ACCUSED OF MURDER. Republic Pictures, 1956. David Brian, Vera Ralston, Sidney Blackmer, Virginia Grey, Warren Stevens, Lee Van Cleef, Barry Kelley, Elisha Cook Jr. Screenplay by W. R. Burnett, based on his novel, Vanity Row. Director: Joseph Kane. Currently available on YouTube (see below). (The book is reviewed by Dan Stumpf here.)

   Time was starting to run out for Republic Pictures when this film was produced, and as it so happened, the end of Vera (Hruba) Ralston’s motion picture career was close to ending as well. Republic lasted until 1959, while Miss Ralston’s last appearance on film was in 1958. That their fortunes were so long tied together is due to one fact: she was the longtime protege of Republic Pictures studio head Herbert J. Yates, whose last year on top was also — you guessed it — 1958.

   Her acting abilities, never regarded very highly, were probably adequate for most of the generally low budget films she was in, and over the years, there were 27 of them. In Accused of Murder she’s a night club singer who’s suspected of murdering a high-flying attorney (Sidney Blackmer) in debt to the mob, but luckily for her, the homicide lieutenant in charge of case (David Brian) finds himself falling in love with her, and he’s the only person standing between her and a life in prison.

   Definitely not believing her story is Brian’s second-in-command, a very young Lee Van Cleef, whose way of carrying himself reminded me a lot of Lee Marvin, lean and lanky and in so smooth control of himself.

   There’s more to the story than this, including a scar-faced hit man (Warren Stevens) whom we see being paid for killing Blackmer, and a would-be blackmailer, a dime-a-dance girl (Virginia Grey) who saw Stevens at the scene of the crime. There are a few twists to the tale, some of them quite clever, or there would have been if we (the viewer) hadn’t been shown too much in the beginning, and yet not enough to stop us from puzzling over whatever it was that wasn’t shown. Speaking entirely for myself, you understand.

   Adequate, therefore, but all around? Only adequate. There’s no other word that might apply, unless it was mediocre, and truthfully, Accused of Murder is a step above that. It’s a small step, but a step, nonetheless.

UPDATE: This review was first posted on this blog on 17 November 2011. The reason for its revival is that it’s the second listing (alphabetically) in Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of FILM NOIR, by Arthur Lyons (Da Capo Press, 2000). I’m in the process of working my way through it, one movie at a time. The first nine Comments that follow are from its earlier posting.
   

(Give Me That) OLD-TIME DETECTION. Spring 2024. Issue #65. Editor: Arthur Vidro. Old-Time Detection Special Interest Group of American Mensa, Ltd. 36 pages (including covers). Cover image: Stuart Palmer’s The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree.

   It goes without saying that Old-Time Detection is an indispensable repository of information for the devotee of classic detective fiction, mixing the old with the new in this particular literary genre; and who better than Arthur Vidro to curate it.

   First up is a short 1976 EQMM interview with Stanley Ellin: “The problem here was to get an ending which was right.”

   Next, Charles Shibuk continues his Paperback Revolution from 1974: “As I write this, 1973 is slowly dissolving into a hopeful new year, and 1973 has certainly not been a good one — especially in the reprint field.” Shibuk notes reissues from Margery Allingham (“an extremely erratic performer, but she seems to be her best in the short form”); James M. Cain (“hardboiled prose by a master of the genre”); Agatha Christie (“presents Poirot as a Nero Wolfe imitator”); Carter Dickson/John Dickson Carr (“exploits in farce and detection”); Dick Francis (“a superb work”); R. Austin Freeman (“the creator of Dr. Thorndyke was one of the giants in this field”); Jacques Futrelle (“they [his stories] still retain their freshness and devilish ingenuity today”); Frank Gruber (“a fast and funny romp”); John D. MacDonald (“the patented brand of MacDonald philosophy, which this reader could live without”); Ngaio Marsh (“not among Marsh’s best work”); Rex Stout (“one of Stout’s better early novels”); and Trevanian (“overpraised”).

   Dr. John Curran, the foremost Christie expert extant, sadly traces the damage committed by meddlesome Hollywood and its even more heavily politicized ugly twin, the BBC, when adapting Agatha’s Murder Is Easy (a.k.a. Easy To Kill) and looks forward apprehensively to an upcoming “adaptation” of Towards Zero. Curran hits the truth button on why Agatha Christie’s “entire back catalogue is still in print”: “It is because she stuck to writing what she knew she could write: clever, entertaining whodunits. . . she rarely, if ever, weighed down her stories with discussion of religion or politics.”

   The second part of Francis M. Nevins’s article about Erle Stanley Gardner has a wealth of information concerning ESG’s middle period (including the two largely unknown prototypes of Perry Mason and Della Street) and his first Mason novels, featuring a far different character than most readers and TV viewers are accustomed to (“The Mason of these novels is a tiger in the social Darwinian jungle . . .”). And there’s more to come.

   In 1958 Julian Symons compiled a heavily annotated list of what he regarded as the “100 Best Crime Stories,” starting with William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794), and running up to 1957. Those familiar with Symons’stastes in detective fiction won’t be surprised at some of his choices, but it’s heartening to see that he didn’t overlook Freeman, Futrelle, Van Dine, and EQ, among deserving others.

   Pietro De Palma offers up this issue’s fiction piece, “A Double Locked Room” (6 pages): “In the seafront office of the Bari Police Station, two men were discussing this fresh case, which seemed less a police matter than a matter for an escapologist.”

   From the mid-80s we have Jon L. Breen’s in-depth reviews of three contemporary novels: Max Allan Collins’s Kill Your Darlings (1984: “excellent dialogue, characterization, and mystery plot”); Robert J. Randisi’s Full Contact (1984: “a well-crafted and quick-paced story”); and Reginald Hill’s A Clubbable Woman (1970, first U. S. publication 1984: “one of the outstanding firsts in detective fiction history”).

   Editor Arthur Vidro shares his thoughts about the (usually) benign madness associated with book collecting, which sometimes becomes uncontrollable at auctions, and his own personal “game plan.”

   From a 1979 issue of The Armchair Detective we delve once more into “The Non-Fiction World of Edward D. Hoch,” as he reminisces about “Growing Up with Ellery Queen” (“I think I wanted to be a writer even then”).

   When he reviewed Doug Greene’s recently published John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles (1995), Michael Dirda rightly entitled it “The Houdini of the Mystery” (“Carr excels in his plotting and narrative pacing, in the rush of unfathomable, seemingly unconnected clues . . . reading a writer like Carr is being reminded that good fiction doesn’t require richly beautiful sentences or complex psychological probing . . .”).

   Arthur Vidro returns with two concise reviews: Agatha Christie’s By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968: “her enthusiasm comes through in the prose”) and Stuart Palmer’s The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (1933: “The fourth outing for Hildegarde Withers takes her to California”).

   Letters from OTD-ers and a fiendish puzzle wrap up what we’ve come to expect, a quality issue of Old-Time Detection full of good stuff.

      ____

   Subscription information:

   Published three times a year: spring, summer, and autumn. – Sample copy: $6.00 in U.S.; $10.00 anywhere else. – One-year U.S.: $18.00. – One-year overseas: $40.00 (or 25 pounds sterling or 30 euros). – Payment: Checks payable to Arthur Vidro, or cash from any nation, or U.S. postage stamps or PayPal. – Mailing address: Arthur Vidro, editor, Old-Time Detection, 2 Ellery Street, Claremont, New Hampshire 03743.

Web address: vidro@myfairpoint.net

BART SPICER – The Golden Door. Carney Wilde #3. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1951. Bantam #975, paperback, 1952.

   “The Golden Door” are the last three words on the Statue of Liberty:

         “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
         I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

   Carney Wilde has been able to sustain his private eye business through a retainer as security detail for the fancy Jonas Department Store in downtown Philadelphia. It’s been a pretty cushy gig — but lately it seems like there’s some insider theft going on. So Wilde has to earn his keep.

   While working on the case, the son of the Jonas Department Store mogul asks for help with an ‘unrelated issue’. The so-called unrelated issue has to do with stolen files from his non-profit agency “Future Americans”. “Future Americans” helps displaced eastern European Jewish survivors of WWII immigrate to the U.S., frequently by promising jobs with the Jonas Department Store. The missing files contain sensitive personal information of prospective immigrants.

   Of course, if you’ve read any detective stories before you know there’s no such thing as an unrelated case.

   The store thief ends up dead, and he’s not the only one. Turns out some of the “Future Americans” think the ‘golden door’ ought to be melted down and cashed in. And that’s pretty much just what they try to do.

   Carney Wilde is a terrific hardboiled detective and Bart Spicer exercises great narrative control. Despite seeming coincidences tying everything together, I never doubted the credibility of the story. No plodder, he’s a skillful plotter. Everything fits; you get a satisfying denouement.

   So I’ll say it again. I have no idea why the Carney Wilde books are out of print. They’re exciting vintage hardboiled detective novels. Some of the best I’ve read by anyone not named Chandler or Hammett.
   

      The Carney Wilde series —

The Dark Light (1949)
Blues For the Prince (1950)
The Golden Door (1951)
Black Sheep, Run (1951)
The Long Green (1952)
The Taming of Carney Wilde (1954)
Exit, Running (1959)

KEITH LAUMER – Spaceman! Serialized in If SF, May-June-July 1967. Published in book form as Galactic Odyssey (Berkley X1447, paperback, September 1967).

   Billy Danger is accidentally kidnapped off Earth by a hunting expedition consisting of two men and a girl, The Lady Raire. He is made a gun-bearer, and when the two hunters are killed, he is made responsible for the girl’s safety. They find cover and means for a signal, but slavers respond and steal her from him, leaving him for dead.

   His hunt for her takes him across the galaxy, with many back-breaking jobs and imprisonments, but also with many friendships, until he reaches her home planet, where she has been returned but under another’s control.

   Rousing action, from beginning to end, descriptive passages of alienness and nightmares, captures and escapes make this a most exciting story in the old tradition. Although a college student, Billy Danger at first seems more a grade-schooler in character, but his experiences mature him soon enough and he begins to fit his name exactly.

Rating: ****½

ACCOMPLICE. Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), 1946. Richard Arlen (Simon Lash), Veda Ann Borg, Tom Dugan, Michael Brandon, Marjorie Manners, Earle Hodgins, Francis Ford. Based on the novel Simon Lash, Private Detective, by Frank Gruber. Director: Walter Colmes.

   Sometimes it doesn’t pay to get what you’ve been wishing for, even if you’ve been looking for it for a long time. Case in point: This movie, based on a private eye yarn by a long time master of pulp fiction, Frank Gruber.

   Gruber also had a hand in on the screenplay, but I have to be honest. This is one of the worst assembled detective movies I’ve had the occasion to watch in a long time. It’s a jumbled up mess, one put together by a gang of ham-fisted amateurs, or so it seems.

   Luckily it’s only 68 minutes long, and at that it felt a whole lot longer. PRC didn’t have a lot of money to splurge on their productions, and even so you get the feeling that they cut the budget on Accomplice by thirty percent about halfway through to save it for the next film out of their hopper.

   Another problem, perhaps, is that they tried to film the book fairly closely, but that’s only a guess, not having read the book in over 50 years, but that’s what it feels like. There’s simply too much story, which goes hither and yon and there, and in 68 minutes, there’s not nearly enough time to stitch the pieces of a nicely complicated plot together so the seams don’t show, and badly.

   But as for the story, since you are asking, it starts out in fine fashion. Simon Lash (a mid-career but still dashing Richard Arlen) is a private eye, and not only that, one of my favorite kinds of private eyes, a book collecting PI, mostly non-fiction about the West and how it was Won. He also has an assistant named Eddie (Tom Dugan) who seems to do a lot of the heavy lifting around the office.

   He’s hired in Accomplice by brash blonde Joyce Bonniwell (played to perfection by brash blonde Veda Ann Borg) to find her husband, a bank manager who suffers from periodic bouts of amnesia. (We’ve heard that before, and so has Simon Lash.) What makes things hinky here is that Joyce once dumped Simon at the altar.

   So far, so good. What comes next is fast and furious. There is a mistress on the side (red-headed, as if you could tell in a black and white movie), a mink ranch, a missing bank president who’s been seen with a mysterious brunette, a body found with its head blown off, and — skipping a whole lot — a Castle in the desert being used for nefarious purposes, lorded over by Francis Ford (brother of John Ford, a fact which is of course totally irrelevant to the rest of this paragraph).

   There things come to a flashy and violent end. I had stopped caring about 30 minutes earlier, but the ending, I’d have to admit, is nearly worth waiting for. Almost, but not quite.
   

MICHAEL & JOHN BRUNAS and TOM WEAVER – Universal Horrors.The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931-1946. McFarland, hardcover, 1990, softcover, 2017.

   Fans of that sort of thing should drop what they’re doing and rush out in the street to buy this book. Handsomely produced, exhaustive but never tedious, this is the survey of those wonderful (and sometimes wonderfully inept) Horror Films put out from 1931 to 1946 by the Horror Studio.

   There are fascinating bits of information on budgets and stock footage, intelligent interviews with the surviving principals and minor character actors, and even an occasional bit of critical depth.

   It’s all too rare that a book manages not to insult the reader’s intelligence even while seriously discussing films that do, but Universal Horrors actually manages to chart its way from the giddy heights of Bride of Frankenstein   and The Black Cat all the way down to things like Night in Paradise and The Brute Man without putting a foot wrong.

   Of course, there are a few mistakes in critical Judgement, by which I mean that the authors don’t always agree with me. I have always been struck by the contrast in Universal Monster Movies between the bland, unengaging “heroes” of these films and the intriguing treatment of the hairy outcasts who are supposed to be the Bad Guys.

   I’ve reflected that kids watched these things in movie houses, where they were re-released right up to the early 50s, then stayed up late a night to catch them on television through the 60s, and I’ve always wondered if this was how the Hippies got their start.

   Weaver and the Brunases don’t bring this up — perhaps just as well — nor do they cite the bit of Invisible Man stock footage that was always [any good Sherlockian’s] favorite bit of Holmesian Trivia, but they do manage to run to earth just about every other bit of stock footage, retreaded script and reused actor from almost a hundred movies that most film historians wouldn’t give the time of day.

   And they do it in a way that is almost compulsively readable. I recommend this one highly.

THE ADVENTURES OF THE FALCON. “Kiss Me Not.” Syndicated / Federal Telefilms, 01 October 1954 (Season 1, Episode 15). Charles McGraw. Guest Cast: Nancy Gates, John Dehner, Herb Vigran, Betty Ball. Writer: Herbert Purdom. Director: Derwin Abrahams … (as Derwin Abbe).

   For a quick recap of the long, involved and confusing history, the fellow who does the Spy Guys and Gals website does the best job I’ve ever seen. Here’s the link: spyguysandgals.com/sgShowChar.aspx?id=2662

   He covers the books, the short stories, the movies, the radio (nearly 500 episodes), but it’s an episode of the TV series that this review is about. It begins with a gangland killing in a two-bit hashery, then continues with Michael Waring in Washington DC as an overall troubleshooter for an unnamed agency as he volunteers to help a war widow whose teen-age daughter has gone off with a hired killer.

   The connection between this and the prologue? The killer in the hashery and the gun man the woman’s daughter has taken off with are one and the same. How, also, you may ask, does the government get involved? Simple. The girl has taken her mother’s monthly assistance check with her.

   Charles McGraw suffers from a screenplay that makes him a one-dimensional PI, tough and gruff, but little more. John Dehner (the gunman) was always a dapper fellow, but not one you might thing would have not one, but two beautiful women fall head over heels in love with him.

   But overall, not a bad story, one that makes the most of limited amount of time it has to work with (less than 30 minutes). I was happy not to have to sit through wasted time watching cars do nothing but drive from one place to another.
   

A. I. BEZZERIDES – Long Haul. Carrick & Evans, New York, hardcover, 1938. Reprinted in paperback as They Drive by Night (Dell, 1950) and Tough Guy (Lion, 1953).

   Brothers Nick and Paul Benay are trying to make it as over-the-road truckers. Between loan payments on the truck, repairs, middlemen, chiselers, and rotting freight, it’s tough road to hoe. One brother sleeps while the other drives. And vice versa.

   The only way to make it pay is to pay off your truck and haul your own freight. That’s the dream that keeps guys going. But just as soon as it seems like they’re gonna get there, something happens. A drunk driver veers into oncoming traffic, totaling their truck, juicy oranges fluttering down the freeway.

   Paul is concussed, and the only way to keep going is Nick has to pull all-nighters, 72 hours, without sleep. He’s nodding off, nightmares jolting him awake, of a crack up. Is it real or only imagined, this time, flying off a cliff?

   Depressing story, yes, but stilted prose is what keeps from the winner’s circle.

   Made into a Bogart film in 1940.

My apologies for the longer than usual break I’ve had to have with the blog. Nothing’s wrong, I’m just a lot busier than I’m used to. I’ll be back as soon as I’m able. (A few more hours a day might help, if you have any to spare.)

A. A. FAIR – Owls Don’t Blink. Bertha Cool & Donald Lam #6. Morrow, hardcover, 1942. Reprinted many times, including Dell 211, mapback edition, 1940s, and Dell R101, paperback, October 1961.

   A. A. Fair is a pseudonym of Erle Stanley Gardner, but don’t pick up one of these novels featuring private eyes Bertha Cool and Donald Lam expecting a couple of carbon copies of Paul Drake. Cool and Lam are an amusing and endearing pair — perfect foils for one another.

   Bertha Cool, at the time of this novel. is the middle-aged proprietor of an L.A. investigative firm, pared down to a mere 165 pounds but ever on the alert for a good meal. Her partner, Donald Lam, is a twerp in comparison — young, slender, and forever on the defensive for what Bertha considers excessive squandering of agency money. But there’s considerable affection between the two, and with Donald doing the legwork, they crack some tough cases-and have a lot of fun while doing so.

   Owls Don’t Blink opens in the French Quarter of New Orleans, where Donald is occupying an apartment once rented by a missing woman he has been hired to find. He is due to meet Bertha at the airport at 7:20 the next morning and knows there will be hell to pay if he’s late. Fortunately. he arrives on time. and together they meet the New York lawyer who has hired them to find Roberta Fenn. a former model.

   Over a number of pecan waffles — a number for Bertha. that is, who only eats “once a day” —  the lawyer is evasive about why he wishes to locate Miss Fenn. But Cool and Lam proceed with the case-and Bertha proceeds with several lavish meals, still on that same day.

   The discovery of the missing woman’s whereabouts proves all too easy, and also too easy is the discovery of a corpse in Roberta Fenn’s new apartment. But from there on out, everything’s as convoluted as in the best of the Perry Mason novels. The scene moves from New Orleans to Shreveport, Louisiana, and from there to Los Angeles, where its surprising (although possibly a little out-of-leftfield) conclusion takes place.

   And there’s a nice twist in the Cool-Lam relationship that will make a reader want to read the later entries in this fine series, such as Crows Can’t Count (1946), Some Slips Don’t Show (1957), Fish or Cut Bait (1963), and All Grass Isn’t Green (1970). Especially entertaining earlier titles are The Bigger They Come (1939) and Spill the Jackpot (1941).

     ———
   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.