Two of my recent columns (here and here) have been devoted to a once well-known but now largely forgotten writer named John Roeburt. This month is my third on the subject. And my last.

   Except for EARTHQUAKE (Random House, 1959), the mainstream novel supposedly co-authored by vaudeville/TV comic Milton Berle, all of Roeburt’s books during his last five years of creative life were paperback originals. THEY WHO SIN (Avon pb #T-321, 1959) and RUBY MacLAINE (Hillman pb #151, 1960) seem to have been sex-driven, and the title of THE MOBSTER (Pyramid pb #G566, 1960) speaks for itself.

   During these years Roeburt also turned out three media tie-in novels. THE UNHOLY WIFE (Avon pb #T-169, 1957) was based on the movie of the same name (RKO/Universal, 1957), which was directed by John Farrow and starred Diana Dors, Rod Steiger and Tom Tryon. As chance would have it, Steiger also starred in AL CAPONE (Burrows-Ackerman/United Artists, 1959), which was directed by Richard Wilson and featured Fay Spain and James Gregory. Roeburt’s novelization of the script (Pyramid pb #G405, 1959) followed soon after the movie’s release. His third and last effort of this sort was SING OUT, SWEET HOMICIDE (Dell pb #K105, 1961), which was based on the Warner Bros. TV series THE ROARING TWENTIES.

   That paperback marked the end of Roeburt’s career as a novelist. But before fading away he did crank out three quickie nonfiction books for softcover publication. GET ME GIESLER (Belmont pb #L92-536, 1962) was a biography of celebrity criminal defense lawyer Jerry Giesler, the Johnnie Cockroach of his generation.

   The subject of SEX-LIFE AND THE CRIMINAL LAW (Belmont pb #L92-560, 1963) is clear from the title. THE WICKED AND THE BANNED (Macfadden pb #60-147, 1963) had to do with books like LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER and TROPIC OF CANCER that were the subjects of obscenity prosecutions. I haven’t read this volume and can’t recall ever seeing a copy, but I feel safe in suggesting that anyone interested in the topic should turn instead to Charles Rembar’s THE END OF OBSCENITY (HarperCollins, 1986) or Edward DeGrazia’s GIRLS LEAN BACK EVERYWHERE: THE LAW OF OBSCENITY AND THE ASSAULT ON GENIUS (Random House, 1991).

   Those books were Roeburt’s last. As in CITIZEN KANE, let’s go back and explore our subject’s beginnings.

   After graduating from college—and from law school, if he ever went there—he held a variety of jobs. Apparently he drove a cab for a while, as one might have guessed from his three Jigger Moran novels, and worked in a few antique shops, making use of that setting in the second Moran exploit, THERE ARE DEAD MEN IN MANHATTAN (1946). His career as a radio writer came about as a result of his connection with one of the medium’s top producer-directors.

   Himan Brown (1910-2010) graduated from both Brooklyn College and Brooklyn Law School, although he never practiced law and never took the bar exam. In 1927, while still a student, he began reading poetry over a New York radio station and was soon hired for acting jobs that called for Jewish dialect. His earliest success as a producer-director was MARIE, THE LITTLE FRENCH PRINCESS (CBS, 1933-35), the network’s first daily soap opera.

   After several years doing soaps and action thrillers like DICK TRACY and FLASH GORDON, Brown created his first well-remembered series, INNER SANCTUM, a mystery-horror anthology show that ran on various networks between early 1941 and late 1952. For that series and others—including ADVENTURES OF THE THIN MAN, BULLDOG DRUMMOND, COUNTERSPY and THE FALCON—he needed a stable of writers, and among the literary workhorses who wound up in that stable was Roeburt.

   Exactly which Brown shows he worked on and how many scripts he wrote for each remains unknown, but by the mid-1940s he was so well established in the field of radio crime drama that he got tapped to write an article on the subject for a major magazine (“Bloody Murder on the Airwaves,” Esquire, September 1945).

   The earliest scripts known to be by Roeburt date from late 1947, and he turned out around two dozen for INNER SANCTUM between then and 1951, as well as three adventures of THE SHADOW. For one of Brown’s final radio series—BARRIE CRAIG, CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATOR (NBC, 1951-55, starring William Gargan)—he wrote at least 32 episodes.

   Among the less successful Brown shows he worked on were TALES OF FATIMA (CBS, 1949, starring Basil Rathbone), THE AFFAIRS OF PETER SALEM (Mutual, 1949-53), and THE PRIVATE FILES OF REX SAUNDERS (NBC, 1951, starring Rex Harrison).

   All this radio work didn’t keep Roeburt from dipping his toes gingerly in the Hollywood ocean. His earliest movie credit was JIGSAW (Tower/United Artists, 1949), starring Franchot Tone and Jean Wallace. Tone played crusading Assistant D.A. Howard Malloy, who runs afoul of an extremist group while investigating a series of murders. Fletcher Markle directed from a screenplay by himself and Vincent McConnor, based on an original story (perhaps a radio play?) by Roeburt.

   A few years later he became involved with two projects for independent producers Edward J. and Harry Lee Danziger and director Edgar G. Ulmer (1904-1972), a wild talent who’s best known as the master of ultra-low-budget film noir. Roeburt however wasn’t involved with any of the director’s movies in that category. His first and only screenplay for an Ulmer film (from an original story by George Auerbach) was the Runyonesque ST. BENNY THE DIP (Danziger/United Artists, 1951), starring Dick Haymes, Nina Foch, Roland Young and Lionel Stander.

   Roeburt received screen credit for additional dialogue on Ulmer’s Arabian Nights farce BABES IN BAGDAD (Danziger/United Artists, 1952), which starred Paulette Goddard, Gypsy Rose Lee, Richard Ney and John Boles. His work for the Danziger brothers also led, as we’ll see, to his being hired to write scripts for two of their TV series a few years later.

   His final screenplay was for one of the most obscure movies I’ve ever heard of. DEAD TO THE WORLD (National Film Studios/United Artists, 1961) was based on Edward Ronns’ novel STATE DEPARTMENT MURDERS (Gold Medal pb #117, 1951) and was directed by Nicholas Webster. In the leading roles were the immortal Reedy Talton and Jana Pearce. I dare you to find that pair in your reference books!

   As radio faded away and was replaced in the role of America’s home entertainment medium by TV, Roeburt did his best to go with the flow, but with how much success remains (dare I say it?) a mystery. Among the sparse TV writing credits for him documented by the Internet Movie Database, the earliest was the original story for “The Long Count” (FOUR STAR PLAYHOUSE, CBS, March 25, 1954), which starred Frank Lovejoy as McGraw, a PI with no first name.

   A few years later McGraw became protagonist of his own series (NBC, 1957-58), which Roeburt wasn’t involved with. It was also in 1954 that the connection with Himan Brown led to Roeburt’s writing at least four scripts for the short-lived syndicated televersion of the INNER SANCTUM series.

   The connection with the Danziger brothers also paid off for him when they hired him to write for two of their series which originated in England but were also seen in the U.S.: THE VISE (1955-59), which for most of its run starred Donald Gray as one-armed British PI Mark Saber, and THE CHEATERS (1959-61), with John Ireland as London-based insurance investigator John Hunter.

   Between series for the Danzigers, Roeburt worked at the position which first brought him to my attention, as story editor and occasional scriptwriter for NBC’s THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF ELLERY QUEEN (1958-59), a 60-minute live series. George Nader starred as EQ, with Les Tremayne playing Ellery’s father, Inspector Richard Queen.

   Credits for this short-lived series are hard to come by. The Internet Movie Database lists nothing, and I have far fewer than I’d like to have. As story editor for the series Roeburt was almost certainly responsible for the decision to buy TV rights to novels by a number of other authors—including Hillary Waugh, Edgar Box (Gore Vidal), Harold Q. Masur and William P. McGivern—and yank out their continuing characters like Box’s Peter Sargeant and Masur’s Scott Jordan so that EQ in the person of George Nader could be shoehorned into the continuity.

   Roeburt is not known to have done any of these scripts himself but he did write the TV adaptation of the 1950 Queen novel DOUBLE, DOUBLE (November 14, 1958). The basis of one EQ episode (December 26, 1958) was Roeburt’s own 1954 novel THE HOLLOW MAN, adapted by Howard Rodman and with Nader implausibly taking the place of Roeburt’s tough cop Johnny Devereaux. The cast included Frank Silvera, Whitney Blake, Murvyn Vye and Wesley Lau.

   Two other episodes were allegedly based on Roeburt material. In “Four and Twenty—To Live” (December 12, 1958; script by Robert E. Thompson), Ellery is confronted by a young woman with a gun who demands that he phone the governor and request a stay of execution for her condemned father. And “The Jinn City Story” (January 9, 1959; script by Nicholas E. Baehr)starts out with Ellery’s plane forced by heavy fog to make an emergency landing at a small-town airport where he’s approached by a strange old man who asks him to clear someone falsely accused of murder. Featured in the cast were Peggie Castle, Vanessa Brown and Brian Keith.

   Neither of these plots sound like any Roeburt novel I’ve read, although they might of course have come from original stories or radio plays. When the series moved from New York to Hollywood and from live to tape, with Lee Philips replacing Nader as EQ, Roeburt apparently declined to go along for the ride. There’s a character named Amos Roeburt in one of the Philips episodes but that’s hardly sufficient evidence that John was involved with the show’s second incarnation, which survived only a few months.

   As far as I can tell, Roeburt did not appear in print or any other medium after 1963. Aside from a screenplay based on his 1958 novel THE CLIMATE OF HELL, copyrighted in August 1969 but never produced, how he occupied his time between the year of the Kennedy assassination and his own death remains unknown. Perhaps he’d saved enough money not to have to work anymore.

   We do know that he was prosperous enough to maintain a summer home on Fire Island, where in 1972 he died. Anyone interested in pursuing Roeburt more deeply than I’ve done in these columns will find his papers at Boston University’s Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.

   While working on this column I discovered to my surprise and delight that my copy of Roeburt’s movie novelization AL CAPONE, which I probably had never opened since buying it decades ago, was graced by an inscription in the hand of Roeburt himself—an inscription which I hope you can read below. Whether Roeburt was referring just to this one book as “horrendous” or was writing off his entire literary output remains unknown.

   As I hope this column and my earlier ones have shown, what he contributed to the genre we love is well worth at least a modicum of attention.

AGATHA CHRISTIE – Cat Among the Pigeons. Hercule Poirot #34 (including story collections). Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1960. Pocket, US, paperback; March 1961. First published in the UK by Collins, hardcover, 1959. Reprinted many times. TV adaptation: ITV, 2008, with David Suchet as Poirot. (Other versions have also been made.)

   At this mid-to-late stage in her career, Agatha Christie’s skills at concocting outrageously clever detective puzzles were showing signs of decreasing, but even so, as a detective puzzle Cat Among the Pigeons would qualify to be in the top 5% of anything written and marketed as a mystery today.

   The book opens in impressive fashion. It is the first day of the term for the girls arriving at Meadowbank School, some for the first time, including some of the mistresses. It is a day of happiness and confusion. There are any number of matrons, mothers, girls and the new school secretary to be introduced to the reader. While I can’t tell you how Miss Christie does it, what is true is that each and every one of these is described in such a way that you know them almost inside and out within just the few lines set aside for each of them.

   It isn’t going to be a pleasant term, however. Two murders will occur before it has hardly begun, and headmistress Miss Bulstrode, usually calm and collected, has all she can handle as she does her best to keep the scandal from closing the school down. Luckily Hercule Poirot is called in on the case, one that also involves a fortune in diamonds that has somehow been smuggled into the country.

   Unluckily, Poirot doesn’t make his first appearance until page 148 of the Pocket paperback I’ve just read, and yet, on the other hand, Agatha Christie also had the knack of keeping her mysteries from sagging as badly as they do in the ones written by so many other authors.

   Being a novel taking place in academia, it should not be surprising that Miss Christie has something to say about schooling and education in general, and she does. Or at least her main character here, Miss Bulstrode, does. She’s a very progressive woman, especially for the year of 1960.

ONE FOOT IN HELL. 20th Century Fox, 1960. Alan Ladd, Don Murray, Dolores Michaels, Dan O’Herlihy and Barry Coe. Written by Aaron Spelling and Sydney Boehm. Directed by James B Clark.

   I hate it when someone has a good idea for a movie and then it gets fumbled.

   In this case it’s a warped quest for vengeance set in the old west, with Alan Ladd as a settler passing through a small town who sees his ailing wife die because of the callousness of its citizens: The hotel clerk won’t fetch a doctor, the local druggist doesn’t fill a prescription promptly, and when Ladd makes a fuss, the sheriff detains him on suspicion long enough for Ladd’s wife to die before he gets back with the medicine that would have saved her life.

   Chastened by her death, the good people of the town try to make up for it by offering him a job, but when Ladd takes a position as Deputy Sheriff, it’s with an eye out to settle the score.

   To this end, he recruits a small band of ne’er-do-wells and owlhoots to help him loot the local bank: Don Murray as a drunk looking to restore his pre-war fortunes; Dolores Michaels as a dance-hall floozie trying to get out of the racket; and Dan O’Herlihy and Barry Coe, who just like stealing & killing — and One Foot takes a step into Caper Movie Territory.

   The supporting cast does quite well in this, particularly when Murray and Michaels (who was memorable in The Fiend Who Walked the West) kindle a spark of decency between them and wrestle with the notion of going straight. Some of Aaron Spellings’ expositions are a bit too pat—like the characterizations in Love Boat — but when we get to the robbery and subsequent posse chase, led by Ladd himself, things get agreeably nasty as writer Sydney (The Big Heat, Violent Saturday, etc.) Boehm rings in some gratuitous murders and wicked double-crosses to liven things up.

   Too bad One Foot is afflicted by the wrong director and a star past his prime.

   Director James B. Clark did some highly successful animal films (Flipper, and A Dog of Flanders come to mind) but he lacks the sense of pace necessary to this sort of thing. As for star Alan Ladd as the bitter widower nursing a deadly grudge and finally turning on his cohorts…

   Well, back in the 40s he could have used his impassive features to suggest wheels within wheels ready to grind up his unwitting prey, but at this stage in his career Alan Ladd was from all accounts fighting a battle with booze & drugs, and not trying very hard to win. Podgy and dull-eyed, he looks about as deadly here as a rubber ball, and he’s not helped by a costume designer who dresses him like a hick.

   With Ladd and Clark at its heart, it’s surprising that One Foot in Hell works as well — or as not-too-badly — as it does. I recommend it to fans of Westerns and Caper Movies with a quick finger on the fast-forward trigger, who will find here a solid half-hour’s entertainment in a 90-minute movie.

DON WINSLOW – A Cool Breeze on the Underground. Neal Carey #1. St.Martin’s, hardcover. 1991; paperback, 1996. Nominated for an Edgar award for Best First Novel.

   Neal Carey is a young man employed by a firm called Friends of the Family, which exists to solve nagging little problems that might annoy friends, acquaintances, or business associates of an old New England bank. Carey is called away from his studies — the firm is financing his education — to hunt down the daughter of a politician who has run away from home, and has been sighted in London.

   He doesn’t care much for the assignment, or the timing that’s going to cause him to fail a course, but really doesn’t have much choice. And as if finding a runaway in a huge city weren’t chore enough, he’s given a deadline. Off he goes to the Smoke, where he finds that nothing is ever simple. But he already knew that.

   I can see why Winslow is getting a lot of attention. I don’t know whether the series will stand the test of time — or even if the second and third are as good as the first, for that matter — but I liked this considerably. A good bit of the book is devoted to flashbacks that tell us who Carey is, and how he got to where he is today, and these interludes are well integrated with the story proper.

   Winslow has what may be the most important ingredient in making it big in the field — an engaging “voice.” His characters are interesting and believable, his narration smooth. The plot was nothing special, but nothing especially offensive either. Underground is one of the better series debuts I’ve read, and it will be interesting to see if he can maintain the standard he’s set.

      The Neal Carey series —

A Cool Breeze on the Underground (1990)
The Trail to Buddha’s Mirror (1992)
Way Down on the High Lonely (1994)
A Long Walk Up the Waterslide (1995).
While Drowning in the Desert (1996).

MICHAEL INNES – Lord Mullion’s Secret. Charles Honeybath #3. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1982. Penguin, US, paperback, 1983. Published previously in the UK by Victor Gollancz, hardcover, 1981.

   There may be a few others, but Innes is one mystery writer who can get away with writing a full-length detective story that doesn’t have a single murder in it. Famed portrait painter Charles Honeybath returns for this latest of now three witty adventures. allowing Innes’s more famous detective character, Sir John Appleby, to continue enjoying his retirement a while longer.

   Asked by an old friend to paint his wife, Honeybath quickly discovers that Mullion Castle is filled to the brim with secrets. Small unaccountable things begin to happen as soon as he arrives, including some switched paintings, a clandestine romance between a gardener and the lord’s older daughter, and a dotty great-aunt’s sudden penchant for sleepwalking.

   Stately mansions may be becoming more and more difficult to maintain, but they do have their places in mystery fiction, don’t they?

      The Charles Honeybath series —

The Mysterious Commission. Gollancz 1974
Honeybath’s Haven. Gollancz 1977
Lord Mullion’s Secret. Gollancz 1981
Appleby and Honeybath. Gollancz 1983

  ROUGHSHOD. RKO Radio Pictures, 1949. Robert Sterling, Gloria Grahame, Claude Jarman Jr., John Ireland, Jeff Donnell, Myrna Dell, Martha Hyer, George Cooper, Jeff Corey. Screenplay by Daniel Mainwaring (as Geoffrey Homes) and Hugo Butler. Director: Mark Robson.

   Roughshod is a surprisingly noir western from RKO, the quintessential nor studio, co-written by Geoffrey Homes (Out of the Past) and directed by Val-Lewton-alumnus Mark Robson. Surprising because it sets up a standard White-Hat vs. Black-Hat plot, then pretty much abandons it to dwell of the Pilgrim’s Progress of four Ladies of Easy Virtue reluctantly rescued by absurdly tight-lipped White-Hat Robert Sterling, who is stalking and being stalked by Black-Hat John Ireland.

   Homes does a thoughtful job sketching the trials and tribulations of the euphemistic “Dance Hall Gals” (who include Martha Hyer, Jeff Donnell and the unforgettable Gloria Grahame) as they chase dreams of Love, Lust, Avarice and Respectability, showing sensitivity without straying West of the Pathos, while Robson skillfully sustains tension in the Val Lewton style, with half-seen figures flitting about the night, punctuated by a few very chilling scenes of Ireland prowling about like a monster in a horror flick.

   There is also a dandy run-and-jump gunfight to wrap things up with a satisfying ironic twist that I refuse to divulge.

ARTHUR LYONS – Fast Fade. Jacob Asch #9. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1987; paperback, July 1988.

   PI Jacob Asch goes Hollywood in this one, his ninth overall. His client thinks a well-known director was once her husband, under another name, The director is also into kinky bondage, and when he’s found dead, they have a name for it: autoerotic asphyxiation.

   An underlying themes seems to be the built-in insecurities of show business, and the people in it. While the case itself is as heavily plotted as an X-rated Erle Stanley Gardner story, the wrapup comes a little too quick. I anticipated more than I got.

ROBERT SHECKLEY – The Game of X: A Novel of Upsmanship Espionage. Delacorte Press, hardcover, 1965. Dell #2788, paperback, 1966; Ace, paperback, 1980 (?). Film: Condorman, 1981.

CONDORMAN. Walt Disney/Buena Vista, 1981. Michael Crawford, Oliver Reed, Barbara Carrera. Loosely based on the novel The Game of X, by Robert Sheckley. Directed by Charles Jarrett.

   William Nye (yes, Bill Nye) is a likable, if not overly bright sort hanging on in Europe by the skin of his teeth, and reluctant to go home, so when a friend who works for an obscure agency that lends the CIA a hand once in a while offers Nye a simple job, to entrap a spy so they can turn him, a modest and nonthreatening spy, Nye accepts the job, and finds shutting the spy in question up is far harder than entrapping him.

   But things soon get out of hand when Nye’s new boss, Colonel Baker, takes note of a certain phenomena once the debriefs the spy Nye helped entrap.

   Yes, there was work for Agent X — as Baker had already begun to think of him. Agent X utilized that law of human nature which makes con men the easiest victims of a con game. The law of autopredation, Baker decided to call it; the iron rule by which an inevitably merciful Nature turns the specialized strength of the predator into a fatal weakness, and thus betrays a vested interest in long-range averages.

   Nye assumes he is done and goes back to trying to make a living doing things like illegally bartending, when he suddenly finds himself drawn back in. Karinovsky, the spy he unwittingly turned, wants to come in from the cold, and naturally he wants the brilliant Agent X to do the job. All Nye has to do is what he is told, pretend again to be the ruthless Agent X, and all will be well.

   Of course the Russians aren’t going to just let Karinovsky go, but for the most part they are a fairly useless group, for the most part …

   And anyone who has ever read a thriller can imagine how that is going to go. Nye has hardly set foot in Venice where the game is set to be played before he has been picked up by Foster, who is impressed to be face to face with the famous Agent X.

   Not long after Nye finds himself kidnapped (again) by one Dr. Jansen (… a dwarf, about two and a half feet high, with a large, finely shaped head and blue pop eyes behind heavy glasses. He wore a dark business suit with a rubber apron over it. He also wore a beard. He looked like a tiny Paul Muni playing a miniature Pasteur.) who plans to torture him for details of Karinovsky’s defection, but Nye blunders his way to safety — or was it a brilliant move by Agent X? No matter what Nye does he seems to be feeding the legend of Agent X.

   The Game of X, subtitled “A Novel of Upsmanship Espioinage” is from the pen of satirical science fiction writer Robert Sheckley, whose work graced many of the best magazines and collections in the fifties and sixties, and who tried a more serious hand at thrillers with his Stephen Dain novels and his mix of science fiction and thriller the “Victim” series that began with his short story “The Seventh Victim” (Galaxy SF, 1953) that came to the screen as The Tenth Victim, about a society where in order to deal with over population and boredom people take art in a game of hunter and hunted elaborately assassinating each other for profit and televised entertainment.

   As you might expect with that pedigree the book is a very funny send up of spies and spying and the whole James Bond milieu, with Nye blundering from one success to another until at the end Colonel Baker is no longer sure whether he made Agent X up or if Nye was X all along, and as Nye asks himself, “Why, after all, did I have to live with reality? Wasn’t illusion a perfectly suitable condition?”

   Game of X came to the screen as a rather handsome and fairly faithful Disney film called Condorman with future Phantom of the Opera star Michael Crawford as a comic book artist who finds himself recruited to play his creation, Condorman. Oliver Reed was well cast as the redoubtable Foster. Some of the fun of the book is lost in silliness and camp, but then there is a fair amount of silliness in the book to begin with. A sharper, more Sheckley-like edge would have helped no end.

   The Game of X fits nicely on the shelf with some of the better spy spoofs of the era, John Gardner’s The Liquidator, Martin Waddell’s Otley, and books such as Eric Ambler’s The Light of Day and Victor Canning’s The Great Affair. William Nye may not be the brightest bulb, but he proves an affable companion for a jaunty adventure in the sometimes blackly humorous world of unlikely spies.

C. S. MONTAYNE “The Perfect Crime.” Short story. Rider Lott #1. First appeared in Black Mask, July 1920 (Vol.1, No.4). Reprinted in The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, edited by Otto Penzler (Vintage Crime, softcover, November 2007).

   Unless I’m very much mistaken, not only was this Rider Lott’s first appearance, it was also his last. Which is as it should be, since doesn’t the old saying go, “Crime Does Not Pay”? The story is included in “The Villains” section of Otto Penzler’s book, but to tell you the truth, Rider Lott is one very minor villain indeed.

   His modus operandi in “The Perfect Crime” is to recruit two others, one male and one female, to commit the crime of burglary for him, while he takes a third of the loot for being the mastermind behind the plot. But even though he warns his two underlings to be extra cautious in leaving no clues behind them, it goes without saying that if you want to commit the perfect crime, you’d be better off doing it yourself.

   As I suggested earlier, this is not a major piece of work. To me it’s historically significant because I’m fairly sure this is the earliest story in the long run of Black Mask I’ve ever read. Otherwise I think I’d rather have read one of Montayne’s stories about one of his other villains, namely a certain jewel thief by the name of Captain Valentine, a gentleman who appeared in a total of ten Black Mask stories, as Otto tells us in his introduction to this tale, plus one novel, Moons in Gold (1936).

ERNEST HAYCOX – Canyon Passage. Little Brown, hardcover, 1945. Pocket, #640, paperback, 1949. Many other reprint editions exist.

CANYON PASSAGE. Universal, 1946. Dana Andrews, Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward, Patricia Roc, Ward Bond, Hoagy Carmichael, Lloyd Bridges and Andy Devine. Screenplay by Ernest Pascal, based on the novel by Ernest Haycox. Directed by Jacques Tourneur.

   Ernest Haycox writes best about working men — miners, ranchers, or as here a freighter — made heroes by force of circumstance, set in communities that are not always right or just, but keep striving to get that way. Canyon Passage is the best example of this I’ve seen so far, not so much a carefully-plotted story as a series of interactions between fallible people bouncing off each other in an evolving milieu.

   A book like this gets life from its characters, and Haycox gives us a colorful cast. Logan Stuart, the central character, is the solid, dependable sort to hang a story on; he has a hankerin’ for smart, tough Lucy Overmire, and she for him, but… well, Haycox puts it best, as Logan ponders to himself:

   I credit Haycox with making these ill-turned relationships at least as interesting as the fights, murders and Indian raids that propel the story. He draws an interesting parallel between George Camrose — Logan’s friend betrothed to Lucy, and also a polished thief preying on his friends — and Honey Bragg, a murderous brute and near-outcast, also preying on the locals. Both are eventually punished by the mining camp they live in (and off) but in very different ways, and it’s this sense of Community as Character that gives Canyon Passage real depth.

   Bragg gets his comeuppance at the hands of Logan Stuart, after the good people of the town have goaded them into a fight for no better reason than they wanted to see a battle royal. And Haycox writes us a dandy. Faced with the meaner, stronger, Bragg, Stuart starts the fight by cracking a bottle across his face, then smashing a chair over his head, then picking up the pieces of the chair and smashing them over his head, then picking up another chair…. You get the idea. It’s brutal and very real.

   Camrose, on the other hand, gets tried by a Miner’s Court for the murder of a man whose poke he’s pilfered, found guilty on the basis of circumstantial evidence (He is in fact guilty as hell.) and locked up till the town can get around to lynching him—which puts Logan in the position of having to rescue his guilty buddy for the sake of the misguided Lucy.

   Me, I woulda just sat back, seen him hanged, and moved in on Lucy myself, but that’s probably why I was never the hero of a Western. And I have to say Haycox rings in the Indian Raid that brings everything to a head and resolves the various conflicts without seeming a bit contrived.

   Producer Walter Wanger made a fine job of filming this, hiring Jacques Tourneur, known for his horror flicks with Val Lewton, to direct, and dependable hack Ernest Pascal to stick close to the book. He also signed up sturdy leads Andrews, Donlevy and Hayward, and a host of dependable character actors, including Ward Bond as Bragg, Andy Devine as a homesteader, and best of all Hoagy Carmichael as an amiable minstrel.

   The result is a film of considerable charm and surprising brutality. Like I say, writer Pascal stays close to the book, and director Tourneur gives us the beatings & killings with unflinching nastiness, done up in fairy-tale Technicolor by photographer Edward (Heaven Can Wait) Cronjager.

   There is one point where the movie departs from the book though, and I think it’s an improvement. And since it’s at the ending, I’ll throw in a SPOILER ALERT!!

   In the book, Logan Stewart helps his friend Camrose escape, but it does no good as he’s shot down shortly thereafter by one of his victims. Logan, having led the miners against raiding Indians, is forgiven by the town, mainly because they got their man anyway and no real harm done.

   In the movie, however, Logan returns from injun-fightin’ to find that the good people of the town have burned down his store as retribution for his crime. Having chastened him, they are now willing to accept him back as a member of society in good standing. And Logan accepts it as a just punishment, ready to move on with his life.

   It’s not a major story element, but somehow this moment, as directed by Tourneur, gets to the meat of what Haycox was saying in the book. I’m not sure I can put it into words, but it has something to do with a civilization not built on laws, religion, or even tradition, but on people. And therefore as good or bad as the best and worst of us.

   As Walt Kelly used to say, “it’s enough to make a man think.”