JANE EYRE. 20th Century-Fox, 1944. Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Margaret O’Brien, Peggy Ann Garner, John Sutton, Sara Allgood, Henry Daniell, Agnes Moorehead, Aubrey Mather, Edith Barrett, Mrs. Fairfax, Barbara Everes, Hillary Brooke. Screenplay: John Houseman, Aldous Huxley, Robert Stevenson & Henry Koster (the latter uncredited), based on the novel by Charlotte Brontë. Director: Robert Stevenson.

   Last night as I sat up until 2:00 a.m. engrossed in a showing of the 20th Century Fox version of Jane Eyre, I alternately cursed the frequent interruptions for the promotion of albums like Motels & Memories and local entrepreneurs like Mother’s Pizza (“Just like you remember it, only it really wasn’t ever this good!”) and revelled in the superb Dickensian detail of the sequences at Linwood School dominated by Henry Daniell’s marvelous portrayal of the sadistic religious fanati,c, Broadhurst.

   I was moved by the moody, romantic sweep of the episodes at Rochester’s estate, with the brilliant portrayal of mad Mrs. Rochester’s husband by Orson Welles, supported by one of composer Bernard Herrmann’s finest scores.

   The film is one of those meticulous re-creations of a literary classic that David Selznick, in particular, was gifted in bringing to life on the screen, but it has, at moments, something which such films often do not have: imaginative camera work which makes portions of the film seem as fresh as they did thirty-five years ago and confirms for me the rumors that Welles, coming to this project after Citizen Kane and the abortive Magnificent Ambersons, co-directed certain scenes.

   I thought I detected Wellesian touches in Jane’s introduction to Rochester at the manor; in the handling of the brief scene with Agnes Moorehead at the beginning as the camera in a sardonic low-angle shot accented the self-satisfied cruelty of Jane’s aunt and cousin; and in the exterior shots of the great house that squats malevolently at the film’s center, with its battlements and moody lighting that inevitably remind the viewer of Kane’s estate.

   You will get some idea of the quality of the team that was assembled for this film when I tell you that two of the script-writers were Aldous Huxley and John Houseman and that, in addition to Welles, Daniell, Moorehead, and Joan Fontaine (as Jane), there are splendid performances by a group of actors that can only serve to remind us of the talent that was still available to the major studios in the early forties: Elizabeth Taylor, Peggy Ann Garner, Margaret O’Brien, Sara Allgood, John Sutton (in an uncommonly fine portrayal of Broadhurst’s sympathetic alter ego, Dr. Rivers), and other players whose names are less familiar but whose faces are indelibly imprinted on our memories of films of the period.

   I was struck by the beauty of a line delivered by Welles as he described Jane’s first sight of Mrs. Rochester, “Look at Jane, all grave and silent at the mouth of Hell,” and bothered by the jarring modernity of another line describing Mrs. Rochester after her fatal leap as she “lay smashed on the pavement.”

   I was riveted by a shot of Moorehead looking like a grinning Medusa and by the long shot of the wedding ceremony with the ominous entrance of an unseen “Guest” glimpsed only at first as a shadow slipping by against a shaft of light suddenly striking a sacristy wall.

   And I was intrigued by the obvious attempt to introduce fairy-tale elements into the narrative, with the climax clearly using devices from “Beauty and the Beast” that could not have been accidental.

   In short, I was overwhelmed by the intelligence, craftsmanship, and beauty of this film and reminded that film history is filled with superb movies that are often only entries in an edition of Movies That May Be Seen as Interruptions of Late-Night TV Commercials.

LUCAS WEBB – Eli’s Road. Doubleday, hardcover, 1971. Reprint paperback: Popular Library, no date stated.

    I went back to the used book store to buy the copy of Green Ice they’ve had there for years, and got distracted once again. This time by a novel called Eli’s Road, by Lucas Webb.

    Considering the quality of this thing, I’m surprised Webb and his novel aren’t better known. It starts off a bit awkward, but soon gets the reader involved in a 1st person narrative spanning ante-bellum Kansas to 1880s Wyoming.

   Webb does a remarkable job of keeping his narrator believable from the time he writes as a callow teen-ager till he ends up in stoic middle-age, quite a feat of style, and the story: Bloody Kansas, rogue mountain men, orphan girls, pro-slavers, store-keepers, abolitionists, border ruffians, emigrants, freed slaves … and the mysterious Brother Frank.

   Seek it out.

[Editorial Comment]   I wish I had a copy of the paperback reprint to show you. The jacket of the hardcover edition, which perhaps sold to libraries and no one else, is rather plain and uninspiring, to say the least. The paperback is a lot more colorful and inviting, if you’re a fan of western sagas, and it has a quote from noted author Stephen Longstreet to boot:   “The Best Novel of the American West since The Big Sky.” No small praise.

     Lucas Webb is stated on the Web to be the pen name of Michael Burgess. Burgess is also well-noted as bibliographer R. Reginald (Cumulative Paperback Index, 1939-1959, among many others).

   But while Burgess did use Lucas Webb at least once as a pseudonym, an online bibliography for him does not include either Eli’s Road or one later novel under the Lucas Webb byline, a book called Stribling (Doubleday, 1973), about which I have found very little to date, only one quote:   “But there was no place to go to farm or settle; the farms were being deserted, the big combines tractoring out the shacks and the little fields…”

“The Rise and Fall of Eddie Carew.” An episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre (Season 2, Episode 30). First air date: 24 June 1965. Dean Jones, Sheilah Wells, Alan Hewitt, Jerome Cowan, Harry Townes, Ken Lynch, Stanley Adams, Ian Wolfe, John Hubbard, Barry Kelley. Story: Robert Thom; adaptation: Don Brinkley. Director: Joseph Pevney.

   Senile nonagenarian Ellis Stone (Ian Wolfe) manages to get himself locked in the vault of his own bank; unless he’s very good at holding his breath, by the time the electronic lock opens the door three days hence he’ll be very dead.

   The bank manager, in full panic mode, phones Sam Becker (Jerome Cowan), the public relations man for “our party.” He immediately sees the PR disaster (not to mention the financial catastrophe) that he and his cronies would suffer if dotty old Stone, a million-dollar-a-year party contributor, were to go toes up.

   In a moment of inspiration, he plumps for making use of the talents of Eddie Carew (Dean Jones), “The Human Can Opener,” currently serving time in the state pen.

   But Dr. Farley (Harry Townes), the prison psychiatrist, has been making progress weening Eddie away from his compulsion to steal and is flatly opposed to letting Eddie anywhere near piles of money. It would be, as he says, like having an alcoholic become a wine taster.

   The prison warden (Alan Hewitt) overrules the doctor, however, and takes Eddie to the bank. Before he goes, Eddie tries to warn everyone of what could happen; but even his girlfriend, Sally McClure (Sheilah Wells), encourages him to do this because she has faith in his rehabilitation.

   Eddie is now in a position to call the shots: no prison uniform (“something in charcoal gray” would be nice) or handcuffs, deciding who can be present when he does the job (others can be a distraction), and especially having “the best jelly man in the business,” Pinky Ferguson (Stanley Adams), assist him.

   Yes, you guessed it: Eddie has ideas that go way beyond rescuing the old guy, which he almost betrays when he first lays eyes on the safe. (“Well,” says Becker, “is he going to open it or make love to it?”)

   What Eddie doesn’t know is that before the sun rises he will have to crack this same safe three times: once out of greed, once out of duty (and self-interest), and once out of love ….

   This one has a great comic cast as well as normally serious actors doing a humorous turn. Dean Jones is well-known for the many Disney films he’s appeared in. Stanley Adams always seemed to be an affable fast-talker just on the other side of the law (e.g., Cyrano Jones in the immensely popular Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles”).

   And Ken Lynch must have played a cop hundreds of times over the years. Jerome Cowan was a low-rent version of William Powell; he could do light comedy (Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.), but most movie fans remember him as Miles Archer in The Maltese Falcon and the spineless architect in The Fountainhead.

ROBERT BARNARD – The Case of the Missing Brontë. Hardcover edition: Scribner’s, 1983. Reprinted in paperback several times by Dell: 1984, 1986, 1989. Penguin, paperback, November 1994. First published in the UK: Collins Crime Club, 1983, as The Missing Brontë.

   This is the third novel featuring Superintendent Perry Trethowen of Scotland Yard. It begins with the detective and his wife returning from a visit to his very peculiar aristocratic family (who are displayed to fine advantage in Death by Sheer Torture, 1981).

   Their car breaks down in a small village, Hutton-Le-Dales, and since they must spend the night there, they do the true British thing — they go to the local pub. No sooner do they settle in than an elderly lady accosts them and announces that she has inherited what appears to be an unpublished manuscript of a novel possibly authored by one of the Bronte sisters. And no sooner do they leave town than the woman is attacked and the manuscript stolen.

   Trethowen returns to Hutton-Le-Dales, delighted to be associated with literary matters rather than being thought of only as the policeman with the kinky family — something that happens all too often. His investigations lead him to an unholy preacher (trained in Los Angeles!), the professors of a local last-resort college (here Barnard, a professor himself, is delightfully scathing in his caricatures), and book collectors from two continents, to say nothing of a pair of Norwegian toughs.

   Characters in a Barnard book rarely have flattering things to say about each other — and for good reason. Trethowen views humanity with a disdainful eye, which makes for much wary humor. The plot of The Case of the Missing Brontë is solid, and the book-collecting background intriguing.

   A two-time nominee for an MWA Best Novel Edgar, Barnard has written such other delightful novels as Death of a Mystery Writer (1979), Death of a Literary Widow (1980), Death and the Princess (1982), and Out of the Blackout (1985).

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

ROBERT BARNARD – Blood Brotherhood. Walker & Co., US, hardcover, 1978. Previously published in the UK: Collins Crime Club, hc, 1977. US paperback reprint: Penguin, 1983, 1992 (the latter shown).

   Robert Barnard’s element is exposing the underside of the pompous and the powerful, be they royalty, clergy, academics, or pillars of the community.

   The unique thing about his books is not how witty they are (though that in itself makes them worth reading) but that each one is very different. (Indeed, Death in a Cold Climate, 1980, is not humorous; its intriguing quality is its setting in the north of Norway, where Barnard once taught English.)

   Blood Brotherhood takes the reader into the cloistered Anglican community of St. Botolph’s, where an international group of clerics (an American with an unmuted passion for fundraising; an African bishop who has occasional lurchings into un-Christian tribal customs; assorted Britons; and two Norwegians who, to the horror of the host, turn out to be women) meet to discuss the rarefied matters of the spirit.

   At a time “when the heather lay like a purple blanket over the moorlands, and a large proportion of the local population were baking uncomfortably and loathing the food on the Costa del Sol,” the clerics entertain less than holy thoughts, particularly about the more attractive of the Norwegian women.

   One of their number is stabbed to death, and the unholy problem is left for the pious group to unravel. Barnard’s characters, while created to show various peculiarities — such as the overly hip youth pastor or the television bishop — exist not as stereotypes but as individuals who have grown up into their chosen roles. Entertaining.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

Note: Maryell Cleary’s review of this book appears here earlier on this blog.

ROBERT BARNARD – Death of a Perfect Mother.

Charles Scribner’s Sons, US, hardcover, 1981. Paperback reprint: Dell, 1985. Previously published in the UK as Mother’s Boys: Collins Crime Club, 1981.

   Who killed Lill Hodsden? Thick-skinned, loud-mouthed, high-tempered Lill, bane of the local merchants and her neighbors; lusty Lill, who knows how to trade sexual favors for a telly and maybe a car; tempestuous Lill, who can’t get along with her daughter or her mother but whose two grown sons adore her so she says.

   Gordon and Brian seem to be the perfect sons, but the reader finds them plotting to kill her in Chapter One. They can only get away from their vulgar, doting mother by getting rid of her, they say. But when she’s found strangled, it develops that there are plenty of others with motives for getting Lill out of the way.

   Barnard’s mordant humor makes the process of finding out whodunit a pleasurable read.

BRAD LATHEM – The Hook #1: The Gilded Canary. Warner, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1981.

   Warner has been publishing books in several of its various new “Men of Action” series for some time now, and for mystery fans, here is the first appearance of the one that might seem the most promising. “The Hook” is Bill Lockwood, a 1930’s private eye who is as tough with his fists as he is energetic in bed.

   There seems to be little else to say. Lockwood’s case, as he investigates the theft of some jewelry from a rich girl singer named Muffy Dearborn, is nothing less than a flimsy excuse for him to jump in and out of a bed or two and beat up a few hoodlums in between with his patented left hook.

   There are a few good moments — once in a while I got a fleeting impression that there was some intelligent thought put into the writing of this mediocre excuse for a book — but they quickly pass.

   On the other hand, the result is probably exactly what Warner had in mind when they commissioned it.

[UPDATE] 01-28-10.   Whew. I seldom put down a book as solidly as this, and this review took me a bit by surprise when it turned up next to be put online. I thought of tempering the tone down a notch or two, but this is what my reaction was some 28 years ago, and (without re-reading the book) I decided at length that I ought to stand by it.

   There were, in all, five in the series. Here, taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, is a complete list:

          LATHAM, BRAD. Pseudonym of David J. Schow.

    1. The Gilded Canary (n.) Warner, pbo, Sept 1981.
    2. Sight Unseen (n.) Warner, pbo, Sept 1981.
    3. Hate Is Thicker Than Blood (n.) Warner, pbo, Dec 1981.
    4. The Death of Lorenzo Jones (n.) Warner, pbo, 1982.
    5. Corpses in the Cellar (n.) Warner, pbo, June 1982.

ROBERT MOORE WILLIAMS – The Darkness Before Tomorrow. Ace Double F-141, paperback original; 1st printing, 1962. [Paired with this novel, tête-bêche, is The Ladder in the Sky, by Keith Woodcott (aka John Brunner).]

   Dan Stumpf and David Vineyard were briefly exchanging comments about “hack” writers earlier this month. It all depends on one’s definition, of course, and while you can say that a hack writer is one without talent and/or one who merely cranks out the wordage for the money, everyone has a different concept of what’s talent and what’s not and/or how many cranks are needed to make a hack.

   When it comes to Science Fiction hacks, though, for some reason Robert Moore Williams comes to mind. Not that I’ve read anything by him in nearly 50 years, but I’m sure I have, and it must have stuck with me, since (rightly or wrongly, but with no malice intended) I’ve tended to use his fiction as more or less my yardstick of hackwork.

   Titles such as Conquest of the Space Sea (1955) and Zanthar of the Many Worlds (1967) might suffice as examples, but in all honestly, since I haven’t read them, I can hardly dwell on them.

   I will point out that Robert Moore Williams’ SF career started considerably earlier than did, say, John Brunner’s, whose novel on the other side of this Ace Double I reviewed here not so long ago. Brunner first novel was published in 1951, I believe, but it wasn’t until the late 1950s that anyone began to take notice of him.

   In comparison, Williams’ first story appeared in Astounding SF in 1937, and he had a long list of other pulp stories to his credit before he turned to paperback fiction in the 1950s. But no matter; even in 1962 his pulp roots show. The Darkness Before Tomorrow has, I am sorry to say, very little in it for which I might recommend it to you.

   The opening couple of chapters are adequate, however, and indeed maybe even more than adequate. The story begins in the year 1980 or so, with the action going on immediately, allowing the characters to be introduced on the fly.

   Someone, as it happens, has discovered a new kind of weapon that kills without making a wound of any kind. Scientist George Gillian stumbles across a body killed in such a way and hence into a crossfire between the villains and the pair who are resisting them, a brother and sister (Eck and Sis) whose side Gillian quickly joins.

   If I were to tell you that the head villain is a ruthless gangster named Ape Abrussi, and his headquarters are in what’s called Mad Mountain, you will know at once what kind of story this is. It is also the story of aliens walking among us (with small horns on the foreheads and goat-like eyes), with only good intentions (it is assumed), and no, Ape is not one of them. It turns out that he came across his new weapon only by accident, and now that he has, his intentions are to rule the world.

   In a novel like this, of course, good luck with that.

   And so, the big question is: Is this the work of a hack? “Hackery” is such a pejorative term I’d hate to say yes, but I have a feeling that by many people’s standards, the answer is is probably in the affirmative. Williams is good in describing places and things, conjuring up loads of atmosphere for the former and having an excellent eye for detail on the latter.

   But what he’s not so good at are essential things, such as working with people and complex relationships between them — nor is the dialogue they speak anything but stiff. Williams is not so good at science, either, but he’s good at waving his hands and making believe that he does.

   But you could say pretty much the same sort of things about 90% of the writers who wrote for the pulps. What most of them could do, though, those who were successful at it — and I’d place Robert Moore Williams among them — was to write stories that made readers keep on reading them. It worked for me!

EASY LIVING. Paramount, 1937. Jean Arthur, Ray Milland, Edward Arnold, Mary Nash, Luis Alberni, Franklin Pangborn, William Demarest. Screenplay by Preston Sturges, from a story by Vera Caspary. Director: Mitchell Leisen. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

    Although this was described as a well known classic (at least to Cinephile attendees), I don’t recall seeing it in the 19 years I’ve been attending the convention, and after one viewing, I can tell you that it’s not a film I would easily forget.

    With a sizzling script by Preston Sturges and direction by Mitchell Leisen that never misses a comic beat, this is, in my opinion, a lost screwball masterpiece.

    When Wall Street tycoon Edward Arnold tosses the expensive sable coat his wife has bought off the balcony of their apartment, it lands on Jean Arthur, ruining her hat, and setting off a chain of improbable but hilarious events that will hit the headlines of every newspaper in the country, turn the stock market upside down, and, in the funniest set piece in the movie, turn an automat into a riotous madhouse.

    Arthur is a delightful madcap, Ray Milland an adroit comic and romantic foil, and every other actor in the film, from co-star Arnold down to the most insignificant walk-on player, performs flawlessly, like the mechanism in a classy Swiss watch.

“Nothing Ever Happens in Linvale.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 2, Episode 6). First air date: 8 November 1963. Fess Parker, Gary Merrill, Phyllis Thaxter, George Furth, Burt Mustin, Sam Reese. Teleplay: Richard Levinson and William Link; screenplay: Robert Twohy based on his story in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (title and issue unknown). Director: Herschel Daugherty.

   Mrs. Logan (Phyllis Thaxter), a widow living alone, is alarmed. From her upstairs bedroom window she has watched the suspicious behavior of her next door neighbor, Harry Jarvis (Gary Merrill), and feels it’s time to call in the authorities.

   In this instance, “the authorities” consist of mild-mannered Sheriff Ben Wister (Fess Parker) and his semi-official and somewhat excitable deputy Charlie (George Furth).

   Mrs. Logan details the late-night digging around she has seen Harry Jarvis doing, and concludes Jarvis has done in his wife and buried her in his backyard. The sheriff investigates as far as he can, but tells her that based on the evidence he has, Harry has done no wrong. Nevertheless, responding to Mrs. Logan’s urgings to DO something before this killer gets away with murder, he takes it upon himself to dig up Jarvis’s back yard, where he does find a body — but not the one he was expecting ….

   This story is a clever variation on Hitchcock’s Rear Window, but if you’ve seen that film you’ll be at a disadvantage here because of preconceptions and expectations that you may have brought with you from the movie — and I think the screenwriters are clearly counting on that. (To say more would be to say too much.)

   Among Gary Merrill’s crime/suspense screen credits are Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), A Blueprint for Murder (1953), Witness to Murder (1954), and The Human Jungle (1954). He also commanded a bomber group in Twelve O’Clock High (1949) and was nearly eaten by a giant crab in Mysterious Island (1961).

   Amiable Fess Parker’s screen persona usually led him to being cast as good guys — e.g., Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone on TV — so he never had much of a chance at being a bad ’un.

   Phyllis Thaxter was equally adept at being a victim, a perpetrator, or just the girl next door. She appeared in a noir Western, Blood on the Moon (1948); in Act of Violence (1948), Women’s Prison (1955), as well as in nine Alfred Hitchcock TV series episodes (is that a record?). She was also Clark Kent’s adoptive mother in Superman (1978).

   Follow the link to Hulu to see why “Nothing Ever Happens in Linvale.”