Brett Halliday, but the story the movie’s based on was actually written by Borden Chase. It didn’t appear in book form until it came out as a 1947 digest paperback entitled Diamonds of Death (Hart K-2). The first appearance of the story was probably as a serial in one of the pulp fiction magazines in the 1930s.

   As much as I’d like to, I can’t review the movies now, but the odds are that I will, as soon as I’m able. Let’s go back to Vince’s comment that the perfect gent to play Michael Shayne would be Ken Tobey. (Looking back, I see that I’ve been assuming all along that you know who Mike Shayne is, and who Brett Halliday was. I didn’t intend to go into it here, and I won’t, but what I will do to send you to Kevin Burton Smith’s Thrilling Detective PI site, and trust to your good judgment to come back. It’s a gamble on my part, because I know from experience that you could easily get lost and spend days on end there, if you’re not careful.)

   Here’s a picture of Mike Shayne that was used on the covers of tons of 1950s Dell paperbacks. I’m not sure, but I suspect that the artist responsible was Robert Stanley. I’m sorry that it’s rather small, but it was only used in the corner of the covers.

   Now here’s one of Lloyd Nolan. I can’t at the moment guarantee that this comes from one of the Mike Shayne movies, but I think it does. It’s the right vintage, at least:

   Maybe he needs a hat and a cigarette drooping out of his lip, but I don’t see a resemblance.

   Here’s one of Hugh Beaumont. Before he became famous as Beaver’s dad, Hugh Beaumont remained fairly non-famous by playing the part of Mike Shayne in five films cranked out for PRC between 1946 and 1947. (Will these show up on DVD some day?)

   He isn’t bad, but it’s tough to tell, since all we see in this photo is his profile, but if you think about the Beaver’s show, and think Mike Shayne, do you get the same disconnect that I do?

   Mike Shayne was also the star of aTV show for one season on NBC, 1960-61. I was away at school then, and didn’t have time for TV, so I never saw it. I believe some of the shows are available on DVD, and if so, that’s one more item I’ll have to addto my next Amazon purchase. I also just realized that I didn’t mention that Richard Denning was the star. Here’s his likeness:

   Do you know what? As the years went on, I think the producers and the casting personnel were getting closer.

   Vince said Kenneth Tobey was the man, though, and I’m in full agreement. What do you think?

[UPDATE] 03-19-07. A few typos have been corrected in the essay above, and several questions of a bibliographic nature have been answered, requiring a bit of revising here and there. This is now (um) the current version. Thanks again to Vince Keenan for allowing me to play on his ground.

THE SCARLET CLUE. Monogram, 1945. Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, Benson Fong, Virginia Brissac, Ben Carter, Janet Shaw, I. Stanford Jolley [uncredited]. Director: Phil Rosen.

   My brother and I used to watch these Monogram entries in the Charlie Chan series on television every Friday night when we were kids, and we sure got a hoot out of them — even, I’m sure, the earlier ones with Warner Oland as well. We had to keep the sound down, since our parents were sleeping in the downstairs bedroom then, so we sat as close to the screen as we could, and enjoyed the heck out of staying up late, because it didn’t happen often.

   The funny thing is, I don’t remember any of them, only some general impressions. The crimes, the oddly stiff Sidney Toler, the interchangeable actors who played the number two or number three sons, and we wondered why Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland) wasn’t in all of them.

   A major clue in this one is a bloody footprint found at the murder that occurs in the opening scene. The plot has something to do some radar plans that foreign agents want to steal, but because the scientific laboratory is in the same building, most of the action centers around a radio station where a relatively bad soap opera production has their on-the-air studio. (When Charlie visits the lab and is shown a wind tunnel with temperature and wind effects, we know immediately that the this same wind tunnel is going to play a large part of what happens later on. We are correct.)

    The detection is minimal. I was steered to the most obvious guilty suspect as being the killer, but I didn’t have my head screwed on too carefully, I’m afraid. There are spies, stooges, blackmailers, and people in funny masks, enough to keep your eye off the fact that, as one obvious question among others, how was the elevator with its deadly surprise constructed? It must have been quite a feat, especially with nobody noticing.

   I mentioned Mantan Moreland, the black comedian who later on got a bad rap, or so I’m told, for playing such broad comic relief in movies like this one. Actually, I think that he and Tommy Chan have more screen time than does Mr. Chan himself, and never a serious part of the investigation are they ever. (One wonders why a great detective like Mr. Chan would put up with … but, oh well, never mind.)

    Moreland and fellow comedian Ben Carter do a couple of great turns in an old vaudeville bit called the “infinite” routine, wherein both men carry on a conversation something like this, with neither one ever quite completing all of their sentences:

    “Why if it isn’t …”

    “Yes, and I haven’t seen you since …”

    “No, it was longer than that. Last time I saw you, you were …”

    “Well, I’ve lost weight! And you lived in …”

    “No, I’ve moved to …”

    “That’s a bad neighborhood. How can you live there?”

      and so on, and so on …

   Afterward, a thoroughly befuddled Tommy Chan asks, “Who was that?”

   Birmingham’s answer: “He didn’t say.”

   Well, my brother and I thought it was funny. We also woke our parents up and we were sent to bed.

   This will not be an easy comment to make, since my one quibble with the movie involves a plot point, and I want to avoid giving vital information away to anyone who has not yet seen the movie. As Poirot did, I prefer the easier solution. So, first, for the simple matters.
   I agree completely with your assessment of Albert Finney’s performance. He is almost demonic at times, almost scary, which is the last thing one expects of a Poirot. His performance was a most pleasant surprise.

   Lauren Bacall’s performance was enjoyable, but I liked Ingrid Bergman’s better. And I had never realized until now not just how beautiful Vanessa Redgrave’s face was, but how wonderfully she could use it. I also enjoyed John Gielgud’s and Richard WIdmark’s performances as well as several of the others.

   If the movie reflects the novel faithfully, I can see which aspect would have troubled censors. It’s a sobering question that such a matter could keep the story off the screen for so long.

   Finally, the plot point: the resolution, as presented on screen had a ritualistic aspect that I found far-fetched. I can say no more until everyone in the world has seen the movie or read the novel. When that happens, we can discuss my objection openly.

         Peter

      Detectives Beyond Borders
       “Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”

      ========================

Peter

   Or should I call you “Artful Dodger.” Thanks for being so skillful in saying what has to be said about the movie without actually revealing what it is that can’t be talked about.

   Why is it, I wonder, why so many otherwise intelligent people can’t resist giving the solutions away to detective story plots? Only this morning I read an op-ed column in the Hartford Courant which, to make another point, gave away for nothing the ending of Murder on the Orient Express.

   And as for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the mystery that Christie is even more famous for, you can forget it. Even people who are trying to recommend the novel to others do so by saying, “You’ll never guess who did it. It was …” And every kind of variation on blab, blab, blab comes spouting forth.

   In any case, however, I certainly agree with you about the way the crime itself was committed, as shown on the screen. It seemed to me to be borderline distasteful. But more than that, because of the sensationalistic nature of this aspect of the film, the point that (I think) was intended to be conveyed was lost.

   One other thing. While I enjoyed Lauren Bacall’s performance more, in more ways than one, I would not have considered it worthy of an Oscar. Ingrid Bergman’s, yes, even if I quibbled about it.

      – Steve

      ========================

   I thought it was less distasteful that it was slightly ridiculous. I’ll have to go read the novel to see how Christie made the same point and if she did so any differently.

   Regarding people who give away plots, they are selfish, stupid, or simply unable to distinguish between contemporary crime stories, in which who did it tends to be less important, and older ones, in which the mystery aspect is paramount. They add obtuseness and lack of taste to their selfishness or stupidity.

   I realize now that one aspect of Ingrid Bergman’s performance may have especially endeared it to Oscar voters. She was a beautiful woman playing an unbeautiful character. It’s been noted that Oscar voters tend to reward that sort of thing.

          — Peter

      ========================

   I responded by describing what I cannot divulge here, but I mentioned Ingrid Bergman’s performance in a way that *might* disclose plot points that I shouldn’t, and Peter agreed with me about her. I also spoke in detail about what I saw behind the way the murder was committed. Peter replied that he hadn’t noticed or realized that, and that in retrospect the clues were fairly planted, a nice touch.

   Now of course you may be wishing you had a rolling pin to throw at me, and if I were in your shoes, I think I might be wishing the same. To that end I have uploaded the continuation of our conversation here. Please note that the ending will be discussed in detail, and it is up to you to decide whether it is safe for you to go read it or not.

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. Paramount, 1974. Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Anthony Perkins, Denis Quilley, Vanessa Redgrave, Rachel Roberts, Richard Widmark, Michael York, George Coulouris. Directed by Sidney Lumet.

   They don’t make movies with all-star casts like this anymore, and maybe for a couple of good reasons. First of all, I don’t think you can convince me that in this modern, contemporary era of movie-making there are enough stars with the on-screen magnitude to match the ones you see above to make a film like this today.

   And secondly — and here’s a point in favor of the small-scale modern day casting — having too many stars can sometimes detract from the story and divert the audience’s attention away from it.

   Your eye sees the star, in other words, and you don’t see the character. The actors play roles rather than disappearing into parts. It probably can’t be helped in extravaganzas like this, but — and this is a rather subtle “but” — in thinking it over afterward, in terms of this grand, elaborate production of one of Agatha Christie’s masterpieces of deductive detective fiction, it may have even helped.

   I’m sorry if I’m being cryptic here, but if you’ve seen the movie, it’s possible that you very well know what I mean.

   Before going on, and perhaps I shouldn’t admit it, but last night was the first time I’ve seen the film. I don’t know how I missed it when it first came out, or if I did, I’ve forgotten it completely, and I hardly believe I could have done that.

   So in what follows, you’re getting my opinion as it’s just been formed, with a “mature” eye, and not by the eye of a 30-something. (Notice that I put “mature” in quotes, keeping in mind that being old enough to collect Social Security does not necessarily imply mature.)

   Albert Finney as Poirot. Other than the later BBC productions with David Suchet, and I regret to say that I have seen only one of them, I think too many actors play Poirot as a comic character, what with his large assortment of eccentric mannerisms and sometimes faulty English.

   In the opening minutes of Orient Express, I could feel myself cringing at the anticipation of yet another performance played for laughs, but when Poirot gets down the business of solving the murder of a notorious crime figure traveling incognito on the train heading from Istanbul to England, he is exactly that. Down to business.

   The final scene, confronting the group of passengers who are the only suspects on the snowbound Express, takes at least 20 minutes of intense revelation, going over the clues and the deductions the Belgian detective made from them.

   I should have timed how long the scene actually takes. I know that I’ve read somewhere that filming the scene, in the restricted confines of the dining car, took several days. I can believe it.

   Luckily the flashback scenes, with the crime being reconstructed, piece by piece, break up the sequence of talking heads in a rhythm that slowly builds and builds upon itself.

   Even so, the lack of action that this approach entails means that there’s hardly action enough to suit modern day audiences, or am I only being cynical again?

   Finney is probably the only actor to play a detective concerned with clues and not the third-degree in back rooms to have been nominated for an Oscar, but on second thought, without going to check on it, there’s a finite chance that I’m wrong about that.

   But as for his performance, as regarded by others, according to IMDB: “An 84-year-old Agatha Christie attended the movie premiere in November of 1974. It was the only film adaptation in her lifetime that she was completely satisfied with. In particular, she felt that Albert Finney’s performance came closest to her idea of Poirot. She died fourteen months later, on January 12, 1976.”

   If she was pleased, then how I dare say anything otherwise? I can’t, and I don’t. As for the rest of the cast, while I enjoyed Lauren Bacall’s role as the the outspoken (and never stopping) American tourist more, it was Ingrid Bergman who actually won an Oscar, for her much briefer part as a semi-demented Swedish missionary lady. A good performance, even a very good one, but I have a feeling it may have been a slow year for the Academy.

   Should I say something about the plot, more than I have so far? Perhaps not, but this is a tour de force of some magnitude, based as it was on the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. The book was first published in England in 1934, and as Murder in the Calais Coach in the US later the same year.

   Before the movie was shown on Turner Classic Movies, which is where I taped it from, the host, Robert Osbourne, pointed out that it took 40 years before the movie could pass the Movie Code. If you know the story, you will know why, and once again, that is all I am able to say about that.

   In terms of the detective work — well, let me tell you a story. Back when I was young, and maybe even younger than that, I decided that the next Agatha Christie novel I read, by golly I was going to take detailed notes and actually solve the murder myself. Well I did, and I didn’t.

   I was so upset at how the crime was committed and who did it that I literally threw the book across the room. Carefully, of course.

   The movie was extremely successful. Albert Finney was asked, but he turned down the opportunity to play Poirot again. Peter Ustinov, chosen in his place, played the part in Death on the Nile (1978), Evil Under the Sun (1982), and Appointment with Death (1988).

   He also appeared in three made-for-TV films: Thirteen at Dinner (1985), Dead Man’s Folly (1986), and Murder in Three Acts (1986). From what I remember — I haven’t seen any of these films in a while — I mostly regretted Ustinov in the role. Albert Finney, I think I could have gotten used to, now that I’ve had some time to think it over, and even more so as time goes on.

[UPDATE] 03-11-07. Looking back on my comments above, I regret not saying more about the opening terminal scene with the passengers boarding the train in the Istanbul station. Beautifully photographed, highly choreographed, and true to the period, it is nearly worth the price of admission in itself.

   Before I say anything more about it, though, I’m going to have to go back and watch it again. It was far too “visual” the first time, but for me, opening scenes often are. I find myself trying to make sure I’m not missing anything of the story while, at the same time, I’m struggling to take in everything there is to see. Delightful!

[A little bit later.] It was too hard to resist. I’ve just ordered the DVD from Amazon, the version with director Sidney Lumet’s commentary on “The Making of the Movie,” and who should know more how the movie was made than he?

   Speaking of mystery movies, as I was not too long ago, Turner Classic Movies is having a special on them this month — a total of no fewer than 53 of them are going to be shown on Tuesdays and Wednesdays during the month of March. Make sure your Tivo’s and (if need be) old-tech VCR’s are ready for these:

   That adds up to 53, doesn’t it? I don’t know if I’ll be taping all of the above, but some of these are absolute musts.

HAVING WONDERFUL CRIME. RKO, 1945. Patrick O’Brien, George Murphy, Carole Landis, George Zucco. Co-screenwriter: Stewart Sterling; directed by A. Edward Sutherland.

   Based on the novel of the same name by Craig Rice, which I haven’t read, but all the sources which I have read say that the movie is nothing at all like the book. Murphy and Landis play the newly wed Jake and Helene Justus, while O’Brien is their long-suffering buddy in crime-solving, lawyer Michael J. Malone. (It was John J. Malone in the books. That much I do know.)

   The story has something to do with a magician who disappears in the middle of his stage act, then reappears in a trunk brought to a lakeside resort by his female assistant – or does he? In spite of the trio’s suspicions, he’s not in the trunk, but not to worry – he eventually turns up dead and there really is a case to be solved.

   I couldn’t tell you one way or another if the plot (the motive and where the body is when) makes any sense, and truthfully I don’t think that anyone involved in this madcap sort of affair, near slapstick at times, really cared.

   Pat O’Brien doesn’t nearly match the image of Malone I have in my head – for some reason, I see him as a shorter, more somber sort of fellow – but George Murphy is right on as Jake Justus, and Carole Landis is even more perfect as Helene. Her beautiful, smiling face, her lithesome figure and (as Helene) her slightly scatterbrained approach to life and solving murder mysteries, makes me wonder why her career in the movies never went any further than it did. (Due to illness, among other factors, she committed suicide only three years after this movie was released.)

   Even though from a murder mystery point of view there is much to be desired from this particular film, the performances of the three main characters make this a must-see, especially to watch Miss Landis in such high form, high spirits and in high fashion.

THE GREAT FLAMARION. Republic, 1945. Erich von Stroheim, Mary Beth Hughes, Dan Duryea, Stephen Barclay. Directed by Anthony Mann.

   A curiously flat film noir with oft-time director Erich von Stroheim as Flamarian, a vaudevillian headliner who falls for the wiles of femme fatale Mary Beth Hughes, an assistant in his pistol markmanship act. Her husband, Dan Duryea, is the other assistant in the act, a man driven to jealousy and as a consequence, given heavily to drink.

   Flamarion is a stolid, impassive, lonely man, once thrown over in love by a double-crossing woman, who’s vowed to never allow it to happen again. Contemptuous, however, of the weakness he sees in Al Wallace and tempted by the flirtatious Connie Wallace, he at length lets his guard down, to his own disaster – and as it happens, to the others in this ill-fated triangle.

The long scene during which Flamarion waits for Connie in a hotel bridal suite in buoyant anticipation, only to realize the inevitable, is as painful to watch as anything I’ve seen in a film in some time. Duryea is perfectly cast in his role, slickly conniving yet weak-kneed and a somewhat pitiful excuse for a man – a fact that the viewer is quickly made aware of. It’s a part made just for him.

   I don’t believe I’ve seen Mary Beth Hughes in a movie before, although she was around throughout the 1940s in B-movies like this, though often in uncredited performances. Her body language in the role was as crucial as her spoken dialogue, and she made the best of both.

   But the reason I called the film flat? The main story is presented in the form of a long, uncomplicated flashback. When you know the fate of two of the characters from the beginning, and you can soon guess that of the third, it’s just about impossible for any movie or any director or any cast to generate a feeling of suspense, and The Great Flamarion is no exception.

   On the other hand, if it had been filmed linearly, which would have been the only alternative, there simply aren’t enough twists and turns in the plot for the otherwise lightweight tale to have gone anywhere at all. Mann made the best of two choices, in my opinion, but in spite of some more better than average performances from the players, the movie didn’t ring any bells for me.

ROAR OF THE PRESS. Monogram, 1941. Wallace Ford, Jean Parker, Jed Prouty, Paul Fix. Directed by Phil Rosen.

   What this Grade B murder mystery movie is more than it is a murder mystery is a comedy about crime beat newspapermen and their wives who never see them. Wallace Ford is the reporter (Wally Williams) who spots a body falling from the top of a Manhattan skyscraper on the day and his bride of one day come to the city to spend a few days honeymooning. Jean Parker, of Detective Kitty O’Day fame (in certain circles), is his bride Alice, who hails from a small town in New England and who quickly joins the club – that of the long-suffering wives of the other reporters on her husband’s newspaper.

   Dead is the head of a pacifist league, in case it matters, and it doesn’t much, which turns out to be a front for fifth columnists and saboteurs. When Wally finds yet another body before the cops do, the cops get sore, and rightfully so, as all of the clues are in the pockets of Wally. Jed Prouty plays Wally’s editor, who cleverly keeps him on the case, even with the lure of a dinner of corned beef and cabbage waiting for him at home. One would think that the slim and decidedly pretty Mrs. Williams would be lure enough, but not so.

   Paul Fix is the head of a numbers racket with a heart of gold, and thereby saves the bacon of both Mr. and Mrs. Williams when the gang of bad guys start to get overly worried about what Wally knows, which truthfully is very little, even with the clues he obtained before the police did.

   As for director Phil Rosen, who later directed a number of Charlie Chan films, he makes the best of also truthfully very little, and the result is surprisingly entertaining.

   This post began as an UPDATE to be found at the end of the previous one, but as I kept writing, it became long enough, I thought, and substantiative enough, to survive on its own. And so, on its own two feet, here it is:

   Taken from an email message from Al Hubin this morning: “Looks good. The only connection you haven’t made is that Murder in Mayfair was reportedly the basis for the movie “Hour of Decision” (Tempean, 1957).”

   >> No, I didn’t catch that, and I’m certainly happy to know about it. When I checked how many copies of Murder in Mayfair were offered for sale yesterday on the Internet, the answer was none. Zippo. If someone were interested in knowing what the book’s story line was, all I could offer right now in reply are the comments of a single viewer on IMDB, which I’ll add below. And, yes, I know that the movie may be NOTHING like the book, but here goes something better than nothing, at least:

    To which I add, ah yes, Hazel Court. I remember her from a short-lived TV series called Dick and the Duchess (CBS, 1957-58). It was an American series filmed in England and was mostly a comedy, but with criminous overtones.

   Hazel Court’s co-star was Patrick O’Neal, who played Dick Starrett, an American insurance claims investigator based in London and married to an Englishwoman, the “duchess” of the title. That is to say, his wife Jane, whose efforts to help her husband invariably ended in disaster.

   I may be the only person I know who remembers this series, but even though I was only 15 or 16 years old at the time, I think that I was slightly in love with Hazel Court. Yes, she was too old for me, but at that age what possible difference could a few years make, and a distance of only a few thousand miles away … ?

    Thus began a lifelong love of British crime fiction. And yes, I do digress.

   Born Pearl Elizabeth Dobbins on May 14, 1926, Liz Renay died January 22, 2007, at the age of 80 in Las Vegas, Nevada, of cardiopulmonary arrest.

   Quoting liberally from her biography at www.imdb.com, it is clear that there is no immediate connection between Ms. Renay and crime fiction:

   However, and a big one at that, Ms. Renay did appear in a few films that do warrant mention here, the first being an obscure classic of late 1950s film noir, Date with Death, 1959, starring Gerald Mohr.

   A semi-anonymous reviewer on IMDB says great things about the movie, from which I have excerpted the following:

   Go here for the rest of Mr. Renay’s onscreen credits, which appear largely to be schlocky B-movies or (far) less, but which also include a part on the television series Adam-12, and a role as a stripper in Peeper (1975), based on Keith Laumer’s novel Deadfall, later titled Fat Chance, in which Michael Caine plays a London PI in LA by the name of Leslie C. Tucker. Natalie Wood plays the femme fatale.