ROBERT COLBY – In a Vanishing Room. Ace Double D-505; paperback original; 1st printing, 1961. Published back-to-back with The Surfside Caper, by Louis Trimble.
Put an ordinary guy in a decidedly non-ordinary and dangerous situation and see how he does. That’s the basic premise, and while I’d have to tell you that the book itself is quite forgettable, an out-of-work advertising account executive named Paul Norris does all right for himself, mostly by finally getting himself out of the funk he’s been in for several months.
There is a MacGuffin involved, a shipping crate filled with something valuable, but what exactly, no one will tell him. In the process of tracking it down, making his way from Miami to New York City to San Diego, he finds caught up in an adventure filled with multiple shady characters, beautiful women and double crosses galore. Who’s on who’s side? You’d need a scorecard to know for sure.
It’s a minor story with no frills in the telling, and short, at only 127 pages long, but its action-packed content zooms right along with the speed of how fast the reader can turn the pages. One good gimmick is a room in a basement in which Norris and a female companion have a deadly encounter with a killer. When they go back with the police the next day, not only is there is not a room in the basement, there is not even a basement.
Try that one on for size the next time you want to go adventuring.
This song was used as the theme for The Moonshine War, a comedy-drama based on a Leonard Elmore novel and starring Patrick McGoohan, Richard Widmark, Alan Alda and Melodie Johnson.
MIDNIGHT AT MADAME TUSSAUD’S. Paramount British Pictures, UK, 1936. Released in the US as Midnight at the Wax Museum. Charles Carew, James Oliver, Lucille Lisle, Kim Peacock, Patrick Barr, William Hartnell, Bernard Miles. Written by J. Steven Edwards, Roger MacDougall and Kim Peacock. Directed by George Pearson.
Wax Museums exert a sinister fascination in the movies that they somehow never achieve (for me at least) in real life. Every Wax Museum I’ve ever visited seemed unconvincing and a bit dull, except for the Boris Karloff Wax Museum in Niagara Falls, which was so tacky as to cause alarm.
Maybe it has something to do with the camerawork, or the nature of Film itself, but in the movies (the best of them anyway) the dullness of Wax Museums gives way to a creepy sub-reality that comes across in evocative backgrounds and creepy denizens — Lionel Atwill, Vincent Price and Martin Kosleck (in The Frozen Ghost) — who seem like extensions of their nightmare background.
The creepy denizen in Midnight/Tussaud’s is Bernard Miles (no, I never heard of him either.) and he conveys the mood of malevolent nerdiness perfectly as he escorts World-famous explorer Sir James Cheyne (Carewe) and a group of notables about the London Tourist Trap for the unveiling of Cheyne’s wax replica. Then he pretty much drops out of the movie, worse luck, as we get a bit of exposition; Cheyne’s broker-friend (Oliver) is oddly evasive about some funds supposedly coming due, and Cheyne himself is not at all happy about the suitor (Peacock, who also worked on the screenplay) courting his daughter (Lisle).
So when the Creepy Curator dares the Intrepid Explorer to spend a night alone in the Museum, we can tell something interesting is going to develop, and it does, quickly, because this thing’s only an hour long. In fact it may me take longer to tell it than the movie did.
Briefly, Lisle gets engaged to the unworthy Peacock, a brash reporter (Patrick Barr) finds out and thinks it just a tidbit for the Society page but soon senses something beneath the surface. Turns out Peacock is already married, and he and the broker-friend are in dastardly cahoots to milk Carewe and his daughter of their wealth — or as much of it as they can get, anyway.
By now you’ve figured out that the brash reporter and the daughter start up a tentative and playful romance (you DID see that coming, didn’t you?) which bungs up the schemes of our plotters, and they decide the best move is to send the Explorer on a trip he never planned. And since he’ll be conveniently isolated in the Wax Museum that very night….
…And this is where the film lets us down. Murder in a Wax Museum should be a thing filled with odd camera angles, creepy shadows, menacing-but-still figures, an occasional furtive movement or gleaming eye among the dummies, and all that sort of thing. But we get none of that here. Not even a hint. What we get instead is an interminable stretch of the murderer skulking through the dark, intercut with even-less-terminable shots of Carewe reading the newspaper — how’s that for thrills?
The big problem with this whole sequence is that we never get a sense of their relative positions; the killer slinks, lurks and prowls, Carewe does the crossword and lights a cigar, but we never know if the villain is getting closer or just wandering around in some other movie. Bad show, that.
The end result is a movie that coulda been a contender — but it ain’t. I should add though that the brash reporter’s comic-relief assistant is played by William Hartnell — who went on to fame, or at least cult status, as DOCTOR WHO.
STEPHEN GREENLEAF – Blood Type. John Marshall Tanner #8. Morrow, hardcover, 1992. Bantam Crimeline, paperback, 1993.
It’s no news that I consider Stephen Greenleaf one of the better of the current PI writers. As I’ve remarked elsewhere about Jeremiah Healy, I know Greenleaf is going to give me at worst a decently written book of a type I enjoy, featuring a character I like.
One of Tanner’s`drinking friends, who works as a member of the emergency medical services, is found dead in an alley, apparently a suicide by drug overdose. He has recently been pouring out his heart to Tanner about the impending break-up of his marriage, about to be caused by the pursuit of his torch singer wife by a local tycoon. Tanner does not believe his friend would have killed himself (sound familiar?), and begins to investigate. The case of course proves complex, with links to a possible blood supply scandal and the victim’s troubled past.
As always, Greenleaf has things to say about society, and people, and the way we live our lives. Usually, they are not intrusive; here, at times I felt I could see the soapbox. I didn’t feel that the plot was well integrated, either — or perhaps it just didn’t grab me enough to make me pay attention.
All told, this was the least impressive entry in the series in some time. Still, it was a John Marshall Tanner book by Stephen Greenleaf, and if you’re a fan of same, that’s enough.
— Reprinted from Fireman, Fireman, Save My Books #4, November 1992.
PAUL KRUGER – A Bullet for a Blonde. Vince Latimer #1. Dell First Edition A160; paperback original; 1st printing, June 1958.
Although author Paul Kruger has ten entries in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, this is the only one of them in which PI Vince Latimer is the detective of record. The setting is unknown. Al lists it as the “US West,” and that’s my best guess, too.
There’s no particular reason why Latimer couldn’t have made a second appearance. Sometimes the nature of a case makes it all but certain it’s one and done, but that’s not at all true here. It’s just an ordinary PI novel, with most if not all of the standard ingredients, well written but for the most part easily forgotten once you’re done.
As the title suggests, the victim is a blonde, one who shows up drunk on Latimer’s office doorstep one night, telling him someone is going to kill her. It sounds like a vodka dream to him, so he bundles her into his car and drops her off at her home. Next day he gets a call from her sister. She wants to hire Latimer. She thinks her sister is having an affair with her husband. Latimer goes to check out the trysting place, and there he finds the girl dead.
The only aspect of the mystery that raises it above standard fare is the ending, which is a doozie. Latimer builds a solid case against two people before settling on a third, which is the correct one. It isn’t easy writing a detective novel in which this happens. The drawback being that it takes lots and lots of last chapter explanation to untangle all of the threads of the plot. I didn’t mind, but your standard PI novel reader might.
One other thing. “Paul Kruger” was in reality Roberta Elizabeth Sebenthall, 1917-1979, and if it means anything to you, you could have fooled me. The writing is told in first person, with all of the conventional leering at women and all of their curves in the right places, and while the one bedroom scene stays outside the bedroom, it does happen, as does one other that’s even more offstage, but when you think about it later, you have to realize that… well, I’ll have to be content in saying that men do not have a monopoly on PI novels in which hardboiledness (if that’s a word) comes into play in one fashion or another.
THE REPORTER: “Extension Seven.” CBS, 60m, 25 September 1964 (Season 1, Episode 1). Cast: Harry Guardino (Danny Taylor), Gary Merrill (Lou Sheldon). Guest Cast: Rip Torn, Shirley Knight. Series created by Jerome Weidman. Writer-director: Tom Gries.
This was from all reports, a highly ambitious TV series, but it evidently didn’t catch on withe viewing public, since it ended in December the same year, with only 13 episodes aired.
This is the only episode I’ve been able to see. Others don’t seem to be around, or else I haven’t been looking hard enough. But based on this sample of size one, it was obvious that a lot of effort and talent was put into it. Harry Guardino plays a columnist/reporter for the New York Globe, while Gary Merrill is his city editor. I was reminded of an old-time radio show starring Frank Lovejoy called Night Beat, in which he comes across all kind of crooks and other people with problems, all grist for his column for a Chicago newspaper, but the basic idea I’m sure has been around for a long time.
According to Wikipedia, all kinds of big names (or soon-to-be big names) showed up in the 13 episodes: Nick Adams, Eddie Albert, Edward Asner, Dyan Cannon, Richard Conte, Herb Edelman, James Farentino, Anne Francis, Frank Gifford, Arthur Hill, Shirley Knight, Jack Lord, Archie Moore, Simon Oakland, Warren Oates, Claude Rains, Paul Richards, Robert Ryan, Pippa Scott, William Shatner, Barry Sullivan, Roy Thinnes, Daniel J. Travanti, Franchot Tone, Rip Torn, Jessica Walter, and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.
In this the first episode, Rip Torn plays a nobody of a man who is encouraged by one of Danny Taylor’s columns to not not stand idly by when he sees a woman being seriously harassed by a gang of juvenile delinquents. For this he gets a knife in the stomach, and he blames Danny Taylor, whom he calls to vent his frustration and feelings.
Problem is, he will die if he doesn’t get medical attention, but he doesn’t know where he has found refuge, only the extension number on the phone. The hoods are also looking for him so they can finish off the job, which provides exactly the kind of suspense that makes a 60 minute program, including commercials, pass very quickly. On the other end of the line, while Danny is trying to have the call traced, is Shirley Knight, a copy girl for the paper and another lost soul, and a second kind of connection is made.
The script does get kind of preachy at times, especially when Merrill reminds Guardino that his job is not to feel guilty for getting the victim to risk his life on the basis of his newspaper column — Guardino seems to have been around long enough to not need a rookie reporter’s pep talk — but all in all, this was a top notch production that did what it was supposed too, keep the viewer’s eyes on the screen at all times.
These three short reviews first appeared in the Hartford Courant and were published consecutively in The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 2, No. 6, Nov-Dec 1978. That the authors’ last name all begin with the letter “F” is purely coincidental, something I never noticed until now.
JOAN FLEMING – Every Inch a Lady. Putnam’s, hardcover, 1977. First published in the UK: Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1977. No US paperback edition.
Easter Cragg, although brought up an orphan, seems hardy the kind of lady to be the center of so much homicidal activity, but after the murders of both her husband and then her doting father-in-law, and in spite of a surprising lack of curiosity or thirst for revenge on her part, a new neighbor and admirer is compelled to continue working on her behalf. Many a false trail lies in waiting, catching the reader’s interest in peripheral matters, necessarily so, as the slayings themselves turn out to have disappointingly little mystery to them.
BRIAN FREEBORN – Ten Days, Mister Cain? St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1977. First published in the UK: Secker, hardcover, 1977. No US paperback edition.
Harry Grant, a small-time London con-man who successfully impersonated a notorious hit man named Cain in his previous adventure, finds that selfsame gentleman hot on his trail in this one. That, plus some unlikely spy stuff involving the Foreign Office, gives Harry plenty to sweat about, but while the slangy cockney style reads true, it’s awfully tough on Americans, particularly those asking for something a lot more substantial to get involved with.
Bibliographic Note: The first book in this series was Good Luck, Mr. Cain (1976). These are the only two books by this author in Hubin.
JAMES FOLLETT – Crown Court. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1978; First published in the UK by Barker, hardcover, 1977. No US paperback edition.
An unemployed used-car dealer, called in for jury duty just as his wife is due to give birth to their first child, is a reluctant witness to several brief scenarios of British justice — a case involving a thriving pornography business, a scuba-diving murder affair, and the unexpected intrusion of international terrorism, all while complications set in at the hospital down the street. Two-dimensional television drama, gripping for the moment, and then instantly forgettable.
Bibliographic Note: This was in fact a novelization of a daytime British TV series produced by Granada TV for ITV and on the air for 13 years, from 1972 to 1984. Says IMDb: “Courtroom drama — each case takes three episodes. At the end of the third episode a jury of ‘ordinary people’ comes to a verdict on the evidence presented.”
THE REDHEAD FROM WYOMING. Universal International, 1953. Maureen O’Hara, Alex Nicol, William Bishop, Robert Strauss, Alexander Scourby, Palmer Lee, Jack Kelly, Jeanne Cooper, Dennis Weaver, Stacy Harris. Director: Lee Sholem.
For the first twenty minutes or so, I thought that The Redhead from Wyoming was going to be a much better movie than it ultimately turned out to be. There was something particularly dynamic about Maureen O’Hara’s screen presence, including her brightly colored clothes that gave me reason to think that this Universal International release might be something of a minor forgotten gem.
Sadly, that didn’t turn out to be the case. Although it’s not without its charms, the movie is simply just another lackluster 1950s Western that ends up playing it on the safe side. The result being that the movie is likely to languish in relative obscurity.
In many ways, the plot is less a cohesive whole than a mishmash of tropes. Range war between the local cattle baron and homesteaders (check); drifter with a tragic past turned lawman (check); the flamboyant female saloon proprietress with a dark past and heart of gold (check); the power mad villain who wants to catapult himself into the governorship (check). You get the picture and can fill in the blanks from there.
What makes The Redhead from Wyoming somewhat interesting is the rather overt proto-feminist messaging. O’Hara portrays Kate Maxwell, a strong-willed saloon owner caught between three powerful men: Sheriff Stan Blaine (Alex Nicol), cattle baron Reece Duncan (Alexander Scourby), and local power broker Jim Averell (William Bishop). What these three men don’t realize is that Kate has more than good looks. She’s got brains and she’s willing to use them. She’s pretty handy with a gun too. Sadly, the supporting cast, let alone the lifeless male characters and plot, doesn’t do her character justice.
WYOMING. MGM, 1940. Wallace Beery, Ann Rutherford, Marjorie Main, Leo Carrillo, Bobs Watson, Joseph Calleia, Lee Bowman, Paul Kelly, Henry Travers, Addison Richards, Chill Wills, Richard Alexander. Screenplay: Jack Jevine (his story) and Hugo Butler. Director: Richard Thorpe.
When outlaws Reb Harkness (Wallace Beery) and partner Pete (Leo Carrillo) hold up a train in Missouri and find the cavalry waiting for them they decided it is time to move on, complicated by the fact Pete gets greedy and steals the money and horse, leaving Reb afoot and being hunted.
Luckily for Reb he meets Dave Kincaid (Addison Richards), a rebel soldier returning home to his ranch in Wyoming, and the two team up with Reb planning to head out for California as soon as he can steal Kincaid’s horse, which he finally does not far from Kincaid’s ranch in Wyoming. But when he hears gunshots, he returns only to find Kincaid murdered by men stealing from his ranch. The dying man extracts a promise from Reb that he will see to his children, Lucy (Ann Rutherford) and Jimmy (Bobs Watson), thus plunging Reb into a range war between the small ranchers, evil John Buckley (Joseph Calleia), and George Armstrong Custer (Paul Kelly) and the 7th Cavalry.
Whether you like this or not will likely depend on your tolerance for Beery in full ham as a not-so-bad but not-quite-good-yet-badman, a role he played in most films, varying between being semi-reformed (The Champ), not reformed at all (Treasure Island), and a backstabbing bastard (China Seas). Of course being a Beery film, there is the inevitable crying child (Bobs Watson, who could cry on cue as well as any moppet in Hollywood if not quite in the Jackie Cooper or Jackie Coogan class) to moisten Beery’s leery eye and the inevitable tough masculine woman for him to romance, here Marjorie Main as female blacksmith Mehetabel.
Shot on location in Wyoming near Jackson Hole, the film is good to look at, and moves at a crisp pace with more than enough to keep you watching. Rutherford has a romance with Sgt. Connelly (Lee Bowman) of the 7th, Henry Travers is a meek cowardly sheriff with a crush on Mehetabel. Chill Wills is her no good layabout but loyal brother, Richard Alexander Buckley’s backshooting henchman Gus, and Paul Kelly a somewhat bemused Custer, who knows Buckley is a no good crook and has no compunction about using Reb, a good badman. to solve his problems in the territory.
Meanwhile an apologetic Pete has shown up having thrown away the stolen money out of guilt — and because it was Confederate — with promises to save his dear friends life. Like Beery’s, Carrillo’s mugging is kept to a minimum as well.
There is no lack of shooting and fast riding, the big gunfight between Reb and Buckley and henchman Gus suspensefully played off camera, and there is an exciting Indian raid on the Kincaid ranch during a party at night with Reb riding to the rescue and the defenders driven into the open as the ranch house burns just as Custer arrives.
No surprises here. The Beery/Watson business isn’t overdone so it doesn’t really have time to grate too much, the scenes with Main show the two could have made a decent screen team, the Rutherford/Bowman romance is just enough for plot development without ever really getting in the way of the flow of the action, and Travers comedy relief is kept within bounds.
A lot of familiar faces like Dick Curtis, Clem Bevans, Donald MacBride, Chief Thundercloud, and Glenn Strange are among the cast, and the film never asks much more of you than that you go along for the ride, the movie ending with Bowman out of the army and tied up with Rutherford, Beery serenading Main on his unharmonious harmonica, and Custer riding off to the the Little Big Horn to put down a small Indian problem assuring us he won’t be around to arrest Reb or send him back to Missouri for the trial the Code insists be mentioned in the screenplay.
All in all, a good hard-riding, hard-shooting, and only occasionally cloyingly hard-crying Western enhanced even in black and white by the genuine Wyoming exteriors, and more restrained Beery, Carrillo, and Main than usual.
NOT FOR HIRE. Syndicated, California National Presentation (CNP); 1959-60. 39 30min episodes. Cast: Ralph Meeker as Army Sergeant Steve Dekker and Ken Drake as Army Colonel Bragan. Produced by Johnny Florea.
The fall of 1959 brought a flood of crime dramas to networks and syndicated television. Most such as Not for Hire are long forgotten. Information about the series is hard to find and reportedly only six episodes of the thirty-nine survive. All six are currently available on YouTube and the collectors market.
Ralph Meeker (Kiss Me Deadly) starred as Army Sergeant Steve Dekker, considered by the Army their top Investigator in its Criminal Investigation Division (MP). Dekker is a wisecracking womanizer typical of the era. Weekly he risks his life to help save soldiers in trouble. While Meeker does well as the character, his occasional happy grin can be a bit creepy. One of the gimmicks of the series has the person who Dekker saved being ungrateful for Dekker’s efforts – something that Dekker accepts, sometimes even with humor.
Not for Hire has much of the charm and all the flaws of early thirty minute syndicated dramas. The series lacked consistency in the tone of its stories and the character of Dekker. The small budget and thirty minute format limited the series. The lack of shooting time did not allow the actors to always give their best performance in every scene. The series did know its audience as every episode was sure to include beautiful bad girls and as many fights that could fit in thirty minutes minus commercials. The first episode “Soldier’s Story” set up the premise well:
SOLDIER’S STORY. Written by Johnny Florea and Tony Barrett. Directed by Johnny Florea. Guest Cast: Mari Blanchard, John Vivyan and Stanley Adams ***A soldier is framed for a robbery turned murder. Dekker goes undercover to find the villains, a gang of three – beauty (Blanchard), brawn (Vivyan) and brains (Adams).
The episode is well done with stylish dialog and use of camera, lively action, interesting if stereotyped characters, and clever use of the episode’s soundtrack (music supervision by Raoul Kraushaar). It is fun watching likable Meeker’s Dekker obsessively track down the bad guys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL5IyUNjipk
THE SET UP. Written by Laurence Marks. Directed by Johnny Florea. Guest Cast:: Stanley Adams, Michael Miller, Henry Corden and Patrick Waltz *** A soldier with heavy gambling debts is asked to kill a fellow soldier. Dekker convinces the soldier to go undercover to find out who the intended victim is and who wants him dead.
This episode is fun from the heavy slang dialog of the blackmailed soldier to the target’s priorities. The mystery is drawn out at the right pace with the identity of the target at first unknown and the killer’s identity a nice twist at the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXT1G631BMc
As “Soldier’s Story” and “The Set-Up” show, despite lasting only one season the series used several actors in more than one roll. Norman Alden went from guard in “Soldier’s Story” to recurring character MP Cpl. Lucius Grundy. Stanley Adams went from bad guy in “Soldier’s Story” to recurring character good guy Honolulu Police Lt. Morris. Others would play multiple parts such as Fortune Gordien who played the dealer in “The Set-Up” and according to IMDb two other roles during the series run.
SHARK BAIT. Teleplay by Richard Collins – Story by P.K. Palmer – Directed by Dennis Patrick. Guest Cast:: Jan Brooks, William Keene and Rory Harrity. *** Part of a stolen Army payroll is found with a murdered Navy diver. Much to the disgust of the Navy who has been unable to solve the seaman’s murder, the Army sends Dekker undercover to find the Army payroll.
For its time the mystery had some nice twists that today we would see coming from nearly the beginning. The now hilarious but then exciting fight between Dekker and a shark remains the episode’s highlight.
THE DESERTER. Written by Richard M. Powell. Directed by Johnny Florea. Guest Cast:: Dennis Patrick, Ziva Rodann and Peggy Stewart. *** While in Manila on the trail of a smuggling racket Dekker tries to help out a woman who is convinced she just saw her husband. Problem is her husband was declared dead by the Army fifteen years ago. No body was ever found but Dekker knows the man is dead because he was the one who killed him.
Thirty minutes rarely is enough time to create a decent mystery. There is not enough time to develop characters and have truly surprising twists. This episode is a perfect example of that as it reveals the bad guy too soon and has a backstory that needed more attention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waDbBGZGi9Y
THE FALL GUY. Teleplay by Jack Jacobs and Marty Goldsmith. Story by Jack Jacobs. Directed by Johnny Florea. Guest Cast:: Lisabeth Hush, James Seay and Barbara Stuart *** A beautiful 21-year old woman is found dead and Dekker arrests a soldier for the murder. Dekker is convinced the soldier is guilty but a female secretary in his office is even more convinced the soldier is innocent. She nags Dekker to keep investigating until they find the real killer.
This is the worse episode of the six surviving as it comes off more as a pilot for the CID secretary Cpl Madge Turner (Lisabeth Hush) than an episode about hero Sgt Dekker who the episode turned into a smug jerk. Gone is Dekker’s dedication to helping his fellow soldier out of trouble, replaced by a dedication to helping a female soldier out of her uniform.
According to IMDb, Hush as Cpl. Turner returned in episode “Lover’s Leap.” In an odd note of reality, Lisabeth Hush acting career suffered due to her hard work fighting sexual harassment of women in Hollywood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3xzf9XTu4A
SMUGGLED WIFE. Written by Don Brinkley. Directed by William Bennington. Guest Cast:: James Parnell, Nora Hayden and John Marshall. *** An angry and out of control Private Ober has taken on the governments of America, England and Hong Kong. His pregnant British born wife is due to give birth soon. Ober wants the baby born on American soil. But a bureaucratic mix-up has his wife stuck in Hong Kong. Dekker tries to keep Ober out of trouble as the red tape unwinds at its own speed versus the fast approaching birth of the baby.
They don’t write them like this one anymore as everyone takes the screwy plot and run with it. There is no shortage of fights and comedy, and even a femme fatale and a crime are tacked on to the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_goa3BJwcYc
Reading the credits always adds to the entertainment value of watching TV series from the past. From the credits we can guess the “showrunner†for the series was Johnny Florea. Florea was a war correspondent during WWII and had a successful career as a TV director (Honey West, Ironside) and producer (Sea Hunt, CHiPs).
Bonus gossip! According to a newspaper article from Los Angeles Times (June 17,1975) his ex-wife Shirley Florea stabbed him in the back at the County Courthouse. UPI added they were there for an alimony hearing. Both sources mentioned she had once sued him for $1 million for mailing her 20 year-old prostitution arrest record to friends. While his other two wives are mentioned in Florea’s IMDb biography Shirley is not.
The writers featured a variety of talent. Richard M. Powell wrote the Mike Hammer film My Gun Is Quick as well as several TV series including Hogan’s Heroes. Tony Barrett would become a successful writer/ producer in the 60s with Peter Gunn, Mod Squad and Burke’s Law. Don Brinkley wrote for many TV series including The Fugitive and Felony Squad and created Trapper John M.D. Laurence Marks had started as a comedy writer in radio (Jack Paar) and continued with TV for such series as Hogan’s Heroes and M*A*S*H. Marty Goldsmith credits include the film Detour and the TV series Twilight Zone.
Johnny Florea directed most of the Not for Hire episodes but there were others. Dennis Patrick would turn to acting full time (including an episode for Not for Hire). William Bennington would become known for live TV and won an Emmy with seven others for directing the 19th Summer Olympic Games in 1968.
Of course the actors are the easiest to spot. Popular character actors such as Norman Alden, Stanley Adams and Barbara Stuart are remembered for the amount of roles they would play instead of any single one. Henry Corden might have joined that group if not for his role as the voice of Fred Flintstone. Those of us who remember John Vivyan as stylish and sophisticated Mr. Lucky were surprised by his portrayal of a dumb goon.
Not for Hire remains a better than expected syndicated light drama cop show that still can be a pleasant entertaining way to kill a half hour.
