THE TREASURE OF PANCHO VILLA. RKO Radio Pictures, 1955. Rory Calhoun, Shelley Winters, Gilbert Roland, Joseph Calleia. Director: George Sherman.
When is a Spaghetti Western not a Spaghetti Western? When it’s a RKO color feature starring Rory Calhoun and Gilbert Roland. Filmed on location in Mexico, The Treasure of Pancho Villa is a structurally uneven, albeit thoroughly entertaining adventure film that predates not only the Italian Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, but also Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) and the ultra-violent Spaghetti and Paella (Spanish) Westerns of the 1970s. The common theme running through all of these genres and subgenres, at least when pertaining to stories set around the time of the Mexican Revolution, is the tension between idealists and mercenaries.
Such is the case in The Treasure of Pancho Villa. Calhoun portrays Tom Bryan, a somewhat unpleasant, rakish American mercenary working for revolutionaries in the Mexican Civil War. He’s a coldhearted sort, mainly interested in money. And he means business in more ways than one. He carries with him a Lewis machine gun that calls “La Cucaracha” and employs it numerous times throughout the story in order to mow down Mexican troops.
This violence – death at the hands of mechanized warfare – was a hallmark of many of the Mexican Revolution themed Euro-Westerns produced in the 1970s. In many ways, it represents Bryan’s personality perfectly. For him, killing Mexican troops is just a job and “La Cucaracha†is just useful tool at his disposal.
In direct contrast to Tom Bryan, Colonel Juan Castro (Gilbert Roland) is an idealist. He’s fighting for his ideals and believes strongly in Pancho Villa. He’s not on the take, can’t be bought or bribed, and is willing to use violence when necessary. He, however, seems not to get too much of a thrill out of it and certainly doesn’t strut around with a Lewis machine gun like his “ugly American†counterpart.
For a time, the two men find themselves on the same side, both fighting for Pancho Villa. Together, they rob a train carrying gold and begin the process of transporting the loot across rugged terrain in order to deliver it personally to Pancho Village. But when the Mexican revolutionary leader fails to show up, things fall apart between the two men, leading to a series of twists and turns that eventually has them joined together again against a common foe. As I mentioned, it’s a plot that would be followed time and again in Spaghetti Westerns that were set during the Mexican Revolution.
Spaghetti Westerns, for the most part, didn’t often have unnecessary romantic subplots that only served to distract from the action at hand. Unfortunately, that is not the case in The Treasure of Pancho Villa with the introduction of the character of Ruth Harris (Shelley Winters), an American schoolteacher living in Mexico who has fallen in love with the revolution’s ideals. Bryan’s romantic feelings for her never seem real, nor despite what he says at the end of the film, is it believable that Juan Castro could have seen himself with her.
That said, The Treasure of Pancho Villa was a surprisingly enjoyable action adventure film. Gilbert Roland was perfectly cast as Juan Castro and [spoiler alert], despite the fact that his character doesn’t end up surviving the onslaught of the Mexican Army, the story told in the movie is about his impact on Bryan’s worldview. For it’s only through his encounter with a man who believed in something more than money, in something greater than enriching himself, that Bryan learns what honor and loyalty are.
ERIC AMBLER – The Siege of the Villa Lipp. Random House, US, hardcover, 1977. Ballantine, US, paperback, 1978. First published in the UK as Send No More Roses: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, hardcover, 1977; Fontana-Collins, UK, paperback, 1979.
Eric Ambler is something of a rarity among writers in that his inimitable style neither withered nor grew stale over the years. Late in his career he still turned out superb thrillers like Doctor Frigo or Levanter, as fresh and imaginative as his early work. That isn’t to say his work was always equally brilliant, but over his long career I find nothing severely wanting. Mid-level Ambler, or in collaboration as Charles Rodda, is still well worth reading.
The Siege of the Villa Lipp is well above mid-level in anyone’s estimation, and takes head on a theme that Ambler developed over the course of his career, that of the Able Criminal, a shadowy figure with a hand in most crimes yet who is unknown to police, not even as a person of interest; a super-criminal more able and better concealed than any Carl Peterson, Dr. Fu Manchu, or Ernst Stavro Blofield.
He is a figure that dates to the beginning of the genre, think of Poe’s “The Man in the Crowd,†the least likely of unlikely suspects, the spider at the center of the web. John Buchan exploited him in several thrillers in various guises including The Thirty-Nine Steps, The Power House, The Three Hostages, and The Man From the Norlands. Hitchcock uses him as well. Auric Goldfinger, Mr. Big, Doctor No, and Emile Largo in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels are all examples of the form. He makes fleeting appearances in other books by Ambler, in the forefront of A Kind of Anger, but it is not until this book that he takes center stage, in far more subtle form than most of his co-conspirators.
In the real world he is modeled on men such as Otto Skorzeny, Aristotle Onassis, Sir Basil Zarahoff, John D. Rockefeller, and J. P. Morgan.
The narrator of The Siege of the Villa Lipp is Paul Firman, himself an Able Criminal.
Or is he? According to Firman, he is only a not quite innocent caught between a team of academics who think they have uncovered his secret and have gathered at his remote Italian villa to blackmail him into an in-depth interview, and the real Able Criminal, the dangerous Mr. X Firman has partnered with for most of his career, a shadowy figure manipulating in the background.
While not as funny as the adventures of Arthur Abdel Simpson in Ambler’s The Light of Day (Topkapi) and Dirty Story, Lipp is as droll as an Ealing comedy (albeit a dark and at times violent one), and as easy to cast. It’s hard not to see James Mason or Alec Guinness as Firman, Peter Sellers, in makeup of course, as Professor Krom, the academic who sees in Firman the final proof of his disputed theory, and so on down the line from Krom’s unctuous assistants to Firman’s staff, the ever-wily Yves, and Firman’s beautiful and brilliant mistress Melanie.
The siege of the title proves no metaphor for Firman, his guests, and his allies, find themselves literally under siege from the mysterious X when he learns of Krom’s investigations — under siege and under the gun from within, and from without. Watching Firman scheme, wrangle, and ultimately triumph proves great fun as well as revealing of the Able Criminal at work.
Siege offers, aside from first class thrills, a glimpse at the dangerous world of high finance, several well drawn character studies — not the least its protagonist — fine suspense, a clever detective story, and several startling revelations, especially those Firman discovers about himself, some far more revealing than he would like.
Is he the Able Criminal of Krom’s theory, or a semi-innocent caught between dangerous forces is the question Ambler asks, and as fits the subject no two characters in the book offer the same answer. Krom, who is presented with a mix of humor and admiration, has one answer, and Firman himself another. Is Firman the spider or the fly, or, unwittingly perhaps, both?
The Siege of the Villa Lipp is Ambler’s penultimate novel, but shows no sign of weariness or the kind of neutral writing too often associated with writers near the end of their career. There is still about it the same sense of a glimpse into a twilight world we only suspect, the same fascination with characters on the edge of the civilized society we think we live in, and the same gift for explaining the convoluted and complex ways of finance, crime, and espionage at the highest and lowest levels with perfect reportorial skills. The Old Master proves again why he was an Old Master of the form.
I’m only sad I can’t read all his books again for the first time.
MERLE CONSTINER – Guns at Q Cross. Ace Double M-118, paperback original; 1st printing, 1965. Published back-to-back with The Toughest Town in the Territory, by Tom West. Reprinted as Ace Double 81861, the cover of which is the one shown.
Back in the 1940s, Merle Constiner was primarily known for the detective stories he wrote for Black Mask, Dime Detective and several other top notch pulp magazines of the day. He did write one detective novel, Hearse of a Different Color (Phoenix, 1952), but by 1957 he seems to have writing only western novels, many if not all of them for Ace in the “double” format, still very much collectible today.
The hero of Guns at Q Cross is a hard-boiled rancher from Texas named Stiles Gilmore, who has preceded a herd of his cattle to a ranch in southern Idaho, where he has a buyer waiting for him. What he doesn’t expect is that on the same day that he arrives, an owlhoot who is lying in wait for him shoots to kill.
Stiles is caught without a gun, so he’s lucky the fellow misses. But when Stiles soon sees the man again, he is ready. He pulls out his gun and kills him! The reason this comes as a surprise (note the exclamation point) is that even though the wild west was supposed to wild and woolly, this certainly seems woollier than most works of western fiction.
It seems that there is a severe amount of rustling going on in the territory, and while Stiles is worried that his herd is at risk, it is not so. It’s just that Stiles’s presence is a catalyst for stirring up things involving the dirty work the gang is really up to.
There is a bit of detective work that goes on in the rest of this very short novel (only 109 pages), as Stiles tries to figure out just what it is that he’s walked into, and who’s behind it, but unfortunately while Constiner brings his characters to life in fine fashion, the story itself is just not all that interesting.
JOSEPH LOUIS – Madelaine. Bantam, paperback original; 1st printing, March 1987.
Billed as an “Evan Paris Mystery,” here’s a prime example of how detective work can be used as a means for personal therapy. Paris was once an investigator of sorts, but then became a best-author and was even nominated for an Oscar as a screenwriter.
When his wife was kidnapped and murdered, however, his life went into a downward spiral and into a complete funk for over a year. Until, that is, he’s asked to find the father of a little old lady’s three-year-old granddaughter. Trudy’s mother Madelaine was also a murder victim, and it’s the mall similarity between the two cases that brings Evan Paris back to life again.
Tracking down Madelaine’s past is like chasing down a ghost, however, a veritable will-o’-the-wisp. Lew Archer was never haunted as greatly as this by his own memories. But as in Ross Macdonald’s work, this is a case that depends a great deal on untangling the myriad threads in more than one family’s lives, and unraveling the secrets that most of them would prefer to keep concealed.
This is a powerfully emotional book, there’s no denying it, but as a mystery, I think most readers will put the pieces together just a little faster than Evan Paris does.
— Reprinted from Nothing Accompliced #4, November 1993, considerably revised (mostly reorganizing and rearranging).
Bibliographic Update: This book was nominated for the Shamus Award for Best Original Private Eye Paperback by the Private Eye Writers of America, and for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel by the Crime Writers of Canada in 1988. A second and final book in the series was The Trouble with Stephanie (Bantam, 1988).
Prior to this series, the author published five books under his own name, Joseph Mark Glazner, about a character named Billy Nevers (Warner, paperback originals, between 1979 and 1981). The New York Times described Nevers as “a wheelerâ€dealer in the world of finance, the creation of Joseph Mark Glazner, a Toronto public relations man.”
ELLERY QUEEN – The Siamese Twin Mystery. Ellery Queen #7. Frederick A. Stokes, hardcover, 1933. Pocket #109, paperback, 1941. Reprinted many times since, in both hardcover and paperback.
Ellery Queen’s seventh novel, and, in my opinion, by far the weakest to this point in his career. Ellery and his father, Inspector Richard, are returning from a vacation in Canada. Ellery takes a short cut, and the two find themselves cut off by a raging (is there any other kind?) forest fire.
The only refuge is the top of Arrow Mountain, where they come to the home of Dr. John Xavier, an eminent and retired surgeon, who has with him members of his family and other characters who act in the prescribed guilty manner before there is anything really to be guilty about.
As the fire races toward the mountaintop, Dr Xavier is murdered while playing solitaire and is found clutching half of a playing card in his hand — the six of spades. Later, another character is murdered, and in his hand is half of the knave of diamonds. Ellery’s interpretation of these clues are, in the first instance, weak and in the second rather tortuous, but it’s fun watching him at work.
This is the first Queen novel that does not have the usual “challenge to the reader.†Queen explains this inThe Chinese Orange Mystery, without naming the novel missing the challenge, as merely an oversight, but since Ellery himself does not know who did it until the very end of The Siamese Twin Mystery — and the murderer is revealed through psychological trickery rather than ratiocination — any challenge to the reader would have been ludicrous.
Some oddities in the novel: the forest fire knocks out the telephone line, but the electricity supply never falters. Even while the house itself is burning, the light bulb in the basement, though “feeble,†continues working. There is never any mention of a generator on the premises, nor is it likely, with the house at the top of a mountain very difficult of access, that the electrical wires would be underground.
The Queens put the deck of cards from Xavier’s solitaire game in the house’s safe, but Ellery keeps the actual evidence, the six of spades, and describes the safe as a “sort of baited trap.†Yet when the murderer seems to try to get into the safe, both Ellery and his father are surprised.
Why would the murderer, they wonder, try to get the evidence from the safe when the safe didn’t contain the evidence? It does not occur to them that perhaps they had neglected to tell the murderer the safe did not contain the evidence. Besides, the murderer’s attempt is an essential device to keep the plot going, not to help the reader solve the crime.
Also, when the fire reaches the house and sets it afire, Ellery has all the characters go to the basement. Maybe this is the safest place to be when a two-story house is burning down above you and the ceiling of the basement, since we are not told otherwise, is wood, but it does seem a strange refuge.
Is The Siamese Twin Mystery worth reading despite its problems? Any Queen is worth reading, however weak it might be.
— Reprinted from CADS 3 (April 1986) (slightly revised). Email Geoff Bradley for subscription information.
COLLECTING PULPS: A Memoir
Part 19: Pulp Art
by Walker Martin
I’ve talked before about how I love collecting the original pulp and paperback cover art and illustrations. My feeling is that every book and pulp collector should have at least one example of cover art in their library. I’m not recommending that book collectors go to the extreme that I have gone to with scores of pieces, but it’s a thing of beauty to have a pulp, paperback, or dust jacket cover art framed and hanging on your wall with your book collection.
Recently Steve Lewis was visiting me, and he took over 30 photos, not only of the pulp art but also of other items in my house. This installment should give an example of how one long time collector has dealt with the addiction known as bibliomania. I’ve been at it now since I was a child in 1956. That’s over 60 years!
This first photo shows me standing next to my most valuable painting, the cover of Black Mask, for February 1933 by Jes Schlaikjer. Normally, I never would have been able to afford this cover painting because it’s from the classic 1930’s period of Black Mask when the covers showed stark, violent scenes with just a few images. But the seller perhaps did not realize it was a Black Mask cover by Schlaikjer. Over my shoulder is a Lyman Anderson painting for an early 1930’s issue of Alibi.
The second photo is a paperback cover painting by James Avati illustrating a scene from the novel, The Double Door, by Theodora Keogh. Avati was one of the very most influential cover artists in the paperback field, and he was widely imitated. Again, this was a painting that I normally would not be able to afford, but I bought it on credit from an art gallery in NYC.
I’ve often taken out bank loans, used my credit card, paid on the installment plan, in order to feed my art and bibliomania addiction. I’ve never regretted my decision to buy books or art. What I’ve regretted are the books and art that I did not buy!
This third photo shows a corner of my mystery paperback room and part of a Dell paperback rack. For decades I hunted for paperback racks from the forties and fifties and finally found five of them at a Windy City show several years ago. They were too fragile to be shipped, and it was two years before the dealer managed to find someone driving across the country in a van to deliver them to my house.
Here below are three more photos of the mystery paperback room. I have the books shelved by alphabetical order except for my Ace Doubles and Dell Mapbacks. The Dell Mapbacks may be complete or close to it. I even found the crossword paperbacks and I wonder how they ever survived? Also pictured is my Bantam Books paperback rack which is in fine condition. The room is very crowded with books, just the way I like it!
This next photo shows two of three large western pulp cover paintings that are hanging by the stairs to the second floor. Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s it was possible to buy western, detective and adventure cover art for very low prices. The three paintings were delivered by a long time collector named Chet Woodrow, who risked driving through a terrible New Jersey snow storm to my house.
Price? A hundred dollars each. Back then I thought such prices were ridiculously low and I still think so. One funny thing about Chet was that he had the worse condition pulp collection that I’ve ever seen. The magazines looked to be in fine condition with nice covers and spines but when you tried to open them the interior pages were very brown and brittle and almost impossible to read.
The Dime Western painting below is from the 1930’s and the artist is the great Walter Baumhofer. Many years ago at an early Pulpcon, I was talking to artist Norman Saunders, and I saw a car drive into the hotel parking lot. I said excuse me to Norman and ran outside where I asked the driver who was not even out of the car if he had any pulp paintings.
He said yes and sold me this painting out of the trunk of his car for only $400. I then went back and showed Norman Saunders the painting that I just had bought in the parking lot and he couldn’t believe that I had just bought an excellent Baumhofer painting out of a car trunk.
We then spent much of the convention in the hotel bar talking about pulp art. I tried to get Norman to sell me some of his paintings, but he was leaving them in his will to his children.
The two bookcases below show part of my extensive DVD collection. I believe these are mainly film noir movies, another my addictions. The crusader painting is from a 1931 Adventure. I got it from the estate of A. A. Proctor, who was the editor of Adventure in the early 1930’s.
Above is one of my favorite pieces of art. It’s a bizarre illustration by Howard Wandrei, the brother of Donald Wandrei. Howard died an early death of alcoholism, but he was a writer of pulp fiction and a sort of outsider artist. This piece fascinates me with its complexity and strangeness. Dwayne Olson has written at least three long book articles on Howard Wandrei, but he is an unjustly forgotten, excellent artist.
The next photo shows me holding the February 1956 issue Galaxy. This is the actual magazine that I bought off the newsstand in Hoscheck’s Deli, and it so impressed me that I became the fiction magazine collector that I am today. It led to my present collection of thousands of pulps, slicks, and digest magazines.
Above is a corner of my son’s former room. For thirty-five years Joe lived with us and then a couple years ago decided to get his own place and moved out. It did not take me long to move into his room and convert it into a library and art gallery!
I have over thirty-five pieces of art in the room and eight bookcases. I think I’m now in every room of the house with art and books. All five bedrooms, the garage which I converted into a library and gallery, the basement, living room, family room. Even the bathrooms and kitchen have art. If I had room I would build another house in the back yard. The large painting is from Detective Fiction Weekly.
This is Paul Herman who has been friends with Steve Lewis and me for quite a while. He’s standing next to a western paperback cover painting.
Above is a corner of dining room with a western painting by Sam Cherry. I love western art, but many collectors seem prejudiced against westerns. They are colorful, full of action, and not as expensive as science fiction or hero art.
Below is another Dime Western painting by Walter Baumhofer showing a girl and cowboy blazing away, back to back. Art dealer Steve Kennedy owned it for many years and would never sell it, but one day he needed money, and I managed to talk him into selling it to me. I seem to remember me whining, begging, and crying. Collectors know no shame!
I’ve told this story before in my article on collecting Western Story Magazine, but the painting below amazingly enough came from my next door neighbor! What’s the odds of a non collector moving next door and having a pulp painting? Took me years to talk him into selling it to me. It’s by Walter Haskell Hinton from Western Storyin the 1930’s.
Above is a row of cover paintings. The first one is from Street & Smith Detective Story. The second one is a Spider cover which was repainted by Raphael Desoto, the original artist. The third one is by Wittmack from People’s.
Another western from one of the Popular Publication pulps. I only paid $400 for it. In the background you can see in the laundry room three of the dozen or so preliminary drawings I have framed. The artist would make a preliminary sketch and if approved would then go ahead and paint the cover. Not many of these survived, but I love them and pick them up whenever I see them. Not many art collectors care about them, but I think they are of great interest.
The next three photos show areas of my basement. The first is an almost complete set of Western Story. Of over 1250 issues, 1919-1949, I need only nine issues.
The second shows some Ace High magazines and the third photo gives an idea of a corner of the basement. The basement is about 60 feet long by 30 feet wide. I’ve filled the entire area with shelving.
In 1989 when I moved into this house I hired a contractor to turn the two car garage into a library and art gallery. These photos show some the area which I’ve filled with artwork, books, and pulps. All the neighbors asked me the same thing. “Why am I turning my garage into a library?” My response was why should I park my cars in my house? But who can understand non readers and non collectors?
More photos of my converted garage taken from different angles. You can see some of the art hanging above the pulps.
The final photo is of me and Steve Lewis. We have been friends for almost 50 years and I’ve been reading the various incarnations of Mystery*File for almost as long. Over Steve’s shoulder is a large painting from The Saturday Evening Post by Harold Von Schmidt. It’s from 1950 and illustrates a scene from a serial starring series characters Tugboat Annie and Glencannon. It was the only time they met in a story, but it has an interesting background.
The Glencannon series were comedies and thePost readers found them hilarious. During the 20 year period of 1930-1950 there were over 60 stories written by the author, Guy Gilpatric. I’ve read them all and they are among my favorite stories. They have all been reprinted in omnibus collections and there was even a British TV series back in the 1950’s.
Unfortunately there was a tragic ending to this comedy series. Gilpatric’s wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer and in a fit of depression they decided on a murder suicide pact. He shot his wife and then took his own life. Later there was a rumor or evidence that the doctors had made a mistake and made the wrong diagnosis.
I obtained the painting from an art gallery by telling the owner that I’d like to get a painting showing my favorite series character, Glencannon. I was stunned when he said he knew where one was, and it turned out to be the best one of them all, the one where Glencannon meets Tugboat Annie. Von Schmidt is a famous western artist, and I’d never be able to afford one of his paintings, but since this was a non-western the price was a lot lower.
So thanks, Steve, for taking these photos and also thanks to Sai Shanker for twice taking photos that unfortunately did not turn out as well. I love reading about the collections of other collectors and maybe this memoir on my art collection will make you decide to become an addicted, out of control bibliomaniac also! I’ve enjoyed the trip and it’s been a great ride…
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Velvet Claws. Perry Mason #1. William Morrow & Co., hardcover, 1933. Pocket #73, paperback, 1941. Ballantine, paperback; 1st printing, August 1985. Many other reprint editions, both hardcover and paperback. Film: First National, 1936 (with William Warren as Perry Mason and Claire Dodd as Della Street). TV series: Perry Mason “The Case of the Velvet Claws,” 21 March 1963 (Season 6, Episode 22).
I’ve never taken a count, but at a rough guess Id say I’ve read well over half of the Perry Mason novels. Unfortunately I’ve never made a point of reading them in order. If I had I’d feel a lot more comfortable in talking about Perry Mason as he was in 1933 versus Perry Mason as he was after the TV series came along in 1957.
But here are some of the things I did notice in this one that I can pass along to you. Perry Mason was a man who prided himself on standing behind his client, no matter how he (or she, in the case) has lied to him. He was also a man with his fists, a technique on a case that he abandoned fairly quickly.
Della Street and Paul Drake were with him from the beginning. Lt. Tragg and Hamilton Burger came along later. We are told that Della is 27, that she is devoted to her boss, down to warning Perry about her misgivings about his latest client, an attractive woman (velvet) who will do anything to get what she wants (claws).
Della also has doubts about Perry in this one, when it looks as though Perry has thrown his client to the wolves. It is true that she has confessed to killing her husband, but it is (not surprisingly) part of Perry’s plan. But how can Perry get his client off after she’s confessed? That is a good trick, and it’s nicely done. I think it’s part of the reason the Perry Mason stories were so popular, right from the start.
There are no courtroom scenes in this one, which came as a surprise to me, but the cluing that helps identify the killer is there, in full “play fair” mode, and I think that also helped make a success of this book. Perry also kisses Della at the end of this one. I don’t think this happened too many times. Erle Stanley Gardner must have realized that an overt romance between the two would take away from the stories he wanted to tell, and tell them for a long time after this one he most certainly did.
WALTER TEVIS – The Hustler. Harper & Row, hardcover, 1959. Dell D434, paperback, 1961. Rerinted several times since.
THE HUSTLER. Fox, 1961. Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, Jackie Gleason and George C. Scott. Screenplay by Sidney Carroll and Robert Rossen. Directed by Robert Rossen.
I started watching this last week and remembered I had read the book back in High School. A quick check of my shelves turned it up: the same movie tie-in edition from 1961, and I settled in for a few days of doing the book/movie thing, where I read a few chapters through the day, then watch the corresponding minutes that evening.
Both are fun.
Walter Tevis worked his way through college in a pool room, and he writes is a hard-boiled classic here that wouldn’t be out of place in a Gold Medal wrapper. It also shows all the best earmarks of a First Novel: craftsmanship, passion and the sense of personal experience that makes the milieu come alive on the page. His portrait of pool hall culture and pool-hustler life-style comes across with the precision and color that only come from having lived and observed it
Tevis seems to instinctively know how to get drama from his characters in a natural, unforced way. He brings life and depth to Fast Eddie Felson and his alcoholic college-girl companion. He also does a fine fast job with the minor characters and offers a brilliant portrait of the sinister-heavy-as-mentor, Bert Gordon, who seems at first to be in it just for the money — in the best pulp tradition — but his real motives come out toward the end in a scene of surpassing toughness. No fan of Hammett, Chandler or John D. MacDonald should miss this one.
Robert Rossen’s film works some changes on the book: not bad ones, not improvements, just changes. Mostly he draws a dichotomy between Piper Laurie’s sensitive love and George C. Scott’s calculating reserve. Scott’s very presence makes his relationship with Eddie (young Paul Newman at his most virile and charming) more Faustian, and as the drama draws them into opposition, it’s… well it’s like seeing a kitten wander into the path of a speeding truck.
Indeed, as the movie progresses the drama gets heavier —much more so than the understated narrative of the book — and it provides some Oscar-worthy moments for some very capable players, the sort of thing we go to the movies to see.
And speaking of Oscar-worthy, it’s just not possible to review this film without mentioning Jackie Gleason’s Minnesota Fats. For once in his life, The Great One doesn’t try to be the star here; he’s content to sit back and provide solid support in a role he was born to play. And doing that, he shines all the brighter in a brilliant cast working for a director who knows how to get the most from them.
Shocking Blue was a Dutch rock band, formed in in 1967. Their greatest hit in the US was a song titled “Venus,” which went to #1 in 1969. Scorpio’s Dance was their third album, released in 1970.
ERNEST BRAMAH – Max Carrados. Methuen, UK, hardcover, 1914. Hyperion Press, US, hardcover, 1975. Moran Press, softcover, December 2015. All 26 Max Carrados short stories are included in The Collected Max Carrados Investigations: The Cases of the Renowned Blind Edwardian Detective, Leonaur, hardcover/paperback, 2013.
For some years it was thought that Ernest Bramah was the pseudonym of some other mystery writer who was doing double duty; or, alternatively, that the pen name represented a group trying its hands at a specialized type of story. Eventually, the author revealed himself (a little bit), and what he revealed was that the pseudonym stood for Ernest Bramah Smith.
He was extremely self-effacing; however, details are plentiful about the life and adventures of his greatest creation, Max Carrados, the first and probably the best blind detective in fiction.
Carrados was very much in the Great Detective mold. Even though blind, his personality dominates the stories. He is sophisticated, cynical, and whimsical, and he awes friends, clients, and enemies with feats of subtle brilliance, “seeing” what no blind man can see.
Carrados lives at the Turrets in Richmond (just west of London), surrounded by his menage of secretary, young, brash Annesley Greatorex, and valet,the solemnly decorous Parkinson. He is interested in crimes of originality, and is called upon to solve cases of arson, madness, embezzlement, jewel burglary, a divorce murder, the theft of one of England’s greatest relics, a post-office robbery connected with Irish outrages, and to thwart German naval spies. A commentator has said that the setting of these stories is much closer to Raymond Chandler’s “mean streets” than to the unreal English country house of Agatha Christie.
The Carrados stories are an Edwardian tour de force, and Ellery Queen called Max Carrados “one of the ten best volumes of detective shorts ever written.” The eight stories in this collection contain the inevitable meeting between Carrados and disbarred lawyer turned inquiry agent Louis Carlyle, who becomes his “Watson.”
The tales range from a problem in numismatics (one of Bramah’s own little enthusiasms), to train-wrecking tinged with racism, to looting of safe deposits as a result of religious enthusiasm. The problems are logical, the characterizations are excellent, and the backgrounds are exceptional.
In the much-anthologized “Tragedy at Brookbend Cottage,” a man proposes to remove his wife by the latest scientific methods. Of course, Carrados intervenes, using clues only a blind man can find, and brings the case to its ironic conclusion.
Critics have praised the stories highly, and the two other collections — The Eyes of Max Carrados (1923) and Max Carrados Mysteries (1927) — are also well worth attention, although the later stories tend to get ponderous and are uneven in quality. The only Max Carrados novel, The Bravo of London (1934), proves conclusively that Bramah was a good short-story writer.
