BRIAN ANTHONY & ANDY EDMONDS – Smile When the Raindrops Fall: The Story of Charley Chase. Scarecrow Press, 1998.

RICHARD LEWIS WARD – A History of the Hal Roach Studios. Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.

   Together these two books give a nice portrait of one of the most interesting smaller studios during Hollywood’s Golden Period. The Charley Chase book covers the creative sides by telling the story of one of Hal Roach’s most talented stars and directors. The Ward book covers more of the business and practical aspects of the studio and includes a great deal of specific figures on the cost and earnings of individual films and series.

   I am a bit late to the party on Charley Chase, as other than his supporting role in Laurel & Hardy’s wonderful Sons of the Desert, I was not very familiar with his film work. I had seen a few of his shorts but those few were years ago. More recently, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) ran some of his silent short subjects as well as talkies and it piqued my interest. Chase was a very talented fellow, both as a performer and director.

   Born Charles Joseph Parrott in Baltimore in 1893, he spent his first 10 years in an ethnic neighborhood near the inner harbor. After his father died, the family moved in with his mother’s sister and Charley began running errands and anything he could to bring in money.

   A talented tap dancer with a pleasing voice, he began earning money on the streets as an entertainer. Soon he teamed up with two other boys and the trio gained bookings in vaudeville theaters. Eventually, he teamed up with another comic for a routine entitled “The Boys from Nutsville” that was very successful. Charley became tired of living out of a trunk and stayed in Los Angeles when a tour ended in 1911.

   He found employment with Lon Chaney’s stage troupe as a member of the chorus. There he met his wife, but soon Chaney abandoned his stage career to enter movies. Out of a job, Charley did the same, first with the Christie Studios and then with Mack Sennett.

   With Sennett, Charley began doing bits and graduated to featured roles, and along the way, was given his first chance at directing. He also became friends with the star of the Sennett lot, Charlie Chaplin, and appeared in several of the Chaplin films circa 1914. After several years with Sennett, Charley freelanced as a director and performer at Paramount and other studios.

   His younger brother Jimmy Parrott went to work for the Hal Roach Studio in 1917 as a gag writer on Harold Lloyd comedies and eventually made his way in front of the camera. Jimmy was drafted into the Army and sent to Europe where he was wounded.

   After his return, Roach put him back before the cameras but soon James Parrott left acting to become one of Roach’s best directors.

   Meanwhile, his brother Charley joined Roach and because of his experience with some of the best producers, he was made supervisor of all productions. It was at Roach that Charley made his mark both in front and behind the camera.

   As a studio manager, Charley lured Stan Laurel into returning to the Roach Studio trom vaudeville. Charley had worked with Oliver Hardy in the Billy West comedies and in 1924, he added him to be Roach stable of actors. While others have credit for teaming L&H, Charley got them to the same studio.

   The star of the Roach Studio in the early days was Harold Lloyd. I attended a 100th birthday party for Hal Roach given by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. Nearly completely deaf, Roach did answer questions posed. Asked who was his favorite comedian, Roach immediately answered “Harold Lloyd.” Why? “Because I made the most money with him.”

   I need to dig up my notes from the Roach interview to be exact but when he was asked who he thought was the funniest comic, he quickly said “Charley Chase. But he was a terrible drunk.” Alas, in a hard-drinking era, Charley was notable for his love of brandy and eventually, it killed him in 1940.

   Rail thin, slicked-back hair and a small mustache was the picture of a young man on the go in his early movies and even as he grew older, he maintained a very likable film persona. It is ironic that he is best remembered for his role as the obnoxious fraternal order convention-goer who plagues Laurel and Hardy in Sons of the Desert.

   When Roach exited the short subject field (except for the “Our Gang” series), he used Chase in a couple of features and then fired him. Chase took a full page ad in Variety to thank Roach for a wonderful 17-year run. He moved over to Columbia where he had his own series, and he directed others including several of the best by the Three Stooges including Violent Is the Word for Curley.

   The biography is an odd collaboration as Andy Edmonds had done much of the research years before but had never finished the biography. One day Anthony knocked on his door and asked him “Why?”

   Together they finished the book: The close cooperation of Chase’s daughters and children add a human element often missing from biographies. The writers also visited the homes they lived in and that added a lot of physical detail.

   Edmonds’ early interviews saved a lot of information that would have been lost with the death of Chase’s contemporaries. He even tracked down Joe Kavigan, the bartender at the theatrical oriented Masquers Club where Charley was an officer. Kavigan used to drive Chase home when he was in his cups. Chase would yell “Stop the car!! Get out!!” And outside, he said “Look at the sky! Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?”

   Kavigan said his helping the patrons home could be misinterpreted. He often escorted an inebriated Spencer Tracy from the club to his home. One late evening, Mrs. Tracy came to the door to help her husband in and said sharply, “How come when he’s with you, he’s always drunk?” She probably had no idea he was the bartender.

   The Ward history of the Hal Roach studio is a much drier book but I found the level of detail fascinating. Discussed in detail are the relationships with Pathe as his distributor, fol1owed by the glory years with MGM and then finally with United Artists.

   I knew Roach had been in trouble in the early 1930s after the crash but was surprised to learn that the studio nearly went under in 1940. Although Roach produced the wonderful Of Mice and Men starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Burgess Meredith, the rave reviews did not translate into profitability due to mishandling by United Artists.

   As documented in a wealth of detail, the studio was never in great financial shape. Hal Roach, Sr. eventually turned it over to his son and Hal Roach, Jr. made the lot one of the most active in the early days of television. Shows shot at Roach included My Little Margie, Blondie, Racket Squad, and The Stu Erwin Show.

   Independent producers rented the studio to make series including Amos and Andy, Life of Riley, Beulah, You Are There, and Waterfront. Yet, the studio couldn’t make money because of the debt it was carrying, including a hefty buy-out for Hal Roach Sr. Eventually, it went bankrupt.

   Interesting tidbits: “Our Gang” weekly salaries in 1937: Spanky $200, Alfalfa $175, DarIa $150, Buckwheat $80.

HOWARD BROWNE – Thin Air. Carroll & Graf, reprint paperback, 1983. Originally published by Simon & Schuster, hc, 1954; Dell #894, pb, 1956.

   Ames Coryell, successful advertising executive, is bringing his wife, Leona, and their three year old daughter home from a peaceful, happy summer vacation. They arrive home at 3:00 a.m. Leona opens the front door and goes into their home. In the time it takes her husband to carry their daughter upstairs and come back down, she has disappeared — into thin air.

   No signs of a struggle, purse left behind, and no goodbye note. What happened to Leona? And why does their daughter tell the police “Why didn’t Mommy come home with us?”

   Ames attempts to locate Leona himself, after feeling frustrated by the apparent unconcern of the police. On the other hand, the police consider it a strong possibility that Ames killed his wife.

   When a woman resembling Leona is found murdered (discovered by Ames, no less!), the action and intrigue quicken.

   This is a tautly written tale, with strong characterization and a compelling style. Thin Air is not likely to disappoint any mystery fan.

S. S. VAN DINE – The Bishop Murder Case. Charles Scribner’s Sons, US, hardcover, 1929. Cassell, UK, hc, 1929. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and soft, including: Pocket #305, July 1945; Gold Medal T2140, no date given [1970s].

Film: The Bishop Murder Case. MGM, 1930. Basil Rathbone, Lilia Hyams, Roland Young, Delmer Daves. Directors: David Burton & Nick Grinde.

   Of all the criminal cases in which Philo Vance participated as an unofficial investigator, the most sinister, the most bizarre, the most seemingly incomprehensible, and certainly the most terrifying, was the one that followed the famous Greene murders.

   The Bishop Murder Case is not the best of the Philo Vance mysteries, but it is the showpiece of the series, a full out extravaganza that mirrors many of the strengths and weaknesses of the Classic Detective novel of its time — and particularly of the Van Dine brand that became the American model of the Golden Age Detective Story, at a time when Van Dine’s (art critic Wilfrid Huntington Wright) Twenty Rules became as faithfully entrenched on this side of the Atlantic as those of the British Detection Club were on the other.

   The Bishop Murder Case finds the supercilious Philo Vance up against his most dangerous adversary, a Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme killer who calls himself the Bishop, and whose crimes have rhyme, but seemingly no reason.

   With District Attorney Markham, Sgt. Heath, and Dr. Doremus, the dour Medical Examiner, in tow and loyal secretary Van Dine recording it all, Vance plunges right into the murder of Joseph Cochraine Robin, by arrow at the Riverside Archery Club, who died shortly after meeting with Raymond Sperling, Sperling being German for sparrow.

   The clues lead them to the home of Professor Dillard which runs alongside the Archery Club, and an intellectual who’s who of suspects including a physicist, an astronomer, a mathematician, and a chess master.

   And we’re off with a second murder out of Mother Goose as John Sprigg is murdered.

   Clues include a knowledge of Ibsen’s plays, and the Reiman-Christofell Tensor for determining the Gausian curvature of spherical and homolodial space… And it wouldn’t hurt if you were familiar with world class chess, abnormal psychology, the Einstein-Bohr theory of radiation, and the implications of modern mathematical theory that would boggle the mind of Newton and Leibnitz…

   But knowing who the killer is and proving it are two different things, and after the rescue of the young victim of the next planned killing, Little Miss Muffet, Vance turns to the most high-handed action since the great days of Sherlock Holmes to unveil the killer and serve justice, resulting in perhaps the most famous passage in the Vance canon:

   If there is a more perfect example of the Nietzschean superman as detective other than M.P. Shiel’s Prince Zaleski I can’t think of one.

   The film with Basil Rathbone as Vance is a major disappointment. Rathbone is flat and reserved as Vance (and it’s hard to take him seriously in that bowler hat), and despite some decent attempts at atmosphere, the whole Mother Goose nursery rhyme motif is used to little effect. It certainly can’t hold a candle to the William Powell Vance films from the same period. Incidentally the Delmer Daves listed in the credits is the future director of films such as 3:10 to Yuma and Jubal.

The Bishop Murder Case hasn’t so much as a moment of reality in it. It is the classic detective novel in its most artificial form, but it is also, for all of its posing and intellectual pretense, a splendid example of the form and Van Dine and Vance at close to their best.

   The Greene Murder Case is likely the best puzzle and formal detective novel of the Vance canon, but Bishop is more fun. Reading it you may understand why Philo Vance once dominated the field and influenced such major writers as Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, and Anthony Abbot.

   Nash may well have been right, but I think for this one, both he and Van Dine also deserve to take a well deserved bow — without risking that inviting boot to the rear end. The Bishop Murder Case is the game played full out and to splendid effect.

LEO BRUCE – Jack on the Gallows Tree. Academy Chicago, paperback; first US edition, May 1983. Hardcover edition: June 1983. British edition: Peter Davies, hardcover, 1960.

   Carolus Deene, history master in an English public school, is recuperating from jaundice at the Royal Hydro in Buddington-on-the-Hill. He encounters the murders of two elderly ladies, each of whom has been strangled and laid out with a madonna lily on her chest.

   It seems that the two deaths must be related, but how? The ladies had not known one another, and had little in common. Deene dips into the mystery, much to the displeasure of his headmaster. At once he is beset by the snobbish elderly cousin of one of the ladies, and by one of his students who is determined to play Watson.

   Along the way he comes across characters who are reminiscent of Edmund Crispin’s books: a farmer whose house pet is an ocelot, an elderly couple who practice both vegetarianism and nudism, two local ladies who vie for the attention of the police and of Deene, and a Miss Shapeley who keeps strong language out of her bar.

   If this is a parody, it is deft enough to be enjoyable as a serious read. Bruce is a pseudonym of the late Rupert Croft-Cooke, who wrote other mysteries under his own name and the Sergeant Beef books under the Bruce cognomen.

Editorial Comment:  Maryell Cleary, who died in 2003, was an ordained minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church as well a voluminous reader and collector of detective fiction. I met her once while she was taking a trip by car through New England. She stopped here to look at my collection and to go through my duplicates, and of course we spent a long, wonderful afternoon talking about each of our favorite characters and authors.

   Maryell was especially fond of mysteries in the Golden Age tradition. In fact, she had a letter in the same issue of The Poisoned Pen as the one above in which she protested mildly that fans of private eye novels had taken over the pages of recent issues! More coverage, she requested, of authors like Martha Grimes, Ruth Rendell, Patricia Moyes, Charlotte MacLeod, Robert Barnard, Marian Babson, Dorothy Simpson and P. D. James.

   To that end she also wrote many reviews and articles herself for the mystery fanzines of 20 and 30 years ago, including the still late lamented Poisoned Pen, published for many years by Jeff Meyerson. I’ve conferred with Jeff, and we both agree that she would have liked her reviews to go on after her. They will appear here on a regular basis for some time to come — she wrote a lot of them!

GREGORY DEAN – Murder on Stilts. Hillman-Curl, 1939; Detective Novel Classic No. 17, no date stated [1943].

   There are several things to be sought in a mystery novel. Style, to this reader, is foremost. When the author on page one writes, “He trajected his mind back,” it is a pointer that style will not be found.

   Characterization comes next, and the author fails here, too.

   Finally — though to many readers the most important aspect of a book — comes plot. In this area Dean gives good value for the money, particularly if you actually paid a Quarter for the reprint.

   A good, kindly, thoughtful rich man — most unusual in mystery novels — is murdered in a locked room. Although the murderer’s intent was to have the man’s death appear to be suicide, the murderer botched this aspect rather badly. The rich man was supposed to appear to have shot himself through his blanket while in bed, but there are no powder marks on the blanket.

   The window locks have been wiped clean of fingerprints, as has the safe in the room. Dirty work has obviously been afoot.

   Fourth Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Simon is the investigator here. It is he who deduces murder rather than suicide. He also figures out early on how and who. He doesn’t reveal it, thus being responsible for another murder. At the end of the novel when he finds out why, all is belatedly revealed.

   Unfortunately, the explanation for the murder in the locked room, and a later appearance of the murderer there — while the room again is locked and a policemen is in it — is rather lame.

   This novel will be of interest only to those who collect locked-room puzzles. It also may be of interest to another type of collector, but reviewers’ rules do not allow that information to be divulged.

   (If anyone is curious about the title, which is the only reason I bought the book, the murdered man lived in what was called “the house on stilts,” a dwelling apparently constructed on a concrete arch. I say “apparently” because this is not mentioned in the novel; it is information provided by the paperback publisher.)

Bibliographic Data: From Bill’s review, it is difficult to imagine that there were additional cases in Commissioner Simon’s career, but it is true. There were two others, as a quick reference to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, will immediately show:

DEAN, GREGORY. Pseudonym of Jacob D. Posner, 1883-?
      The Case of Marie Corwin. Covici Friede, hc, 1933. [Dep. Commissioner Benjamin Simon]
      The Case of the Fifth Key. Covici Friede, hc, 1934. [Dep. Commissioner Benjamin Simon]
      Murder on Stilts. Hillman-Curl, hc, 1939. [Dep. Commissioner Benjamin Simon]

MICHAEL CONNELLY – The Narrows. Little Brown & Co., hardcover, May 2004. Reprint paperback: Grand Central, March 2005.

   Harry Bosch is working as a PI when he’s approached by Graciela McCaleb to look into the death of her husband Terry, a former FBI agent, and friend of Harry’s. Terry had presumably died of a heart attack while working on his boat on an extended charter, but Graciela has discovered that Terry’s medication had been replaced, causing his death.

   Meanwhile FBI agent Rachel Walling, exiled to the Dakotas after the botch-up of the serial killer case involving “The Poet” is assigned to a task force near Las Vegas because it looks like the latter has returned with the discovery of the bodies of several men pin-pointed by a GPS device sent to the Bureau.

   Looking into Terry’s death, Harry discovers that Terry was investigating several unsolved crimes and offering his expertise to the local police. Among those cases was one involving those missing men.

   Harry also finds of photos of Graciela and her children, along with a photo of a road sign bearing the word “Zzyzx,” which is where the bodies of those missing men are discovered. So pretty soon Harry is nosing around in an FBI investigation, and Rachel Walling decides to tag along with Harry once she realizes she’s only being used as a stalking horse by her colleagues.

   A pretty good effort. I gather this was the one Connelly wrote to show his displeasure with the way Clint Eastwood adapted his novel Bloodwork by killing off his Terry McCaleb character. It is quite suspenseful and decently plotted.

   Harry even gets beat up somewhat, one of the prerequisites of the PI novel, even though by story’s end he has decided to go back to the LAPD.

DENISE HAMILTON – The Last Embrace. Scribner, hardcover/trade paperback, June 2008.

   Lily Kessler worked undercover for the OSS during WWII, along with her lover, Joseph Croggan, who was killed in a freak accident after the war.

   When during a visit to Joseph’s mother, Mrs. Croggan receives a wire that her daughter, a young actress working in Hollywood, has disappeared, Lily reluctantly agrees to try to find out what has happened to her, and finds herself returning to the city where she grew up and to which she had never intended to return.

   Lily moves into the room that Kitty had rented in a boarding house for girls seeking, like her, to break into the movie industry, Then, after the discovery of Kitty’s body in a ravine, Lily begins her own investigation when it seems the police aren’t making much headway in theirs.

   The Los Angeles that Kitty knew, and that Lily rediscovers, is a competitive jungle, with temptations for the Unwary that, in addition to the traditional producer’s couch, include gangsters and other pitfalls for the vulnerable young women who flock to the area. One of Kitty’s friends, and a possible suspect for her death, is Max Vranizan, one of the more interesting characters, who works with Willis O’Brien on special effects, but whose creative talent has a dark side.

   Lily seems to find a soulmate in an LA homicide detective, but his partner seems untrustworthy, a quality that soon makes Lily wary of her friend, Pico, in a world in which she finds herself increasingly alone, as well as the target of violence that puts her life in jeopardy.

   This is a Hollywood noir, with a definite feminine take on its conventions, and Lily is another of those inquisitive female heroines who get themselves into situations where caution seems to be in very short supply.

   There’s a fair amount of supplementary material that convinces me that Hamilton did her homework and that she has a genuine affection for post-war Hollywood, with a feel for the geography that seems genuine.

   I wish I had liked the novel more, but in spite of the threatening situations in which Lily finds herself, there was too much of a romantic haze to make me feel that she was ever in any real danger. The threats were less real than Lily’s need to recover from her past and move on with her life, which she finally does, in true romance novel fashion.

JARKKO SIPILÄ – Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall. Ice Cold Crime, trade paperback, 2009. Originally published in Finland by Gummerus as Seinää Vasten. Translated by Peter Ylitalo Leppa.

   The eighth in the police procedural series centered around Kari Takamäki (a male, not female, Kari), the fictional chief of the Helsinki homicide squad (which also handles other serious crime), this is the first in the series to be published in the United States.

   The main character in this outing is Suhonen/Sukkanen, an undercover cop who virtually lives his job. We learn a bit more about the criminals’ personal lives than we do those of the cops. The various cops and crooks quickly become distinct, individual characters, though the names can be a little difficult to keep straight.

   The members of the Skulls gang are truly frightening; the hapless, small-time loser who gets in way over his head eventually draws our sympathy, but that’s cold, cold comfort.

   This is a whydunit, not a whodunit, with a fast pace that makes up for the rather inelegant translation. It’s worth seeking out for fans of Scandinavian crime fiction or those who like a fairly strict procedural flavor to their fiction.

   This book might be hard to find, but you can try Amazon.com and icecoldcrime.com. I purchased it at a Swedish Institute event, had it inscribed, read it, and now have no idea where I’ve put it. That’s my life these days.

   Commentary on books I’ve covered in the New York Times Book Review.   [Reprinted from The Armchair Detective, Vol. 1, No. 4, July 1968.]

    Previously on this blog:
Part 1 — Charlotte Armstrong through Jonathan Burke.
Part 2 — Victor Canning through Manning Coles.
Part 3 — Stephen Coulter through Thomas B. Dewey.
Part 4 — Charles Drummond through William Garner.
Part 5 — Richard H. Garvin through E. Richard Johnson.

HENRY KANE – Laughter in the Alehouse. Macmillan, hardcover, 1968. Paperback reprint: Penguin, 1978. McGregor, retired policeman, wealthy, a gourmet, erudite, sometimes (when so inclined) private detective, is a fascinating addition to mystery lore, and this his third case, involving a left over Nazi and a beautiful Israeli agent, is a solid, tightly plotted affair.

CARLTON KEITH – A Taste of Sangria. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1968. Paperback reprint: Curtis, n.d. Handwriting expert Jeff Green plays private investigator and comes up with some solid detection in this story of a disappearing (with $200,000) accountant.

PETER KINSLEY – Pimpernel 60. Michael Joseph, UK, hardcover, 1968; E. P. Dutton, US, hardcover, 1968. No paperback edition. A good example of what careful plotting and imaginative characterization can do for the novel of intrigue. This one follows a Jesuit priest in an attempt to bring a Russian defector out of Albania.

EMMA LATHEN – A Stitch in Time. Macmillan, hardcover, 1968. Paperback reprints include: Pyramid X-2018, 1969; Pocket, 1975. Pseudonymous Miss Lathen has yet to be unmasked, but she is reportedly two women writers. At any rate her (their) talents are indisputable, and this seventh of Wall Street banker John Putnam Thatcher’s cases is a nice puzzle in an interesting setting, told in witty, beautifully controlled prose.

Editorial Comments: Henry Kane was, of course, far better known as the author of several dozen private eye Peter Chambers mysteries. This is the last of three McGregor books. After 1968 Kane and Peter Chambers moved to Lancer Books, where he appeared in a series of novels that became more and more sexually explicit (that is to say, X-rated).

   Carlton Keith wrote six mysteries, five with series character Jeff Green, of which Sangria is the last. I’ve always meant to read one of them, but so far, I still haven’t.

   Pimpernel 60 is the only novel by Peter Kinsley that has appeared in the US. The other two, both published by Robert Hale, came out in the 1980s.

   It seems strange today that an author could hide her real identities for as long as Emma Lathen did, apparently for as many as seven books. With all of the tools of the Internet available today, I think fans would have uncovered the truth in next to no time. For the record, Emma Lathen was the writing combo of Mary Jane Latsis and Martha Henissart. (You can probably put the pieces together.) They also wrote several mysteries as R. B. Dominic, a fact which as I recall, ace mystery reviewer Jon L. Breen brought to light.

NICHOLAS BLAKE – Malice in Wonderland.

Collins Crime Club, UK, hardcover, 1940. Harper & Brothers, US, hc, 1940, as The Summer Camp Mystery. Paperback reprints include: Penguin #592, 1946; Pyramid R-1008, 1964 (later 1971, shown) as Malice with Murder; and Carroll & Graf, 1987, as Murder with Malice.

   Recently published by Carroll & Graf, a publisher which is doing some of the most interesting reprints lately, is Nicholas Blake’s Murder with Malice. This is yet another title for the book which began life in 1940 as Malice in Wonderland (easily its best title) and was reprinted in the United States the same year as The Summer Camp Mystery.

   Oh well, under any title, this is one of the best examples of the late Golden Age of classic puzzles that you’ll find in paperback. Nigel Strangeways is called to investigate strange doings at a holiday camp named Wonderland, where a series of practical jokes — e.g., tennis balls dipped in treacle — by someone who calls himself “The Mad Hatter” have culminated in murder.

   The humor Is sophisticated and the puzzle very difficult to solve. The setting is believable but far enough removed from our usual lives to make perfect escape reading.

Editorial Comment: I wonder if this detective novel holds the record for being published under the most titles. It’s certainly in the running!