British television in the 1950s and 1960s seemed to be choking itself on claustrophobic, heavily-theatrical studio-based plays (often live, sometimes taped). The BBC seemed shackled to the home theatre approach while newcomer ITV (from late 1955) tended to favor young TV writers (the provocative Armchair Theatre, ITV, 1956-74, for example) alongside somewhat wild and adventurous themes (the early Honor Blackman period of The Avengers, ITV, 1961-69).

   Themes or strands, usually explained by the title, such as The Villains (ITV, 1964-65), Blackmail (ITV, 1965-66) and Seven Deadly Sins (ITV, 1966) or by a general heading like Suspense (both ITV, 1960; and BBC, 1962-63) were very much in style during the 1960s, but I have disregarded many of these because they represent nothing more than simple crime-and-comeuppance yarns. It is sad to consider that over a decade later such predictable collections as the 1978 ITV series Scorpion Tales didn’t improve the British TV genre very much.

   The mid-1960s even saw a brief fascination with the fogbound period of Gaslight Theatre (BBC, 1965) and Mystery and Imagination (ITV, 1966; 1968; 1970). At the same time reveling in the Victorian-era police procedurals of Sergeant Cork (ITV, 1963-64; 1966-68) or penetrating the pea-soupers of Sherlock Holmes (BBC, 1965).

   Here I have focused on the more obvious or more interesting genre anthologies shown on UK television during the past half century. (Some of them may even be found on DVD via Amazon-UK or NetworkDVD.)

   One of the earliest was Tales from Soho (BBC, 1956), Berkeley Mather’s less-than-serious take on the notorious central London area. A curious point of interest to emerge from this lightweight collection, however, was one Chief Detective Inspector Charlesworth (played by John Welsh) who went on to his own series. Now featuring Wensley Pithey as Scotland Yard Detective Superintendent Charlesworth, the series was called Big Guns (BBC, 1958). Mather followed up with Charlesworth at Large (BBC, 1958) and Charlesworth (BBC, 1959).

   Something of an unexpected pleasure, Hour of Mystery (ITV, 1957) was hosted by the fearsome Donald Wolfit. Among the episodes were “The Man in Half Moon Street” (with Anton Diffring), “The Woman in White”, Emlyn Williams’ “Night Must Fall” and “A Murder Has Been Arranged”, and Ivan Goff & Ben Roberts’s “Portrait in Black” (filmed in 1960 by Universal).

   Armchair Mystery Theatre (ITV, 1960; 1964-65) was the summertime replacement for the long-running Armchair Theatre and featured stories by Michael Gilbert (“The Blackmailing of Mr. S.”, 1964), Julian Symons (“The Finishing Touch”, 1965) and Mary Belloc Lowndes (“The Lodger” (1965).

   British-made (at MGM British Studios) for producer Herbert Brodkin’s Plautus Productions (US), the filmed anthology Espionage (NBC/US and ITV/UK, 1963-64) was one of the more intelligent contributions to the then-raging 1960s spy cycle. The Larry Cohen-scripted “Medal for a Turned Coat” (starring Fritz Weaver) remains a particular favorite with this writer.

   BBC’s mid-1960s anthology Detective (BBC, 1964; 1968-69) has in the eyes of fans achieved almost legendary status, perhaps due in great part to this 45-episode series being “missing believed wiped.” For now, I’ll list just a few episodes that gave rise to some fascinating series:

   The episode “The Drawing” (1964), scripted by Gil North [Geoffrey Horne], featured North-country Detective Sergeant Cluff (played by Leslie Sands) and soon became the rather leisurely but enjoyable Cluff (BBC, 1964-65). The episode “The Speckled Band” (1964), needless to say, went on to become Sherlock Holmes (BBC, 1965) with Douglas Wilmer as Holmes and Nigel Stock as Watson; Peter Cushing took over as Holmes for a 1968 revival of the series. A third episode to spin-off from the anthology was “The Case of Oscar Brodski” (1964), from the works by R. Austin Freeman, and became the series Thorndyke (BBC, 1964) with Peter Copley as the methodical Doctor Thorndyke; this series, too, appears to be “missing believed wiped.”

   Even while the legendary anthology Detective was enchanting grateful viewers, BBC’s Story Parade (1964-65) was lurking in the background with Ira Levin’s “A Kiss Before Dying” (1964) and, more importantly, Isaac Asimov’s “The Caves of Steel” (1964). This latter story featured the fascinating detective partnership of Elijah Baley (Peter Cushing) and the robot R. Daneel Olivaw (John Carson); depressingly, the original episode is said to no longer exist.

   Outside of the 1960-63 Maigret series, BBC’s other celebration of Georges Simenon was captured in the non-Maigret collection Thirteen Against Fate (BBC, 1966). The collection was a stately-paced human condition drama, focusing on an individual in an unusual predicament; mercifully, the majority of these episodes have recently been rediscovered.

   Leaning more on the horror and supernatural element, ITV’s very atmospheric Mystery and Imagination during the mid-1960s also found time to feature, among other dark mystery tales, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1966), Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Body Snatcher” (1966) and “The Suicide Club” (1970), and Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Uncle Silas” (1968).

   Non-Sherlock Holmes stories made up Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (aka The Short Stories of Conan Doyle; BBC, 1967), a 13-part collection of stories ranging from the horror-fantasy of “Lot 249” to “The Mystery of Cader Ifan”. For the most part, the stories were dramatized by TV writer John Hawkesworth, who went on to immortalize Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes in the 1980s.

   The series called Armchair Thriller (ITV, 1967) lasted a relatively short time but in its slight existence did manage to present Jack Trevor Story’s “In the Name of the Law” among its mere five outings. However, a more notable series under the same title (ITV, 1978; 1980) presented the six-part “A Dog’s Ransom” (1978) from the book by Patricia Highsmith, and the six-part “Quiet as a Nun” (1978) based on a book by Antonia Fraser (the first of a series of books that was spun-off as the 1983 series Jemima Shore Investigates for ITV). A six-part serial of Lionel Davidson’s “The Chelsea Murders” was also produced but not shown on UK TV until an edited version (condensed to 104 minutes) was broadcast in 1981. The Davidson novel was published in the U.S. in 1978 as Murder Games.

   Starting off as a small series of plays under the ITV Playhouse: Rogues’ Gallery banner in 1968, including the wonderfully bawdy “The Lives and Crimes of Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard,” a six-part series called simply Rogues’ Gallery evolved in 1969 (ITV), featuring doom-laden tales of highwaymen and Newgate Prison.

   Being recorded on icy-cold videotape didn’t somehow diminish the fascination of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (ITV, 1971; 1973). Among the compelling dramas were William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki in “The Horse of the Invisible” (1971), Baroness Orczy’s Lady Molly of Scotland Yard in “The Woman in the Big Hat” (1971) and Jacques Futrelle’s Van Dusen in “Cell 13” (1973). This series represented one of the most interesting and enjoyable collections to appear on UK television.

   Alternating between the woman-in-jeopardy story and the supernatural-fantasy, Brian Clemens’ Thriller (ITV, 1973-76) was a passable series of 65- and 75-minute mini-movies (albeit videotaped). Moments of enjoyment could be had in edge-of-the-seat dramas such as the would-be pilots “K is for Killing” (US: “Color Him Dead”; 1974), with Gayle Hunnicutt and Stephen Rea as a couple of amateur sleuths, and “An Echo of Theresa” (US: “Anatomy of Terror”; 1973) and “The Next Scream You Hear” (US: “Not Guilty”; 1974), the latter two with Dinsdale Landen as the likeable but overly confident private investigator Matthew Earp.

   Anglia Television in association with 20th Century Fox Television produced Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries (ITV, 1974-75), with the slouch-hat-and-caped one hosting some intriguing presentations of Conan Doyle’s “The Leather Funnel” (1974), Wilkie Collins’s “A Terribly Strange Bed” (1974), and Dorothy L. Sayers’ “The Inspiration of Mr. Budd” (1975). The series was curiously reminiscent of Hammer Films’ teaming with 20th Century Fox in 1968 for the collection Journey to the Unknown which, in the latter instance, was resolutely geared to scare the living daylights out of the viewer.

   The 13-part thriller anthology with stories connected by the theme of the telephone, Dial M for Murder (BBC/Warner Bros, 1974), was invested with more imagination (by producer Jordan Lawrence) than most contemporary thriller series. While some presentations were indeed tedious, most of the stories were simply dripping with suspense. One of them, Julian Symons’s “Whatever’s Peter Playing At?,” attracted the attention as being just a notch above the average.

   Somehow you knew that when Tales of the Unexpected (ITV, 1979-86; 1988) was shown as Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected during its early years it was inevitable that “Man from the South,” “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat” and “Lamb to the Slaughter” would be included.

   Thankfully, the series also drew on stories by Stanley Ellin, Bill Pronzini, John Collier, Henry Slesar, Ruth Rendell, Helen Nielsen, Peter Lovesey and Patricia McGerr among many others. Even so, the general feeling was that it had all been done much better before in Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

   Some of the stories in The Agatha Christie Hour (ITV, 1982) were just plain silly and embarrassingly dated but most, when taken on their own level, were unexpectedly rewarding. The stories featuring the delightful Maurice Denham as Parker Pyne who runs a sort of dream-fulfilment agency are among some of the best. One of these Pyne stories was “The Case of the Discontented Soldier,” about William Gaunt’s retired-but-restless military major who is given his own Bulldog Drummond adventure; Lally Bowers also appeared in this story as Mrs. Ariadne Oliver.

   Based on the works by the title author, The Ruth Rendell Mysteries (ITV, 1987-2000) consisted of some of the author’s crime thriller tales as well as her Detective Inspector Wexford stories (the latter series starring George Baker). Among the non-Wexford episodes the series presented the three-part “Vanity Dies Hard” (1995), in which a lonely woman investigates the disappearance of her friend, the two-part “The Secret House of Death” (1996), where a woman becomes involved in the sudden death of the neighboring couple, and “Thornapple” (1997), featuring a young boy embroiled in poisonings and inheritance.

   Rating as something of a disappointment was the nevertheless interesting-sounding Frederick Forsythe Presents (ITV, 1989-90), a short-run espionage drama based on stories by the title author. While all the components seemed in order with some fine directors (Tom Clegg, Lawrence Gordon Clark, Ian Sharp) and top-notch players (Beau Bridges, Brian Dennehy, Lauren Bacall, Tony Lo Bianco) the anthology suffered from the “too many chefs” syndrome of having too many producers and co-production companies.

   A similar fate befell another interesting collection, Mistress of Suspense (ITV, 1990; 1992), based on six (hour-long) stories by Patricia Highsmith. Something to enjoy and savor became instead a jumbled concoction due to its myriad producers and co-production companies.

   Murder in Mind (BBC, 2001-2003) was a diverting anthology of psychological crime dramas written by the brilliant Anthony Horowitz. The series turned out to be one of the true delights of genre TV. Horowitz composed such spellbinding stories as “Motive,” where a married couple believe they have committed the perfect murder; “Flashback,” in which a barrister “defends” the man he has framed for murder; and “Echoes,” where a woman investigates the past when a centuries-old body is found in her garden. Told from the detailed perspective of the hunted (the criminal) rather than the hunter (police), Murder in Mind may very well have been one of the high points of British television crime drama.

   Although I’m sure there are many interesting anthologies that I’ve overlooked or have simply forgotten, the previous Parts and the above should be regarded simply as a general overview.

   The next Crime & Mystery Part intends to survey The Black Mask Style, the late 1950s private eye phase of 77 Sunset Strip, Richard Diamond, Mike Hammer and Peter Gunn.

Note:   The introduction to this series of columns by Tise Vahimagi on TV mysteries and crime shows may be found here, followed by:

Part 1: Basic Characteristics (A Swift Overview)
Part 2.0: Evolution of the TV Genre (UK)
Part 2.1: Evolution of the TV Genre (US)
Part 3.0: Cold War Adventurers (The First Spy Cycle)
Part 3.1: Adventurers (Sleuths Without Portfolio).
Part 4.0: Themes and Strands (1950s Police Dramas).
Part 4.1: Themes and Strands (Durbridge Cliffhangers)
Part 5.0: Theatre of Crime (US).
Part 5.1: Theatre of Crime (Hours of Suspense Revisited).

   Following the riches of the 1950s, the anthology series moved into its final period as a stimulating television form. The enormous mass of episodic series featuring regular characters placed the format of the anthology firmly on the back burner.

   Both Dow Hour of Great Mysteries (NBC, 1960) and Boris Karloff’s Thriller (NBC, 1960-62) were essentially, and quite effectively, horror-fantasy series, many with strong elements of mystery.

   Dow Hour used celebrated classics such as Mary Roberts Rinehart’s “The Bat”, John Willard’s “The Cat and the Canary” and Sheridan Le Fanu’s “The Inn of the Flying Dragon”.

   Half of the premier season of Thriller was composed of crime/suspense stories under producer Fletcher Markle, which included tales by Charlotte Armstrong, John D. MacDonald, Cornell Woolrich, Don Tracy and Fredric Brown. Discovering that horror-fantasy worked even better with viewers when they transmitted “The Purple Room” (1960), producers Maxwell Shane and William Frye took over from Markle and concentrated on the macabre. They unleashed scary treats such as Robert Bloch’s “The Cheaters” and “The Hungry Glass”, Robert E. Howard’s “Pigeons from Hell”, and Harold Lawlor’s “The Grim Reaper”. Much to the viewers’ delight.

   The opening season of Kraft Mystery Theatre (NBC, 1961-63; not to be confused with the 1958 series) was made up entirely of British cinema second features (B movies) and it was not until the second season (1962-1963) that the series proper began.

   The first two episodes of the latter (crime thrillers “In Close Pursuit” and “Death of a Dream”) were directed by Robert Altman. It wasn’t until I happened upon the Mike Doran/Steve exchange in Mystery*File (July 2009) that one episode that had previously puzzled me, called “Shadow of a Man” (1963) starring Broderick Crawford as insurance investigator Barton Keyes and his assistant Jack Kelly as Walter Neff (teleplay credited to Frank Fenton from a story by James Patrick with no mention of James M. Cain or Double Indemnity), was finally laid to rest. Thanks to their information, “Shadow of a Man” proved to be a pilot for a proposed Double Indemnity TV series.

   Something of an immediate sister show to the above, Kraft Suspense Theatre (NBC, 1963-65) boasted three interesting contributions: John D. MacDonald’s “The Deep End” (1964) and William P. McGivern’s “A Truce to Terror” (1964) and “Once Upon a Savage Night” (1964) [the latter published as Death on the Turnpike].

   Shamley Productions returned with The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (CBS, 1962-65), but now with its crisp little half-hour story format enlarged to an hour. Among the stretched-out storytelling could be found such gems as Woolrich’s “The Black Curtain” (1962), Richard Matheson’s “Ride the Nightmare” (1962), Henry Kane’s “An Out for Oscar” (1963), the latter with teleplay provided by David Goodis, the superbly spooky “Where the Woodbine Twineth” (1965), from a Davis Grubb story, and the genuinely unsettling “An Unlocked Window” (1965), from a story by Ethel Lina White.

   Although a mix of drama, comedy, musicals and would-be pilots, Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre (NBC, 1963-67) did present an altogether intriguing pilot, or rather a series of pilots, featuring Jack Kelly as private eye/secret agent Fredrick Piper. The first attempt was made with “White Snow, Red Ice” (1964), written by Richard Fielder. It was followed by “Double Jeopardy” (1965), co-starring Lauren Bacall, “One Embezzlement and Two Margaritas” (1966), written by Luther Davis, and, finally, “Time of Flight” (1966), written by Richard Matheson (here Kelly’s name changed to “Al Packer”).

   Oh, there was also “Guilty or Not Guilty” (1966), a legal drama pilot starring Robert Ryan and co-scripted by Evan Hunter & “Guthrie Lamb” (the latter name belonging to a private eye character created by Evan Hunter [writing as Hunt Collins] for Famous Detective Stories magazine in the early 1950s). Unfortunately, all of the above remained unsold.

   During the 1970s, between the TV pleasures of Harry O (ABC, 1974-76) and The Rockford Files (NBC, 1974-80), Joseph Wambaugh’s Police Story (NBC, 1973-78) was the only other series worth keeping an eye on (the author created the anthology for Columbia Pictures Television).

   Arguably, one of the finest genre anthologies to grace the small-screen, even though it was nearly 40 years ago, the earthy stories culled from LAPD interviews were developed into some remarkable episodes, among them “Requiem for an Informer”, where a careful rapport develops between a detective and his street-wise informer, “The Wyatt Earp Syndrome”, focusing on Harry Guardino’s obsessive officer, and the two-hour “Confessions of a Lady Cop”, with Karen Black as a vice detective on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The series Police Woman (NBC, 1974-78) evolved from “The Gamble” (1974) and Joe Forrester (NBC, 1975-76) from “The Return of Joe Forrester” (1975).

   Fallen Angels (Showtime, 1993; 1995) seemed to be created as something of a small-screen tribute to hard-boiled literature. The carefully constructed series unfolded its noir-ish stories at a leisurely pace, underlining a symbiotic relationship between actor and story.

   In this writer’s opinion, all episodes were nothing short of superb. Many remain etched firmly on the memory. For instance, Jonathan Craig’s “The Quiet Room”, in which two corrupt cops receive their just punishment, Jim Thompson’s “The Frightening Frammis”, celebrating flashbacks and femme fatales, and Chandler’s “Red Wind”, featuring an interminably morose Danny Glover as Marlowe.

   The above selected anthologies (including the earlier Part 5.0) had, admittedly, minimum influence on the TV Crime and Mystery genre in general, but their exposure of the work of important crime authors (the Chandlers, the Hammetts, the Christies) acknowledges the form as something of a television pinnacle.

   The sheer range and diversity of these one-off presentations during the latter half of the last century remain as something to marvel. Perhaps this overview may serve to mark its passing.

   The concluding Part of this history of genre anthologies will observe the UK television history.

Note:   The introduction to this series of columns by Tise Vahimagi on TV mysteries and crime shows may be found here, followed by:

Part 1: Basic Characteristics (A Swift Overview)
Part 2.0: Evolution of the TV Genre (UK)
Part 2.1: Evolution of the TV Genre (US)
Part 3.0: Cold War Adventurers (The First Spy Cycle)
Part 3.1: Adventurers (Sleuths Without Portfolio).
Part 4.0: Themes and Strands (1950s Police Dramas).
Part 4.1: Themes and Strands (Durbridge Cliffhangers)
Part 5.0: Theatre of Crime (US).

   Taking its cue from 1930s and 1940s radio drama, the U.S. television play format (initially a live presentation) gathered strength during the 1950s. Presented in various anthology series, the form evolved from live performances to filmed episodes (as developments in broadcast technology progressed).

   Unlike contemporary British television (BBC), with its roots in theatre (the stage), American television drew on professional elements from Radio and from Hollywood (when the latter saw fit to work for the small-screen). By the 1960s, some of the on-screen results were simply astounding.

   The Crime and Mystery genre was represented not only by some outstanding individual plays presented in general anthology series (such as Studio One) but also by entire anthology collections dedicated to the theme. Unfortunately, most of these genre-based anthologies tended to feature ordinary television suspense yarns (usually concerning devious murderers or remorseful fugitives).

   I have, therefore, omitted many of these anthologies (such as Hands of Destiny, DuMont, 1950-51; The George Sanders Mystery Theatre, NBC, 1957; Panic!, NBC, 1957) from this overview.

   In the beginning, Studio One (aka Westinghouse Studio One; CBS, 1948-58) appeared to have only one thing going for it, a brutally realistic adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s “Glass Key” (May 1949). But then, later in 1949, another Hammett appeared, “Two Sharp Knives”.

   It was the beginning of a Studio One deluge, sweeping in with “The Room Upstairs” (1950), from Mildred Davis, “Shield for Murder” (1951), from William P. McGivern, “Nightfall” (1951), from David Goodis, “Mr. Mummery’s Suspicion” (1951), from Dorothy L. Sayers, and “The King in Yellow” (1951), from Raymond Chandler.

   In 1952 they presented “The Devil in Velvet”, from John Dickson Carr, “They Came to Baghdad”, from Agatha Christie, “Stan, the Killer” and, later, “Black Rain” (1953), from Georges Simenon, “Little Men, Big World”, from W.R. Burnett, and “The Hospital”, from Kenneth Fearing. 1953 saw “Sentence of Death”, from Thomas Walsh. In 1954 came “Let Me Go, Lover”, from Charlotte Armstrong.

   By 1955 this deluge was down to a trickle, with “Donovan’s Brain”, from Curt Siodmak, and, in 1956, “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, from Patricia Highsmith. The final drops (genre-wise) were squeezed out with “First Prize for Murder” (1957), from John D. MacDonald, and “A Dead Ringer” (1958), from James Hadley Chase. Along the way, Studio One’s two-part “The Defender” (1957), by Reginald Rose, became the inspiration for the excellent 1961-65 series The Defenders (CBS).

   Taking its title literally, Suspense (CBS, 1949-54) showcased stories by Cornell Woolrich, John Dickson Carr, Craig Rice, Stanley Ellin, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe, Joel Townsley Rogers, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Collier, Geoffrey Household, Georges Simenon, Wilkie Collins, and many others. But before the mouth-watering begins, it should be noted that these plays were broadcast live and therefore less than a third of them survive.

   [Places like The Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago, Museum of Television and Radio in New York and The Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles may have viewing copies of some surviving episodes. Then, there’s always the Internet Archive – Moving Images – Television to explore: http://www.archive.org/details/television.]

   Recipient of a Special Edgar Award in 1951, The Web (CBS, 1950-54) was a live New York series presenting stories from the works of the Mystery Writers of America (MWA). Tantalizing in the extreme, especially with so little to go on in terms of detailed episode credits, one can only imagine (fantasize, even) the possible selection of genre stories translated here for television.

   Living up to its name, Danger (CBS, 1950-55) certainly satisfied its viewers with moments like Philip MacDonald’s “The Green and Gold String” (1950), John Dickson Carr’s “Charles Markham, Antique Dealer” (1951), Anthony Boucher’s “Mr. Lupescu” (1951), William L. Stuart’s “Blackmail” (1953) and Daphne du Maurier’s “The Birds” (1955). At the same time the series also promoted the early careers of directors Sidney Lumet and John Frankenheimer as well as actor James Dean.

   Another live and prestigious series was Robert Montgomery Presents (NBC, 1950-57) which invested in some noteworthy episodes, particularly during the earlier seasons. Included were presentations based on works by Dorothy B. Hughes, Cornell Woolrich, Raymond Chandler (“The Big Sleep”, 1950), Wilkie Collins, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Hemingway (“The Killers, 1955) and Fredric Brown.

   Inner Sanctum (NBC, 1953-54) featured stories based on the popular 1940s radio series, which included Edgar Wallace as story source for “The Lonely One” (1954) and author John Roeburt as a contributor of various teleplays.

   Based also on a popular radio series was the earlier Lights Out (NBC, 1949-52). Similar in atmosphere and theme to Inner Sanctum, it presented stories by Edgar Allan Poe (“The Fall of the House of Usher”, 1949; “The Masque of the Red Death”, 1951; “The Pit”, 1952), August Derleth (“Rendezvous”, 1950), Dorothy L. Sayers (“The Leopard Lady”, 1950), Ira Levin (“Leda’s Portrait”, 1951), Fredric Brown (“The Pattern”, 1951) and Cornell Woolrich (“Nightmare”, 1952).

   Filmed at Elstree in England for NBC, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Presents (NBC, 1953-57; ITV/UK from 1955) presented one particular episode which is worth being celebrated by fans of the genre because it represents the only proposal (to my knowledge) for a Bulldog Drummond TV series: the half-hour pilot episode “The Ludlow Affair” (NBC, 1957), with Robert Beatty as our hero and the scene-stealing Michael Ripper as his sidekick.

   Climax! (CBS, 1954-58) got itself off to an enterprising start with Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye”, starring Dick Powell again as Marlowe, and followed it up quickly with Bayard Veiller’s “The Thirteenth Chair”, Fleming’s “Casino Royal” and Lucille Fletcher’s “Sorry, Wrong Number”.

   The rest of its TV treasures consisted of works by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Eric Ambler, A.A. Fair [Erle Stanley Gardner], John D. MacDonald, George Hopley [Cornell Woolrich], Patricia Highsmith, Ursula Curtiss, Charlotte Armstrong, Ed McBain [Evan Hunter], and John Dickson Carr.

Warner Brothers Presents (ABC, 1955-57) was the umbrella title for Conflict (ABC, 1956-57), an anthology presenting compositions by Frederick Brady and Thomas Walsh as well as the first pilot (“Anything for Money”, 1957) for the influential 77 Sunset Strip (ABC, 1958-63).

   Lux Video Theatre (CBS, 1950-54; NBC, 1954-57) ran for some seven years, but the NBC seasons were the ones that were of the most interest. During this period the series began featuring teleplay adaptations based on screenplays from some notable Hollywood movies. For instance, there was “Double Indemnity” (1954), “So Evil My Love” (1955), “Shadow of a Doubt” (1955), “My Name is Julia Ross” (1955), “The Suspect” (1955), “Suspicion” (1955), “Ivy” (1956), “Witness to Murder” (1956), “Mildred Pierce” (1956), “The Guilty” (1956) and “The Black Angel” (1957).

   The first genre anthology to be filmed by a major studio (Universal), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (CBS, 1955-60; NBC, 1960-62) has over the decades acquired something of a mystique of its own.

   Utilizing the art and craft of many screenwriters, big-screen actors and like-minded directors, the series’ producers (Joan Harrison and, later, Norman Lloyd) provided a wonderful insight into the workings of the famed Hitchcock (his Shamley Productions produced the series for which he was executive producer). Hitchcock was also savvy enough to explore the work of a vast range of lesser-known genre authors.

   Story sources for Alfred Hitchcock Presents include Lillian de la Torre, C.B. Gilford, Michael Arlen, Norman Daniels, Richard Deming (1915-1983), Henry Slesar, Lawrence Treat, Roy Vickers, Harold Q. Masur, Brett Halliday [Davis Dresser], Margaret Manners, Helen Neilsen, Anthony Gilbert [Lucy Beatrice Malleson], Dorothy Salisbury Davis, and Ed Lacy.

   It may not come as too much of a surprise to many readers that the highly-praised 1960 film Psycho was made at Universal by Hitchcock’s TV team, conspicuous by the striking monochromatic imagery of Shamley’s cinematographer John L. Russell.

   The series was revived by NBC (1985-86) and featured colorized Hitchcock intros of the now-deceased host from the original 1950s show. Befittingly macabre or merely mindless? Then, USA Cable Network continued the title (1987-88) with some additional episodes.

   Hitchcock’s Shamley Productions turned to NBC for Suspicion (NBC, 1957-58), even while Alfred Hitchcock Presents was still running over on CBS. The series consisted half-and-half of filmed (Shamley) and live presentations, including Woolrich’s “Four O’Clock”, Helen McCloy’s “The Other Side of the Curtain”, and the rarely-seen “Voice in the Night” (1958) by William Hope Hodgson. “Eye for an Eye” (1958) was the pilot episode for Ray Milland’s 1959-60 private eye series Markham (CBS).

   Kraft Television Theatre became Kraft Mystery Theatre (NBC) for the summer of 1958. The series presented many fine and unexpected works, most notably Ed McBain’s [billed as Evan Hunter] “Killer’s Choice”, the Larry Cohen-scripted “The Eighty Seventh Precinct” [from the McBain novels] and “Night Cry” [from the 1948 novel by William L. Stuart; filmed in 1950 as Where the Sidewalk Ends]. Kraft Television Theatre was the last of the live shows when it faded in 1958, everybody else having already turned to filmed recordings.

   There is one particularly interesting episode of the anthology Pursuit (CBS, 1958-59): “Epitaph for a Golden Girl” (1959), adapted by Lorenzo Semple Jr. from a short story by Ross MacDonald. The story originated in EQMM in June 1946 as “Find the Woman,” with MacDonald writing as Kenneth Millar. In the Pursuit adaptation, star Michael Rennie’s private detective is now called Rogers (instead of Lew Archer).

   In April 1959, Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse (CBS, 1958-60) presented writer Paul Monash’s two-part “The Untouchables” which served as a suitably violent introduction to the popular and controversial series The Untouchables (ABC, 1959-63). The series helped launch the action-filled 1959 to 1962 television gangster phase (to be a later Part in this TV history overview).

   A second Part of this “Theatre of Crime (US)” will follow shortly, concluding the US history of the genre anthology from the 1960s onwards.

Note:   The introduction to this series of columns by Tise Vahimagi on TV mysteries and crime shows may be found here, followed by:

Part 1: Basic Characteristics (A Swift Overview)
Part 2.0: Evolution of the TV Genre (UK)
Part 2.1: Evolution of the TV Genre (US)
Part 3.0: Cold War Adventurers (The First Spy Cycle)
Part 3.1: Adventurers (Sleuths Without Portfolio).
Part 4.0: Themes and Strands (1950s Police Dramas).
Part 4.1: Themes and Strands (Durbridge Cliffhangers)

        #5. SECRET AGENT GEORGE DEVRITE, by Tom Curry.

   The Secret Agent George Devrite stories by Tom Curry were a short series of seven stories published in Detective Fiction Weekly from 1936 to 1940.

   The series involves the exploits of an undercover policeman, or secret agent, of the New York Police. Inspector Hallihan was his superior in the department, but George Devrite was in essence the Secret Police Chief. He had an obscure office on the second floor of a dingy house “down the street from Headquarters, outwardly an importer of beaded goods but actually the main receiver of reports made by such agents as Devrite.” (The Green Fingers of Death)

   These reports often consist of factual accounts of their actions and gives recommendations to Hallihan of what to do – people to investigate, arrest, or otherwise take action about. Devrite “received credit only in the secret records of the Police.” (The Donkey’s Head) He lived in a small apartment in the West Forties, and had no close friends, as his job did not allow such.

   As to entertainment, Devrite derived “his main amusement … in solving the puzzles presented by Hallihan.” (The Donkey’s Head) So Devrite could be described as a workaholic who lived for his job.

    Devrite usually visited the scene of the murders he investigated in order to gather information. As Devrite puts it when he closes in on some criminals, “with twenty thousand policemen on tap but Devrite dared not call one to assist him directly, since he was an undercoverman and could not expose himself to friend or foe.” (The Green Fingers of Death)

    Devrite’s orders at all times was to never expose himself. He did not make arrests or appear in court to give trial testimony. It was explained in the second story in the series (The Queen’s Taste), that “George Devrite was a valuable man – irreplaceable save by years of training; his natural competence and experience made him Hallihan’s star.” Part of Devrite’s training is in ju-jutsu, which he uses in a number of the stories, especially “The Dragon’s Tooth.”

    In the first story in the series, “The Green Fingers of Death,” one of Devrite’s fellow agents has been found murdered, and Hallihan gives the case that he was working on to Devrite to investigate. It involves a young bank clerk named Robert Evans, who is in some sort of trouble.

    Devrite does some investigating and finds that Evans owes a gambling debt to a German named Count von Hult. Hult wants something unknown in return for this debt, which turns out to be passing counterfeit money at his bank. Devrite tracks down the counterfeiters and his earlier report to Hallihan set the police on their track too.

    The second story in the series, “The Queen’s Taste” involves Devrite in investigating a murder case. The police haven’t been able to solve the case satisfactorily, so Inspector Hallihan puts George Devrite on the case. The police think they know who committed the murder, and Devrite winds up agreeing with them.

    The culprit is a Cuban named Luis Ortez, a former triggerman turned dancer at the Peacock Cabaret. His dancing partner is the murdered man’s daughter, Adele Morris. Ortez is interested in Adele Morris, and part of Hallihan’s instructions to Devrite stressed that he was to see what he could do to stop this interest. Devrite runs into the usual danger in this case, barely escaping with his life after gunmen target him.

    “Powder on the Body” is the third story, and Devrite is assigned to investigate a series of murders after the police come up with a dead end. Each of the victims is well-off, each has talcum powder on his suit, and each has been robbed and shot at close range.

    One more victim is killed while Devrite is investigating, making him more determined than ever to solve the case. The victims all went to a night club called the Blue Belle before they were killed, so Devrite starts there. As usual in this series, Devrite comes near death in his attempt to get to the bottom of the murders.

    In “The Dragon’s Tooth” Devrite investigates the murder of William Brennan of Brennan and Kanes, furriers. Also he was to track down the $250,000 worth of furs stolen at the same time. Devrite infiltrates the underworld to a slight degree in this one, and gains some information that sets him on the trail of the solution to the crimes.

    Not only does Devrite’s work clear up the murder, but it also breaks up a criminal gang of fur thieves and put a number of its members in jail.

    “The Visit of Death” involves Devrite in still another murder case, that of Daniel Moresby, rich recluse. The only clue to the murderer is a chunk of lead, which turned out to be a railroad freight car seal. So Devrite puts on some old clothes and goes to the hobo encampment near the railroad tracks, hoping to find further clues and some information. He finds more than he bargained for, as the murderer and a companion show up at the encampment.

    “The Donkey’s Head” finds George Devrite investigating another murder, that of Keith Mortimer, a fairly young rich man who lived an idle life. Other than a possible burglar, there are only two suspects in the case so it is a matter of tracking down clues on each suspect.

    Devrite has his life saved by one of the suspects, and becomes indebted to him for that to the point where he is temporarily unwilling to investigate further. However, his work ethic convinces him to continue the investigation. The title of the story refers to the murdered man’s broken Chinese vase, which is in a hundred pieces when Devrite and Hallihan see it. However, a small piece showing a donkey’s head is missing from the reconstructed vase and provides a clue to the murder.

    “Racket Kill” is the last story in the series, and was published over 2 ½ years after the previous story. Kenneth Harris, a Bronx garage owner, has been murdered racketeer style. Hallihan instructs Devrite to investigate. The only suspects are Harris’ partner, Jerry Sessler, and the local racketeers who peddle stolen auto parts to the garages. Devrite almost immediately gets into trouble with the racketeers, and has to talk fast to get out of it.

    This is an average series, with some very good stories, but mostly average or slightly above that. There is no element of humor in the stories, and the hardboiled nature of the stories denies any lightness to them. This series is better than other stand-alone stories about undercover police that was published in DFW.

      The Secret Agent George Devrite series by Tom Curry:

The Green Fingers of Death     August 22, 1936
The Queen’s Taste     August 29, 1936
Lion Face     September 5, 1936     [**]
Powder on the Body     November 14, 1936
The Dragon’s Tooth     November 21, 1936
The Visit of Death     December 19, 1936
The Donkey’s Head     January 2, 1937
Racket Kill     August 31, 1940

[**]   This story has been added later, thanks to Ron Smyth who discovered its existence and told us about it in the comments. Not only that, but it can be read online at http://www.unz.org. Follow the link to the website, next to the Detective Fiction Weekly page, then to the issue itself.

   While most UK TV viewers surrendered to the spell of the Scotland Yard detective series during the 1950s, another sub-division of the TV genre was attracting something of a mini-following in Britain. The thriller serial.

   Once settled into the post-war comfort of its role in British life, BBC Television began to develop the format of drama series and serials in earnest. A television serial template was struck, conforming at first to the nervous frenzy of “live” TV production and then to a uniform house style (the half-hour, six-part format).

   When Francis Durbridge emerged in television in 1952 with the six-part thriller serial The Broken Horseshoe, the first of this type of programming, he combined the psychological thriller with the multi-part mystery.

   The two notable genre-related forms had first appeared in the autumn of 1951: the single play Night of the Fourth (a detective story with a psychological theme; adapted from the German play Sprechstunde) and C.A. Lejeune’s six-part series of adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories (presented as a series of self-contained, 35-minute plays). It is interesting that these two elements should form the basic structure of what became in the 1950s (and continued through into the 1960s): the BBC Durbridge mystery-thriller serial.

   Durbridge was a radio writer (he had introduced BBC listeners to his amateur sleuth Paul Temple in 1938 [Send for Paul Temple]) whose name on the television credits could be relied upon to raise high hopes.

   He treated his themes — murder, smuggling, treachery — with an unsentimental, civilised levity. There was in the writing a blend of the ironic and the ruthless, a switch in mood from amusing bafflement to disturbing seriousness, that was tartly refreshing in itself while requiring the utmost concentration and evenness of style in the direction.

   While some type of criminal activity was usually embedded into the narrative (be it race fixing, dope smuggling, kidnap), it was the psychological bewilderment of the hero that was often the focus. The Teckman Biography (1953-54) and Portrait of Alison (1955) both move around characters who are supposedly dead but who mysteriously reappear, alive and informed and involved in a criminal enterprise.

   In Melissa (BBC, 1964; remade 1974) it is the “wrong” person who is reported dead. A sense of timeliness was displayed in his Operation Diplomat in late 1952, concerning the mysterious disappearance of a top secret diplomat, and seemed to be perfectly keyed to the 1951 defection to Russia by British intelligence officers Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean (although Durbridge claimed coincidence).

   The BBC’s treatment, with its rococo embellishments and general atmosphere of menace thickened by producer-director Martyn C. Webster’s staging in the early days (by producer-director Alan Bromly in later years), was as assured as any TV viewer at that time had a right to expect.

   On the other hand some of the subsidiary scenes and characters were, if anything, under-developed. But the serials’ main weakness was the absence of expressive cutting and visual flow. As a result, certain half-way stretches of dialogue became tedious to watch; and the essential awareness of the writer’s shifting tensions yielded disappointingly to the easier mannerisms of any conventional thriller.

   The typical Durbridge world of the thriller is comfortably middle class (of the post-war era), breezing with terribly English country-inn-and-gin types, often with the hero a self-sufficient artist or a writer, and always with the inevitable, and dependable, Scotland Yard man on hand when necessary.

   Heavily dependant on dialogue and an end-of-episode hook, the serials were often little more than televised radio scripts, but this was to the serials’ advantage in the early days. In the Durbridge universe, everyone is tainted with a suggestion of menace or deceit. Absolutely no one is to be taken on face value. Information is deliberately withheld from the viewer, as well as the hero, almost to a point of irritation.

   These complicated, intellectual crime riddles tended to overshadow his clearly stock characters (always in search of that elusive depth), somehow making him the ingenious master of the television mystery serial for almost two decades, until the times changed and the old-fashioned formula evaporated.

   It wasn’t long before the UK TV schedules were thick with mystery-thriller serials, all designed and delivered in the Durbridge mould. Author Michael Gilbert studied the Durbridge form and wrote the underworld thriller The Crime of the Century (BBC, 1956-57); screenwriter Jimmy Sangster turned in the murder mystery Motive for Murder (ITV, 1957), and The Assassin (ITV, 1958), involving the hunt for a killer-for-hire; and Anthony Berkeley’s 1937 novel Trial and Error, about a murderer setting out to prove the innocence of a wrongly accused man, was adapted as the six-part Leave It To Todhunter (BBC, 1958).

   Rival channel ITV’s serial master was Lewis Greifer, a prolific radio and TV writer whose work in the serial format (in collaboration with producer-director Quentin Lawrence) was not too far removed from the Durbridge world of psychological terrors. The hero faces an identity crisis in the murder mysteries Five Names for Johnny and Web, both 1957; and in The Man Who Finally Died (1959) is confronted with the return of a “dead” man, leading to a convoluted Durbridge-style unravelling of the past.

   Astute enough to notice the secret agent genre forming on television by the beginning of the 1960s (with the growing popularity of ITV’s Danger Man; the 1960-62 half-hour series), Durbridge created the lengthy serial The World of Tim Frazer (BBC, 1960-61) featuring a working-class engineer who is recruited by a shadowy government department into acting as an undercover agent.

   The unprecedented 18-part serial was surprisingly well-received and even heralded as the successor to the still-popular (via radio) Paul Temple. The detached and skeptical Frazer (performed by a brooding Jack Hedley with insolent confidence) was essentially an outside observer of events who had licence to move through the well-heeled Durbridge milieu with barely-concealed contempt of what was by now stock 1950s British types.

   The peculiar success of Tim Frazer continued Durbridge’s celebrity as the master craftsman of the British thriller serial (other contemporary thriller serials were gauged on their ability to render the “Durbridge touch”; Lynda La Plante would receive similar genre worship during the 1980s).

   Whether he was blinded by the celebrity or simply coerced by BBC producers hungry for more of the same, Durbridge pressed ahead into the following decades (up until his last serial, Breakaway, in 1980) by giving the viewer (and the producer) more of what he thought they wanted: long, drawn-out, unnecessarily complicated plots populated by thinly developed 1950s-type characters, leading up as always to a sudden surprise revelation in the final episode.

   In a television-viewing age that had already experienced by this time a post-Z Cars (BBC, 1962-78) world of stark social realism (explicit violence, police corruption, race conflict, etc.), Durbridge proceeded, seemingly quite oblivious of events around him, to turn out facsimiles of his 1950s plots.

   What was at one time the electrifying anticipation of the coming of “another Durbridge thriller” in the 1950s and 1960s had developed by the 1970s into a non-event of bafflement and disappointment.

Note:   The introduction to this series of columns by Tise Vahimagi on TV mysteries and crime shows may be found here, followed by:

Part 1: Basic Characteristics (A Swift Overview)
Part 2.0: Evolution of the TV Genre (UK)
Part 2.1: Evolution of the TV Genre (US)
Part 3.0: Cold War Adventurers (The First Spy Cycle)
Part 3.1: Adventurers (Sleuths Without Portfolio).
Part 4.0: Themes and Strands (1950s Police Dramas).

   If you own a copy of the Library of America’s Dashiell Hammett volume Crime Stories & Other Writings (2001) and also a copy of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for July 1945, then, whether you know it or not, you have two different versions of Hammett’s Continental Op story “The Tenth Clew” (Black Mask, January 1, 1924).

   The first difference between the two leaps out: the last word of the title is spelled “Clew” in both Black Mask and the Library of America collection but Fred Dannay changed it to the more common “Clue” when he reprinted the tale in EQMM.

   To appreciate the final difference between the two requires a little knowledge about the story’s plot. Leopold Gantvoort, a 57-year-old widower whose net worth is around $1,500,000, is planning to marry a much younger woman, but he’s murdered before the marriage takes place and also before he’s signed a new will leaving half his fortune to her.

   The Op exposes her as a confidence woman and the murderer as her scam partner, who’s been posing as her brother. Here are the last few sentences as Hammett wrote them.

   What’s wrong here? Since Gantvoort was killed before either changing his will or marrying the woman, there’s no way on earth she could have inherited half his estate! Fred Dannay obviously caught this flub, and spared Hammett some potential embarrassment by taking it upon himself to rewrite those lines.

   Very shortly after this story appeared in EQMM, Fred included it in the digest-sized paperback original collection The Return of the Continental Op (Jonathan Press pb #J 17), which was published in the first week of July 1945, a month or two before Hammett came back to the U.S. from Army service in the Aleutian Islands during World War II.

   If any reader of this column has a copy of that edition, which I don’t, I’d love to know whether the text of this story is Hammett’s original or Fred’s revision. (My hunch is the latter.)

   Settled back into civilian life, Hammett started teaching an evening course on mystery writing at the Jefferson School of Social Science, a Communist-affiliated institution on New York’s Sixth Avenue, and Fred joined him regularly as unofficial co-instructor.

   When Return was reprinted in ordinary paperback format (Dell pb #154, 1947), the last paragraph of the story was unaccountably back in its original form. Had Hammett objected to Fred’s bold attempt to spare him a few blushes?

   Erle Stanley Gardner’s pulp stories of the early 1930s, and his early novels as well, were hugely influenced by Hammett although in later years he resented having the fact pointed out.

   In Chapter 20 of one of those early novels, the non-series whodunit This Is Murder (1935, as by Charles J. Kenny), a suspect has just been exposed as an ex-con. “Where was your first conviction?” he’s asked. “In Wisconsin.” “You served a term there?” “Yes, sir, at Waupum.”

   In fact the name of the town is Waupun, which locals unaccountably pronounce Wau-PAN. According to Wikipedia the place was supposed to have been named Waubun, which is a Native American word meaning dawn of day, but some state bureaucrat misspelled it and the mistake has never been corrected.

   The town’s chief industry is prisons — three of them! — but it’s also known for having more outdoor sculpture per capita than any other city in North America. The most famous such piece in Waupun is the “End of the Trail” sculpture: a young warrior on his horse contemplates the end of life as his people had known it.

   I saw it when I passed through the town years ago. The Library Bar on Waupun’s Main Street served the finest fries I’ve ever eaten. My buddy Joe Google tells me it’s no longer there. Drat!

   I am finishing this column on June 27, two days short of what would have been the 100th birthday of my favorite American composer. The centenary of Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975), who’s best known for having scored films like Citizen Kane, Vertigo and Psycho, is being celebrated throughout the music world, and Varese Sarabande Records has just made a huge contribution to the festivities by releasing The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Volume One.

   Herrmann wrote original scores for 17 Hitchcock Hour episodes during the program’s second and third seasons (1962-64), and this handsome two-CD set contains eight of them, more than two and a half hours of primo Herrmann never before available in audio form. Volume Two, let’s hope, will bring together the other nine — and soon. As I wrote in an earlier column, no one does ominous like Herrmann does ominous.

   The American TV police procedural and the British TV senior police detective drama of the 1950s were never the high watermark of the small-screen genre, but their influence on the formats and styles of following crime series lasted for decades.

   For instance, the roots of Stephen Bochco’s highly-influential Hill Street Blues (NBC, 1981-87) or the James Arness seen-it-all-before cop series McClain’s Law (NBC, 1981-82) may be traced back to Jack Webb’s 1950s Dragnet.

   Likewise, the British police dramas of the 1970s — such as New Scotland Yard (ITV, 1972-74), The Sweeney (ITV, 1975-76; 1978), even the North of England-located Strangers (ITV, 1978-82) — may trace their heritage back to the TV Scotland Yard detective stories of some twenty years earlier.

    The following, therefore, is simply an overview of two significant phases in the history of the TV Crime & Mystery genre.

The Story You Are About To See (USA: 1950 to 1959). In 1950, Senator Estes Kefauver established a Senate committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce. It became known as the Kefauver Committee. Its New York hearings were televised to an enormous audience, who witnessed a parade of the most notorious American gangsters treat the Committee with utter disdain.

   The TV viewers, naturally, were hungry for more, and TV fed them with Treasury Men in Action (ABC, 1950; 1954-55; NBC, 1951-54), a dramatization of true cases about counterfeiters and gangsters in U.S. Treasury files, and actual cases from police files in Racket Squad (CBS, 1951-53), with Reed Hadley starring and sometimes narrating in the role of a police captain.

   In 1951 came Crime Syndicated from CBS (1951-53) offering dramatizations of actual cases from the Kefauver hearings. Rudolph Halley, former chief counsel for the Senate crime investigations, fronted the series. December 1951 saw the advent of Dragnet (NBC, 1951-59; 1967-70). The TV child of actor Jack Webb, who produced, directed and starred in the series, Dragnet soon became not only the most popular show on US television during the 1950s but changed the face of the TV genre forever.

   Perhaps the first ever police procedural on TV, Dragnet was a highly stylized but thoroughly enjoyable collection of statistics (time, location, weather), police jargon, and the general drudgery of everyday police work. The stories were borrowed from the files of the LAPD. The relentless questioning of witnesses overshadowed any rare instances of gunplay. The episodes concluded with an update of the criminal’s fate.

   In short, Dragnet was one of the most remarkable programs of its era. Webb and his Mark VII Productions went on to produce some of TV’s most successful procedural series (Adam-12, O’Hara U.S. Treasury, Emergency!).

   Law enforcement procedurals (‘based on the files of…’) soon gathered momentum, then flooded the small-screen (until the ‘adult’ Western genre arrived). Police anthology Gangbusters (NBC, 1952) was followed hotly by Police Story (CBS, 1952), City Detective (syndicated 1953-55) and The Man Behind the Badge (CBS, 1953-54).

   Legal procedurals also came into play, with Public Defender (CBS, 1954-55) and Justice (NBC, 1954-56), the latter from stories based on the files of the Legal Aid Society.

   One of the more notable police procedurals of the period was The Lineup (CBS, 1954-60). The drama starred Warner Anderson and Tom Tully as a detective partnership and was produced in cooperation with the San Francisco P.D. The Lineup was CBS’ answer to the highly successful Dragnet on NBC. Nevertheless, as a taut, well-written, filmed series, it stood its ground firmly (in its semi-documentary fashion).

   Multiple other ‘based on the files of..’ series filled out the decade, among them (their titles being self-explanatory): The Mail Story (ABC, 1954), Paris Precinct (ABC, 1955), Highway Patrol (syndicated 1955-59), State Trooper (syndicated 1956-59), The Tracer (syndicated 1957-58), based on the files of Tracer Co. of America (N.Y.), Official Detective (syndicated 1957-58), from stories in the title magazine, Harbor Command (syndicated 1957-58), a sort of Dragnet in a nautical setting, and U.S. Border Patrol (syndicated 1959).

Scotland Yard’s War on Crime (UK: 1954 to 1965). The British view of the Law and its various mechanisms, especially concerning Scotland Yard, was seen at first through a series of BBC documentaries and drama-documentaries (TV reconstructions) that extolled the virtues of the British police and legal services.

   For instance, Murder Rap (1947), from Scotland Yard casebooks, Armed Robbery (1947), based on real-life Scotland Yard cases, It’s Your Money They’re After (1948), concerning post-war black marketeers, and War on Crime (1950), a series virtually celebrating ‘from the files of…’ Scotland Yard.

   At this time, it dawned on BBC Television that the perceived glamour of ‘Scotland Yard’ was an exportable commodity.

   The Oct-Nov 1951 drama-documentary series I Made News, a dramatization of a criminal who had made the UK news that week, was the first to introduce the real-life character of Detective Superintendent Robert Fabian, head of Scotland Yard’s famed Flying Squad (the Cockney rhyming slang was ‘The Sweeney,’ as in Sweeney Todd).

   The drama series Fabian of the Yard (BBC, 1954-57), filmed by Trinity Productions/Antony Beauchamp Productions for BBC, became as popular and as influential to the British TV genre as Jack Webb’s Dragnet (NBC, 1951-59) had been, in its way, to the 1950s American TV genre.

   In truth, there was absolutely nothing astounding about the plots, save for their being based on real-life cases. But it was while emphasising the exploits of Detective Superintendent Fabian (during an era when people were defined by the superiority of their work) and the activities of Scotland Yard, it can be summed-up fairly as a good police procedural (for the mid-1950s) with actor-star Bruce Seton’s calm, perceptive doggedness leading the painstaking investigation work. In retrospect, perhaps more a measured film noir than a high-octane police thriller.

   No sooner had it aired when the BBC received a complaint from Scotland Yard accusing the series’ producers of misrepresenting Metropolitan Police procedure as well as over dramatizing some events (apparently, it was the sadistic method used by the wife-murderer in the “Brides of the Fire” episode).

   However, Fabian of the Yard made a big impact on 1950s British TV viewers, with series’ star Seton and the real-life Bob Fabian elevated to a god-like status. The series also scored financially via showings on NBC in 1955 (sometimes as Inspector Fabian of Scotland Yard) and as the syndicated Patrol Car. Two feature films (of re-edited episodes) were released to cinemas as Fabian of the Yard (in 1954) and Handcuffs, London (1955). The real Robert Fabian of the Yard died in June 1978 at the age of 77.

   Other UK series attached to the theme of Scotland Yard, by title or through deed, included the atmospheric whodunit dramas of Colonel March of Scotland Yard (shown via ITV, 1955-56; syndicated in the US; produced circa 1952 and 1954). It was loosely based on the 1940 story collection The Department of Queer Complaints by John Dickson Carr (writing as Carter Dickson). The series featured an eye-patched Boris Karloff, a detective who concentrates on bizarre crimes.

   Robert Beatty was a Canadian Mountie (a Detective Inspector) attached to Scotland Yard in Dial 999 (ITV, 1958-59) and solved various London-located crimes. (999, incidentally, is the UK police emergency number, similar to 911.) Man from Interpol (ITV, 1960-61) featured a special agent (played by Richard Wyler) from the Scotland Yard branch of Interpol. In 1961, a Scotland Yard operative, Det-Insp. Bollinger (Louis Hayward), and his police dog appeared as The Pursuers (ITV). Unfortunately, all were standard small-screen cops-and-robbers dramas.

   Stryker of the Yard, with Clifford Evans (as Chief Inspector Robert Stryker), was a peculiar one. Apparently, it first appeared as a series of B-movies in British cinemas during the early 1950s. Then, they were re-edited and shown on NBC in 1957. As a TV series, it also showed up as half-hour episodes on UK’s Associated Television (ATV) from November 1961 to January 1962. A compilation film, Stryker of the Yard, was released in 1953.

   Perhaps the most popular (post-Fabian) Scotland Yard detective series of the 1950s (and 1960s) was No Hiding Place (ITV, 1959-67), featuring the crime-busting investigations of Chief Superintendent Lockhart (played with suitable bank manager authority by Raymond Francis). While this British ‘age of acquiescence’ continued to be ruled by the authority figures of Scotland Yard, it wasn’t too long before Lockhart replaced Fabian as the omnipotent one in the viewing nation’s hearts.

   The series was oddly reminiscent of the Edgar Lustgarten Scotland Yard B-movies shown in the UK from around 1953, with detectives that looked like insurance salesmen constantly springing out of dark cars.

   No Hiding Place evolved from two earlier series: The Murder Bag (ITV, 1957-59) and Crime Sheet (ITV, 1959), two police detective series also popular with 1950s UK viewers. In retrospect, however, No Hiding Place was a rather routine detective drama series, not always persuasive (though some robbery/murder scenes were quite convincing) and — apart from Francis’s dogged detective character — often uninteresting in performance. Plot-wise, coincidence was stretched almost to breaking point.

   On a final but justly deserved Scotland Yard-related note, Gideon’s Way (ITV, 1964-66), based on the character and stories created by John Creasey (writing as J.J. Marric), was an uncommonly intelligent filmed drama series with John Gregson as Commander George Gideon. In many ways it may be regarded as the UK’s television equivalent to America’s excellent Naked City (hour series; ABC, 1960-63). In the former, London was the multi-shaded central character; the latter explored the unpredictable New York City.

   Another significant element of the history of the TV Crime & Mystery was the Anthology series (now a long-forgotten small-screen form); its sometimes brilliant crime and mystery plays and its fine coterie of writers (teleplay or novel). Part 5 intends to look at this Theatre of Crime (ranging from Suspense to Kraft Mystery Theatre to The Short Stories of Conan Doyle).

Note:   The introduction to this series of columns by Tise Vahimagi on TV mysteries and crime shows may be found here, followed by:

Part 1: Basic Characteristics (A Swift Overview)
Part 2.0: Evolution of the TV Genre (UK)
Part 2.1: Evolution of the TV Genre (US)
Part 3.0: Cold War Adventurers (The First Spy Cycle)
Part 3.1: Adventurers (Sleuths Without Portfolio).

        #4. COLIN HAIG, by H. Bedford-Jones.

   The Colin Haig stories by H. Bedford-Jones made up a short-run series of six stories published consecutively from the October 7, 1933 issue through the November 11 issue. The stories are narrated by Martin Burke, who is the assistant in charge of Colin Haig’s laboratory in Los Angeles, “unequaled in the country.”

   The series relates the adventures of Colin Haig and his assistant against a priestess of Shiva named Madame Vanderdonk. She is supposedly the possessor of an evil eye, which can kill people and animals. This power is shown in the first story in the series, “The Evil Eye of Bali,” and Colin Haig cannot get anyone to believe him when he relates this fact. However, she has criminal agents who seem to do most of the actual killing by various means.

   I am missing the second story in the series, “The Desert of Death,” but “The Backward Swastika” is the third story, and involves more of the struggle against Madame Vanderdonk. Lieutenant Kelly of the missing persons detail of the local police makes an appearance at the beginning of the story, relating what they know about Madame Vanderdonk’s activities.

   It appears that she is targeting wealthy financiers, stealing their money and causing their deaths. The police have counted ten victims so far, and Kelly tells of a possible eleventh victim named Johansen. Kelly relates all of this information to Burke; Haig has been gone for three days looking for a trail to follow to Madame Vanderdonk based on photographic evidence acquired in the second story.

   Charles Hunter, one of Madame Vanderdonk’s murderous agents, appears for the first time in this story and uses a fake Haig letter to lure Burke into a trap, where he finds Johansen. He also meets Madame Vanderdonk, who talks to him. She attempts to manipulate him, but it doesn’t work, as Haig and Lieutenant Kelly arrive in time to rescue the two men. Madame Vanderdonk flees in her car.

   In the fourth story, “Circles of Doom,” Burke receives a telephone call from a Professor Malvolio, whose real name is Van Steen. He is a professional hypnotist. Van Steen is asking for information about Madame Vanderdonk. He promises to come and see Colin Haig, but never arrives. He then calls Haig and asks him to come to see him.

   Haig arrives to find Van Steen dead by means of poison and Van Steen’s daughter present. Haig and his assistant, with the aid of the police (including Lieutenant Kelly), investigate the situation and discover much information, including a good deal about one of their nemesis’s agents, Charles Hunter (first seen in the third story).

   However, Hunter is dead from an accident by poisoning by the time they reach him. Another dead end for Haig, but he has an idea she has her headquarters is in the desert around Palm Springs, and plans to search for her.

   The fifth story, “Footsteps of Death,” opens with Lieutenant Kelly saying he can’t help them in their fight against Madame Vanderdonk outside the city limits of Los Angeles. His superiors don’t believe in the evil eye.

   Shortly thereafter, another attempt is made upon the lives of Colin Haig and Martin Burke. This impels them to immediately start the search for Madame Vanderdonk’s desert lair. After searching in the heat for quite a while, they stumble upon a dying man whose last words indicate he knows the woman for whom they are searching.

   They then search outward from that spot. Martin Burke finds woman’s hideout and is captured. He undergoes another session with Madame Vanderdonk as she attempts to win him over to her cause. He soon escapes, and finds Colin Haig nearby.

   Haig wants to go for help and return to attack the dwelling. Somehow, to me this sounds too simple to expect her to stay there and wait for him to return. On to the final part of the story.

   In the sixth and last story in the series, “The Niche of Horror,” Colin Haig manages to get himself captured by Madame Vanderdonk. With this series, it was only a matter of time. He manages to escape the evil eye of the madame by sabotaging her base of operations and ending her reign of terror.

   This quick, short series of stories did not leave much time for readers to have to wait for each installment in the ongoing story. With the series preplanned and an ending provided, I don’t see why there wasn’t a sequel to it. That is, assuming the series was well received by the readers. It had plenty of action.

       The Colin Haig series by H. Bedford-Jones:

The Evil Eye of Bali     October 7, 1933
The Desert of Death     October 14, 1933
The Backward Swastika     October 21, 1933
Circles of Doom     October 28, 1933
Footsteps of Death     November 4, 1933
The Niche of Horror     November 11, 1933

   It has always been accepted generally in television series’ creation that the central character or characters must have a franchise in which to meddle. That is, a seemingly legitimate reason to involve themselves in the lives and affairs of others.

   The policeman, the journalist, the private eye, and a whole slew of other publicly accessible/available types are among the ones who have a licence to meddle in the lives of people whose paths they would not otherwise cross.

   The adventurer in television Crime & Mystery is quite simply a sleuth without portfolio. These adventurers have the least reason to become involved in the affairs of others (given that, for the most part, their main activities are usually as thief, trickster, rogue-of-sorts, when they are not engaged as journalists seeking a hot story, former military types in search of peacetime thrills, or the extra-wealthy in search of “experiences”).

   The adventurer-sleuth has its origins, primarily, in the novels and stories of authors such as E.W. Hornung and Maurice Leblanc, contributors to the Rogue School of crime and mystery literature.

   Hornung’s gentleman-thief A.J. Raffles (whose adventures were first published in 1895) was the epitome of the charming rascal. Rather surprisingly, he did not receive a small-screen treatment until British writer-producer Philip Mackie and Yorkshire Television produced a single play, Raffles – The Amateur Cracksman, in 1975.

   From this play, Mackie and Yorkshire developed the enjoyable 13-episode series Raffles (ITV, 1977) featuring a feline Anthony Valentine. There was also the 2001 BBC single drama, Gentleman Thief, starring the upper-crust Nigel Havers.

   French author Leblanc created the Continental equivalent of Raffles with Arsène Lupin, another gentleman burglar. French television, of course, produced the first Lupin series for TV in the 1970s with Arsène Lupin (ORTF2, 1971; 1973-74), followed by Arsène Lupin joue et perd (A2, 1980), Le Retour d’Arsène Lupin (France 3, 1989-90) and Les Nouveaux Exploits d’Arsène Lupin (France 3, 1995-96). A fine (131-minute) feature film, Arsène Lupin, was released in France in 2004 starring Romain Duris and Kristin Scott Thomas.

   What may be considered a part of this Early Adventurer-Sleuth Strain was DuMont network’s short-lived The Gallery of Mme. Liu-Tsong (1951), featuring the TV debut of Anna May Wong as the owner of a chain of prestigious art galleries, through the connection to which she conducted her mystery solving.

   Both Boston Blackie (synd., 1951-53) and Mr. and Mrs. North (CBS, 1952-53; NBC, 1954) made their appearance around the same period but their rather homegrown adventures were pretty soon overshadowed by the witch-hunt obsessions of the Red Scare, the alleged Communist Menace sweeping America at that time.

   It was inevitable then that Jerry and Pam North ran into a Communist cell in “Jade Dragon” (1953) and Boston Blackie tangled with foreign agents in “Black Widow” (1952) and “Crown Jewels” (1953). (And more about Blackie below.)

   The Foreign Intrigue Cycle. Sheldon Reynolds’ Foreign Intrigue (synd., 1951-55), a European-based foreign correspondent adventure that sought out espionage rings in virtually every European city, and which at times evoked the noir qualities of Tourneur’s Berlin Express (RKO, 1948), was persuasive in turning similar adventure-sleuth series into rabid Commie-hunting rallies.

   The opportunistic adventurer activities of Dan Duryea’s China Smith (synd., 1952; later as The New Adventures of China Smith, 1954) soon turned from solving insurance scams, murders and kidnappings to skirmishes with Red Chinese agents.

   When, in the mid 1950s, the Falcon resurfaced in the shape of Charles McGraw as a syndicated TV series, Adventures of the Falcon (1954-55), the character had lost all trace of the sophisticated gentleman adventurer (of the George Sanders/Tom Conway RKO period) to become a hard-nosed U.S. Intelligence officer working on foreign assignments.

   In a somewhat similar vein, the Eastern bloc adventures of anti-Communist journalist Brian Keith in Crusader (CBS, 1955-56) pulled no punches in his free-wheeling life as a writer and adventurer.

   [Author’s note on the latter four paragraphs: please refer also to the earlier Part 3: Cold War Adventurers]

   In what may be considered Relatives of Raffles, two particular series in the mid 1950s managed to capture the spirit of the television adventurer-sleuth:

   Though removed from author Jack Boyle’s 1919 American-hardened version of Raffles, Boston Blackie (synd., 1951-53) was closer to its film interpretations (via Columbia, 1941 to 1949) with Chester Morris as the freelance crime solver than the original story (which, like Michael Arlen’s The Falcon, had only one published story as its basis). Rights holder-producer Frederic W. Ziv had tried a television version of the character as early as 1948 but it was the series starring Kent Taylor that became typical of the TV adventurers of the period.

   Louis Joseph Vance’s Michael Lanyard (played by Louis Hayward on TV) as The Lone Wolf (synd., 1954-55) was another criminal-turned-adventurous rogue (previously via Columbia Pictures, 1935 to 1949) whose past as an urban outlaw (jewel thief) was put to good use as a globe-trotting crime fighter.

   Perhaps one of the more interesting adventure seekers around this time was Dan Holiday, a former newspaper writer who advertised “adventure wanted” in a search for new story ideas. The character and format was developed originally for radio and starred Alan Ladd, who was heard as Holiday in the syndicated radio series Box 13 (produced by Ladd’s Mayfair Productions, 1948 to 1949).

   Later, his Jaguar Productions attempted a television pilot; also starring Ladd, the half-hour “Committed” (1954) was shown as a part of General Electric Theatre (CBS, 1953-62). Why CBS Television didn’t pick up a Box 13 series with Ladd remains a mystery in itself.

   The Bulldog Drummond Breed. And perhaps a final say in this overextended “footnote.” Military men in search of peacetime excitement was the basis for popular works by authors such as Sapper (H.C. McNeile), with his Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond, and for John Buchan, with Richard Hannay. Geoffrey Household’s upper class outdoor adventurers would follow later.

   Sadly, television also failed to pick on a Bulldog Drummond series in the mid-1950s when Fairbanks Jr., as executive producer of the anthology Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Presents (ITV, 1956-57), produced the energetic “The Ludlow Affair” (1956; aka “Bulldog Drummond and The Ludlow Affair”). The production starred Robert Beatty as the thrill-seeking Drummond (who, in Sapper’s original work, also advertised for a “diversion” to his uneventful post-war life).

   From a purely literary perspective, perhaps the lineage of the adventurer may be traced back to Rudolf Rassendyll (of The Prisoner of Zenda fame) and Sir Percy Blakeney (of The Scarlet Pimpernel)…?

Note:   The introduction to this series of columns by Tise Vahimagi on TV mysteries and crime shows may be found here, followed by:

Part 1: Basic Characteristics (A Swift Overview)
Part 2.0: Evolution of the TV Genre (UK)
Part 2.1: Evolution of the TV Genre (US)
Part 3.0: Cold War Adventurers (The First Spy Cycle).

   Projected rather than inspired by the post-war climate of the uneasy peace between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the Cold War events from 1947 to 1950 (with the coming to power of Communist leader Mao Zedong in China, the arrest of Russian spies Klaus Fuchs, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the Alger Hiss case, the start of the conflict in Korea, and the rise of Red-baiter Senator Joseph McCarthy) were instrumental in starting the first television Spy cycle.

   A wholly American television genre, UK television (only BBC at the time) stayed well away from any “Red Menace” overtures.

   Unlike the full headlong rush into espionage adventure during the following decade, the steady stream of spy stories during the first half of the 1950s were thinly-veiled attacks on the perceived encroachment of Communist influence into various parts of the world. The protagonists of these series were as varied as their assignments, which included government agents, military agents, roving journalists, and simply hot-blooded adventurers.

   These series were often filmed as co-production ventures in Europe and Scandinavia. Among them, they featured the American correspondent hero of Foreign Intrigue (synd., 1951-55) and freelance writer of Crusader (CBS, 1955-56).

   The government agents of Dangerous Assignment (synd., 1952), Doorway to Danger (NBC/ABC, 1951-53), Secret File U.S.A. (synd., 1954) and The Man Called X (synd., 1956).

   The diplomat courier of Passport to Danger (synd., 1954-56) and the omnipotent, globe-trotting adventurers of The Hunter (CBS/NBC, 1952-54), China Smith (synd., 1952-54) and Biff Baker U.S.A. (CBS, 1952-53).

   All engaged in dirty tricks against an even dirtier and trickier enemy.

   It was all too clear that the villains represented agents of Iron Curtain countries in the west or elements of the Red Chinese threat in the east, but it was never stated or the countries named outright.

   Of distinction, but no less shamelessly propagandistic in its relentless Communist infiltration hunting, was the double-agent series I Led Three Lives (synd., 1953-56). It was set in Boston for the most part but some stories took our hero Herbert Philbrick (a suitably nervous, twitchy Richard Carlson) overseas.

   Apparently, the series was based on the real-life experiences of advertising executive Philbrick who, during the 1940s, acted as a volunteer undercover agent for the FBI. The modestly popular series displayed all the customary excitement associated with this type of concealed-identity drama (imminent danger of discovery, walking the shadowy path between the authorities and the enemy) while maintaining the hard and belligerent attitude found in other, more direct anti-Communist TV series.

   During this period of hysterical Commie-bashing, more mainstream Secret Service exploits began to surface. Utilizing case histories (“from the files of…”) alongside original screen stories (ranging in historical scope from the First World War to contemporary times), the anthologies Pentagon U.S.A. (CBS, 1953), Top Secret (synd., 1954-55), I Spy (hosted by Raymond Massey; synd., 1955-56) and Behind Closed Doors (NBC, 1958-59) — even the frontier assignments of two Secret Service agents in the post-Civil War west, Cowboy G-Men (synd., 1952-53) — drew on stories involving political corruption, attempted kidnapping or assassination of government figures, private armies, and the general thwarting of the “enemy’s” skilled craft of deception and duplicity.

   Arriving on the home screen just a year after April 1953 publication, it was inevitable that Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, would show up during this period (as a 1954 CBS presentation of the anthology series Climax!).

   However, only the bare bones of the novel’s plot were used (the high-stakes baccarat game and, unexpectedly, the infamous torture scene; although the latter was changed to an equally grisly pliers-and-toes ordeal), with the hero now a U.S. Intelligence agent (Barry Nelson as agent Jimmy Bond) and the villain (Peter Lorre’s Le Chiffre) the head of a Soviet spy ring.

   The “based on the files…” fad soon became a TV genre fashion after the popularity of Jack Webb’s 1952-59 Dragnet soared. These pseudo-documentary series (such as The Line-Up, State Trooper, Highway Patrol and others) will be among my next observations.

   But before that, there will be something of a footnote to this Part 3, looking at the 1950s TV adventurer sub-genre.

Note:   The introduction to this series of columns by Tise Vahimagi on TV mysteries and crime shows may be found here, followed by:

Part 1: Basic Characteristics (A Swift Overview)
Part 2.0: Evolution of the TV Genre (UK)
Part 2.1: Evolution of the TV Genre (US)