DOWN DAKOTA WAY. Republic Pictures, 1949. Roy Rogers, Trigger, Dale Evans, Pat Brady, Montie Montana, Elisabeth Risdon, Byron Barr, James Cardwell, Roy Barcroft, Foy Willing & the Riders of the Purple Sage. Screenplay: John K. Butler & Sloan Nibley. Director: William Witney.

   Full disclosure: I’m definitely a William Witney aficionado. Plus, out of all the singing cowboys, I like Roy Rogers the best. After recently watching Under California Stars, which I reviewed here, I had moderately high expectations for Down Dakota Way. At the very least, I thought it would be an overall fun movie watching experience. In that sense, I was somewhat mistaken.

   Now, it’s not as if Down Dakota Way is a terrible movie or that the direction is necessarily of sub-par quality. No, it’s just that the movie lacks that real, but difficult to describe in words, sense of fun, lighthearted, escapism. In many ways, Down Dakota Way has all the characteristics of a dark, brooding, Hamlet-on-horseback Western but without the excellent acting and brilliant cinematography that make many “Western noirs” truly outstanding films.

   In this entry in the vast Roy Rogers cinematic corpus, Rogers ends up doing battle with a corrupt cattle baron willing to employ criminal methods to cover up the widespread presence of foot and mouth disease among his stock. Complicating matters is the fact that one of the baron’s hired gunmen, a ruthless little piece of work, happens to be the adopted son of Roy’s favorite childhood schoolteacher. Since the gunman’s father was also a criminal, there’s a bit of a morality play in this somewhat forgettable Western, a didactic lesson about raising your children right and not judging sons for the sins of their fathers.

   Still, when all is said and done, Down Dakota Way really just isn’t all that captivating. For a Witney-directed film, I’d expected some better rough and tumble fight choreography. That, too, was sadly lacking.

ZELDA POPKIN – Death Wears a White Gardenia. J. B. Lippincott, hardcover, 1938. Red Arrow Books #5, digest-sized paperback. 1939. Dell #13, paperback, 1943.

   Mary Carner, department-store detective, appeared in five books, of which this is the first. At least in this novel, the store is Jeremiah Blankfort and Company in New York City, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary with an appearance by the Governor’s wife.

   Also adding to the festivities is the discovery of a corpse that turns out to have been Andrew McAndrew, credit manager of Blankfort’s and a chap, it would appear, given to blackmailing married customers who charge items for their girl friends. He also had his own girl friends, one of whom is carrying his child.

   The suspects are limited to those who were working in the store the previous evening before the anniversary celebration, but that is nonetheless a rather large number. McAndrew’s fed-up wife and brother-in-law and a junky but talented shoplifter add to the total.

   Mary Carner is convinced that the murder was committed by an employee of Blankfort’s. That part of the investigation is stymied since the store’s owner will not allow the employees to be questioned until the sale day is over. This is, after all, still in the depths of the Depression, and the department store’s finances are rather rocky.

   Better than Spencer Dean’s department-store mysteries, but not much better. One hopes that Popkin improved in her later novels.

       The Mary Carner (Whittaker) series —

Death Wears a White Gardenia. Lippincott, 1938.
Murder in the Mist. Lippincott, 1940.

Time Off for Murder. Lippincott, 1940.
Dead Man’s Gift. Lippincott, 1941.

No Crime for a Lady. Lippincott, 1942.

   Zelda Popkn wrote two other works of crime fiction, So Much Blood (Lippincott, 1944), and A Death of Innocence (Lippincott, 1971) which was the basis of a TV movie of the same title. (CBS, 1971 with Shelley Winters and Arthur Kennedy).

   For more on the author herself, here’s a link to her Wikipedia page.

WILLIAM HEUMAN – The Range Buster. Gold Medal 429. Paperback original; 1st printing, 1954; 2nd printing, Gold Medal 944, 1959.

   Sometimes it is difficult to find a hook with which to start a review, and this is one of those times. The Range Buster is a totally average western, but one that starts with a bang — Cole Faraday, fresh up from Texas to claim his dead brother’s ranch, is shot at from the house by someone inside with a rifle — and never really lets up until it’s over, with Cole having just prevailed over the bad guys — at great physical damage to himself — and getting the girl he never knew he was dreaming of all those years he was making a living alone.

   What he finds that he’s walking into is a situation that always seems to arise when two big ranchers are competing for a smaller piece of land that has steady source of water — his brother’s — and starting a feud that threatens all of the other smaller ranchers at their mercy down the valley.

   Cole Faraday, skilled with a gun as well as mightily laconic with words, could be played by Clint Eastwood. The owner of one of the big ranches could be played by Lee J. Cobb, while the boss of the Pine Tree, Thalia Mulvane — a tough-minded but outwardly honest woman — well, if Ava Gardner ever was a blonde, she’d fit the part perfectly.

   Playing the gunhand who seems to have a grudge against Cole from the start, none other than Lee Marvin. The other girl, young and wholesome, whom Cole is attracted to, perhaps Gloria Talbot, while Stub McKay, the only remaining cowboy on Cole’s brother’s ranch, well why not Stubby Kaye

   Besides a western, and a solid one at that, William Heuman’s story is also both a romance (see above) and a detective story. Who killed Cole’s brother, or rather, perhaps, who was he working for? The result is not spectacular in any sense, but as you can tell, it might make for a fairly good movie.

Bibliographic Notes:   William Heuman’s career in writing westerns began with the pulp magazines, circa 1944, but when the pulps began to die out and Gold Medal came along, offering writers a new option, the paperback original, Heuman jumped on board almost immediately.

   Here’s tentative list of his work for Gold Medal:

   Soon after he started writing for Gold Medal, Heuman also began writing westerns for Ace and Avon. Eventually his westerns started coming out in hardcover for Avalon, with many of those ending up in paperback as well.

MARY STEWART – The Ivy Tree. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1961. M. S. Mill/William Morrow, US, hardcover, 1961. Fawcett Crest R590, US, paperback, January 1963. Reprinted many times.

   Before beginning properly I need to make a statement: Mary Stewart is one of my favorite writers. She is not one of my favorite women writers, one of my favorite suspense novelists, one of my favorite British writers, or one of any other sub-division. She is Mary Stewart and one my favorite writers and storytellers bar none.

   Don’t expect an even-handed or unbiased review.

   Aside from her brilliant Merlin trilogy her novels — The Moonspinners, My Brother Michael, Airs Above The Ground, The Gabriel Hounds, This Rough Magic, Nine Coaches Waiting, Wild Fire at Midnight — are some of my favorite works of the period she wrote in. She was a superb storyteller in the Buchan and Stevenson tradition as much as that of Daphne duMaurier.

   Ironically I am not a great fan of the woman in danger genre that dates back the the Gothic era of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Beyond the classics like the Bronte’s, Collins, LeFanu, and duMaurier, this is a gray area for me. I’m not a fan of Mary Roberts Rinehart but I like Ethel Lina White; I admire some of Mignon G. Eberhart’s books but don’t want a steady diet of them. I seldom dipped into the lesser Gothic era of the sixties and all those superbly gowned damsels in danger and stormy backgrounds haunting the paperback kiosks. In fact, only if the names Elizabeth Peters are Mary Stewart were among them.

   For that reason The Ivy Tree is an odd one for me to admire so much, because save for Nine Coaches Waiting, it is closest to a standard Gothic of any of her thrillers.

   Taking a note from Daphne DuMaurier (consiously) it opens with one of those lines that will be repeated at the end.

   That quality of writing is another reason I love Stewart.

   Mary Grey is the narrator, she is a Canadian girl, an orphan, living and working in England in a dreary room with an uncertain future, and she is seated on a bit of the old Roman wall, Hadrian’s Wall, running the length of Northumberland, waiting for her lover Adam who lives nearby. It is someone else who shows up though. A wild angry young man who approaches her threateningly: “You’ve got a nerve … haven’t you? After all these years walking in as calm as you please, and in broad daylight!”

   His name is Con Winslow and he soon learns his mistake, she isn’t his hated cousin Annabel Winslow, but she is almost her double. A remarkable resemblance.

   Mary Grey returns to London after her disappointing rendezvous, returns to her dull life, but a knock on her door turns out to be Lisa Dermott, Con’s sister, come to see for herself, and once she has seen with a proposal that seems suited to Mary Grey with no prospects of a future: Become Annabel Winslow. It’s not really fraud, she would only be assuring the right people inherited what they were entitled to.

   There is an estate called Whitescar and it isn’t far from the once fabulous House of Forrest, as in Adam Forrest, the Adam Mary was waiting at on that piece of Roman Wall. There is a prospect of comfort, wealth, even romance. Of course its an absurd idea, but the more Lisa talks the more it seems as if it might work.

   The plot isn’t new. Tey used it in Brat Farrar and du Maurier in The Scapegoat. There are actual incidents like the Anastasia impersonation and the infamous Tichborne Claimant, but Stewart’s skill are such you needn’t worry how she will handle things. Anthony Boucher considered her to be as good as anyone writing thrillers and suspense in her era, and I agree.

   There is the dying old man who has waited for Annabel to return, a stallion called Rowan only Annabel/Mary can ride, and of course Adam will come back at the worst possible moment to provide the catalyst for the tragedy to follow.

   Mary marries Con and together they will be wealthy, but nothing is quite what it seems, and though Mary was waiting for Adam it turns out Mary Grey never met him, he was Annabel’s lover… And the old ivy tree where he once left a note she never saw when she left, a misunderstanding that may be corrected too late. If Adam ever learns her secret, her real secret.

   The ivy tree is the center for much of the novels action and its heart.

   Tension and mystery swirl about her with fate and danger equally at play. Con is insanely jealous and if she isn’t Mary Grey she threatens all his plans for Whitescar and her death would be all too simple. Just a horseshoe in Rowan’s stall. Everyone would assume the wild stallion killed her. After all the animal is unstable dangerous, he could easily turn on his mistress.

   What set Mary Stewart apart from the usual women in danger writers was more than just the quality of her writing, it was her voice, because she wasn’t just a good suspense novelist. Mary Stewart’s voice was that of a female Buchan or Household and when it came to describing the wild places, rough country, and the story of chase and pursuit she was just as sure a hand.

   I suppose it sounds sexist, but as female as her heroines are, there is a practical masculine side to a Mary Stewart heroine. They aren’t prone to hysterics or unfounded fears. They are less likely to jump at a sudden movement in the dark than hit it with something heavy. They think even when they are frightened, and they don’t wait around for anyone on a white horse to rescue them.

   The Mary Stewart heroine isn’t fainting, dainty, or the last one in on what’s happening. That quality separates Stewart from the pack as much as her at time lyric voice. Though different in style, like Helen MacInnes, Stewart was not really part of the woman in danger or romantic suspense sub-genre. She was a first class thriller writer and because there is a timeless quality to her books woven around the past intermingled with the present that means they still read well and hold up today.

   If you have ever read Mary Stewart you’ll want to know what follows.

FOG ISLAND. PRC Pictures, 1945. George Zucco, Lionel Atwill, Jerome Cowan, Sharon Douglas, Veda Ann Borg, John Whitney, Jacqueline DeWit, Ian Keith. Director: Terry O. Morse.

   It’s a bit of a jump from the mega-million conceits of The Firm [reviewed here ] to the marginal virtues of Fog Island, which cost about a buck-ninety-five to churn out and looks it, but here is a film to sink your teeth into; a stylish creaky Old-Dark-House thriller directed at penurious pace by someone named Terry Morse and offering a hand-picked cast of cinematic lesser-knowns including George Zucco, Lionel Atwill, Ian Keith, Veda Ann Borg and Jerome Cowan (best remembered as the short-lived half of the Spade-Archer partnership in The Maltese Falcon) at his slimiest.

   Before going on to rave about this thing, I should add perhaps that by nomic standards, Fog Island doesn’t amount to much. The script makes very little sense at ail, the sets – when there are any – seem about to topple any moment, and the whole affair is served up with a rushed look that seems cheap-jack even by PRC’s bottom-of-the-trash-can standards. But all of this detracts not a whit from the energy and charm of this little effort.

   Indeed they even help. Like the best efforts of Edgar Ulmer (a workhorse in the PRC stable himself), Fog Island amazes the viewer by the very fact of its existence. Watching it is like seeing a derelict car chug its clanking way down a super-highway – you can’t believe it’s actually moving right there in front of you much less understand what Keeps it going.

   For the record, Fog Island concerns itself with the efforts of recently-paroled embezzler Zucco to revenge himself on his unindicted co-conspirators, and their efforts to prise out of him the money they’re sure he squirreled away.

   As the plot unspools, hints are dropped here and there that Zucco and/or some of his cronies may or may not be guilty, but these are mostly left unresolved in the haste to get this thing in the can. What’s left is brilliantly atmospheric and astonishingly grim as Zucco, Atwill et. al. struggle, grasp and claw at each other to see who will emerge Wealthy… or Alive, anyway. Oh there’s a romantic sub-plot stuck in there somewhere, but Director Morse and writer Pierre Gendron (who worked on Ulmer’s masterful Bluebeard) clearly save most of their interest for the Baddies – who are all played by much more interesting actors anyway.

   The big Confrontation scene where Zucco and Atwill pull out all the dramatic stops and hammer away at each other (accent on Ham) with histrionic abandon has – no kidding – Real Chemistry, made all the more compelling by being shot practically in the dark to hide the cheapo sets. With nothing to distract us, the eyes are drawn irresistibly to the spectacle of two full-blooded (to put it mildly) performers face-to face and toe-to-toe in the thespic equivalent of a Knock-down drag-out prize fight.

   After this emotional high point, Fog Island drags,lurches and stumbles a bit to a conclusion that as I say, is surprisingly grim and well-realized for a B-Horror/Mystery Movie. The glimpse of impressive artistry someone heaped on this obscure thing while no one was looking makes me despair of facile, expensive things like The Firm.

   Which is not to say that Fog Island is as entertaining as the other. It isn’t. The only thing it has going for it is the gratuitous energy and enthusiasm of its creators. Which is enough for me.

STEPHEN SOLOMITA – A Good Day to Die. Otto Penzler, hardcover, 1993. No paperback edition.

   Solomita has switched publishers, and given us a new lead after five novels featuring the maverick cop Stanley Moodrow. Roland Means is, like Moodrow, an NYC cop. Means is half Native American, and known as “Mean Mr. Means.” An eighteen year veteran, he has been exiled to Ballistics for his past sins, which are legion.

   He is offered a chance to get back on the street by assisting a black Captain, Vanessa Bouton, in her search for a serial killer known as “Mr. Thong” for reasons too indelicate to detail in this family journal. The NYPD is going crazy trying to catch him, but Bouton has her own ideas, and has gotten permission to form a two-person task force to try them out.

   At the beginning of the book, we see a blind Asian woman abducted by a man and a woman who are obviously psychotic. Can, the reviewer asked breathlessly, these cases be connected?

   This reads like vintage Solomita: hard, fast, and mean. There’s a tinge of Andrew Vachss here, too, due to Means’ background as an abused child, and much talk of many serial killers being similarly abused. The viewpoints alternate between Means and the blind captive, and the story moves along nicely.

   It’s action-adventure, well written and with enough characterization to keep it from being pure escapism; but barely enough, and not all of it struck me as believable. We’ll probably see more of Means and Bouton, though.

[UPDATE] 01-19-15.   There were three more books in Solomita’s Stanley Moodrow series, but Barry guessed incorrectly in his final paragraph. For whatever reason, there was never a second Means and Bouton novel. The remainder of Solomita’s output, continuing through 2014 with The Striver, appears to have been standalones.

RICHARD HIMMEL – The Rich and the Damned. Gold Medal s735, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1958.

   Of the eight novels Richard Himmel wrote for Gold Medal, five of them recounted the adventures of Johnny Maguire, a hard-nosed Chicago-based lawyer who grew up in a working class, blue collar neighborhood. If we can take The Rich and the Damned as being representative of the earlier books, none of which I’ve read at any time less than 40 years ago, he’s still touchy about his background if anyone brings it up.

   I’m not sure how representative this book is, though. It’s the last of the five, and even though the blurb on the front cover says, “Johnny Maguire is back, and once again mixed up with molls, and murder,” there are no molls in this, not a one, and no murder, either. In fact, there not even a crime in this book, even though (from the titles) all of the earlier books had him tackling crime of all kinds and all corners.

   The closest that anything that resembles a crime in The Rich and the Dammed takes place is when a hoodlum from Maguire’s youth has him beaten up in a futile attempt to make him reveal the terms of a industrial mogul’s will after he dies.

   In therein lies the story. Maguire has been a sometimes bedmate with the dead man’s daughter, but she’s not the only person set to inherit. One son (or stepson) is of the prodigal variety, and has been disowned. The other is a scholarly wimp (my word) who suddenly finds some legs to stand on, thanks to a new lady friend, whose eyes are probably more on the father’s fortune. The other daughter has been sheltered from the world, particularly men and it takes all of Maguire’s will power to resist when she begs him to show her what she has been missing.

   The mobster is working on behalf of a competitor trying to take over the company, and the conditions of the will are important. Surprisingly to everyone, the will leaves equal portions of the stock to each of the four, even though it is Rourke, Maguire’s red-headed girl friend, who has ever shown any interest in the company, and in fact it is she who has been running the firm in recent years, having learned the ropes by starting at the bottom.

   And Maguire, respected by all four of the beneficiaries of the will, is the one caught in the middle, and it is his working class background that formulates his philosophies toward the problems of the wealthy and well-heeled. Does he take advantage of the situation and make himself one of them, one of the rich and powerful? Or does he stick to his basic roots and let them go on squabbling and their not-so-merry way?

   Believe it or not, Richard Himmel was a writer good enough to make all of this interesting, very much so. Johnny Maguire makes a decision, and the book ends. What happens from there, we’ll never know. This is the last anyone has heard anything about Johnny Maguire.

Bio-Bibliographic Notes:

    The Johnny Maguire series —

I’ll Find You. Gold Medal, 1950.
The Chinese Keyhole. Gold Medal, 1951.
I Have Gloria Kirby. Gold Medal, 1951.
Two Deaths Must Die. Gold Medal, 1954,
The Rich and the Damned. Gold Medal, 1958.

   There is little to be learned about Johnny Maguire on the Internet. I found a review of I’ll Find You on Bill Crider’s blog, and not much else. I don’t think Bill will mind if I quote from his comments, one line only: “Gangsters are involved, and there’s a murder, but this isn’t really a crime novel. In its own twisted way, it’s a love story in the Gold Medal vein, with the emphasis on speed, with lots of raw emotion, with plenty of melodrama.” Given that statement, maybe I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was at the lack of criminal activity in this book also.

   As for the author himself, I found an online obituary for Richard Himmel to be very interesting. Besides being a writer, Himmel was for most of his life one of the country’s best known interior designers. Truth, believe it or not, is often stranger than fiction.

RAW DEAL. Eagle-Lion Films, 1948. Dennis O’Keefe, Claire Trevor, Marsha Hunt, John Ireland, Raymond Burr. Phototography: John Alton. Director: Anthony Mann.

   Claire Trevor, who narrates the film in her husky, bruised voice, helps O’Keefe escape from prison, and they head for the Big Bad Guy (Burr), taking with them O’Keefe’s sympathetic correspondent, Marsha Hunt.

   The film’s brutality is still startling, especially a scene in which effete gangster Burr, angry at a girl who has spilled liquor on him, ignites a warming-dish and throws it at her face.

The girl is off-camera but the shock of that gesture, in which almost everything is left to the viewer’s imagination, is still powerful.

   O’Keefe is an actor of limited resources, and Hunt is too pert and glossy, but Trevor is very fine as the rejected girl-friend. It’s a film of multiple betrayals, and is less smooth than The Big Combo [reviewed here ], but its very rawness adds to the impact.

STOLEN FACE. Hammer Films, UK, 1952. Paul Henreid, Lizabeth Scott, André Morell, Mary Mackenzie, John Wood, Susan Stephen. Director: Terence Fisher.

   An English thriller with an unmistakably Gothic sensibility, Hammer Films’ Stolen Face stars Paul Henreid as Dr. Philip Ritter, an eminent but lonely physician, a plastic surgeon who believes that his scalpel will lead him down a path of happiness. Lizabeth Scott, in a dual role, portrays Alice Brent, an American pianist with whom Ritter (Henreid) falls in love and the facially reconstructed Lily Conover (Mary Mackenzie), a recidivist criminal.

   Directed by Terence Fisher, Stolen Face is a story of love, loss, and madness. When Ritter he learns Alice has supposedly chosen David (André Morell) over him, he is heartbroken and despondent.

   Enter the scalpel. Dr. Ritter is part of an experimental program at a local prison in which he reconstructs the faces of habitual criminals, sociopathic lowlifes. Give them a new face, a prettier face, a less ugly face and maybe, just maybe they won’t resort to a life of crime.

   If he can’t have the real Alice (Scott), Dr. Ritter will have a simulacrum. He chooses the grotesquely scarred Lily Conover as his target, for she will benefit from his surgery. But the price is that she will have a stolen face — Alice’s face.

   But Dr. Ritter isn’t done just yet. He ups the ante in his Frankenstein game. Not only does he give Lily Conover Alice’s face. He marries her. And let me tell you. It’s a rough marriage, for despite the new outward appearance Lily (now portrayed by Scott) goes back to her old ways, shoplifting, drinking, and chasing men. It’s all enough to put a murderous rage into Dr. Ritter.

   The final scenes of the film could be categorized as noir. There’s a train hurdling through the night, a death, and a tragic ending for one of the main characters.

   All told, Stolen Face is quirky little British thriller, a journey through a man’s descent into despair. It may be a journey where you pretty much know where you’re going from the outset, but it’s still an enjoyable ride.

An inquiry from Bill Bickley:

Hello- I’m trying to identify what book the painting I purchased recently was used on…any ideas?? I thought it was a Mack Bolan or Nick Carter but have gone through most of those covers online to no avail. Do you know or perhaps know someone who has an encyclopedic knowledge of these types of books you can show or post this for others to see and offer opinions/answers?? Thanks!