LADIES THEY TALK ABOUT. Warner Brothers, 1933. Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot, Tully Marshall, Harold Huber, Dorothy Burgess Directed by Howard Bretherton and William Keighley

   Made on the cusp of the code, this one is almost as tough as it wants to be, with Stanwyck as Nan Taylor, a smart moll who ends up in San Quentin for a bank robbery she aided a hood named Don (Lyle Talbot) in committing.

   This is typical women in prison, and exactly what you would expect from Warners in this era. Stanwyck sets up to con radio crusading do-gooder David Slade (Preston Foster) in order to keep out of prison, and he arranges for her pardon to keep her from prison and falls for her (mutually). But when he finds out she was conning him originally the sanctimonious fool refuses to vouch for her, and she is off to prison. Now the idiot realizes he loves her but it’s too late.

   Apparently women who look like Stanwyck are disposable in his life.

   Foster does what he can with Slade, but among all these colorful types, Clark Gable couldn’t make him anything but a stiff. Casting a tough guy like Foster helps, just not enough.

   I should point out I’m editorializing. The film is much kinder to the noble Slade. I personally found him a huge pain in the lower rear anatomy. Dumb and sanctimonious, the perfect hero.

   Prison is the usual Grand Hotel collection of types: the Duchess, the grand dame of the place who put ground glass in a rival’s food; the aging madam who ran a ‘beauty parlor’; the cigar smoking butch, the rival who will do anything to keep Stanwyck from Slade; and of course the instant best friend (Dorothy Burgess).

   The women’s wing of San Quentin is no cake-walk, but it’s damn glamorous for a prison. There is no shortage of sheer nighties, baby dolls, frilly undies, make up, perms, nylons, suspender belts, and high heels. Save for the ‘butch’ (“Watch out, she likes to wrestle”) there’s not a sensible flat heel in the joint.

   Hard hitting realism, Hollywood style.

   An embittered Stanwyck helps Don (Talbot) and pal Dutch (Huber) plan an escape, and when Dave visits even slips a note in his pocket for him to mail unwittingly helping. When the escape goes wrong and Don is killed she thinks Dave found the note and betrayed her. She swears to kill him.

   When she’s released (short sentences for bank robbery back then) she tracks Dave down to a revival where he is speaking. There she gets him alone and shoots him, but then realizes she loves him and he didn’t betray her. You know how women with guns are. He’s willing to forget the bullet, he loves her, but plainclothes cop Tracy shows up (Tully Marshall, and it’s a full year before Plainclothes Dick appeared in the Chicago Tribune).

   â€œYou ought to have that seen to … gunshots can be tricky,” but suspicion or not, Dave finally grows a pair and stands by his woman. Final clench and they live happily ever after producing little jail birds and revivalists — after a proper period of marital bliss of course. Considering Nan, they better wait at least three years, she is clearly a lady they talk about.

   Ladies They Talk About is a typical little Warner’s picture from the era, with Stanwyck always good in these tough but vulnerable broad roles. Like her, the movie is smart, quick, sassy, and nice to look at.

   The problem is she is alone in this film. There is no one here who can match her. She’s Stanwyck, and at best they are Preston Foster and Lyle Talbot. I like both actors, but matching them up with Stanwyck is like putting Pee Wee Herman in the ring with Ali. They don’t stand a chance in hell. This is a bit lightweight for Warners from this era, not quite one thing or another, and leaves Stanwyck standing center ring alone for most of the movie.

   Bette Davis could have at least loaned her George Brent.

   That said, if you buy the happy moral ending, no doubt code imposed, I have some land in New Mexico next to the White Sands testing grounds you might want to purchase. Nice place save for the black glass.

   Stanwyck’s Nan Taylor is always going to be smarter, classier, and more volatile than her bland do-gooder reformer. Even in a pinafore, gingham, and a pink bow you know Nan will have a flask under her garter and be sneaking cigarettes when Dave isn’t looking. While Dave leads revivals Nan’s going to be nostalgic for bathtub gin, speakeasies, and flash types she used to twirl around her fingers. It’s hard to imagine the pious women of Dave’s revivalist movement are going to welcome an ex-con who matriculated at San Quentin to the fold.

   But then, come to think of it, considering the wan, pale, types Dave spends most of his time with, maybe he’s a very lucky man to come home to Nan’s flash and hidden cigarettes. What’s a little bullet now and then compared to love?

   At least she won’t be dull, and at a fast sixty nine minutes neither is the movie.

GEORGES SIMENON – My Friend Maigret. H. Hamilton, UK, hardcover, 1966. Published in the US as Methods of Maigret: Doubleday, hardcover, 1957. Translation of Mon Ami Maigret (France, 1949). Reprinted several times in both hardcover and paperback, including Penguin, 2007 (shown).

   I had pretty high expectations going into My Friend Maigret. I generally like Georges Simenon’s prose, his characters, and the general bleak, world-weary atmospherics he is able to convey in a sparse amount of words.

   But I have to admit that I was fairly disappointed by this particular installment of the author’s Inspector Maigret novels. The suspects are not particularly well-developed as characters, and there’s really not all that much of a mystery. And it’s just difficult to feel much sympathy for the victim.

   In My Friend Maigret, our eponymous pipe-smoking policeman travels to an island off the French coast. His mission: to discover who killed a man who, not too soon before his death, publicly declared Maigret to be one of his friends. And not merely any man, no. A former rough sort criminal, one of the many men caught up in Maigret’s nets over the years. The trail ultimately leads him to a forgery ring hiding in plain sight.

   Joining the Parisian inspector on his journey is an Englishman, one Mr. Pyke from Scotland Yard. The contrast between these two investigators, separated culturally by the stormy English Channel, makes My Friend Maigret worth a look. But I doubt many readers would consider it one of best Inspector Maigret stories.

  D. B. OLSEN – Cats Don’t Smile. Doubleday Doran/Crime Club, hardcover, 1945. Mystery Novel Classic #93, digest-sized paperback, no date. Reprinted in Two Complete Detective Books, January 1946 (with She Fell Among Actors, by James Warren).

   Rachel and Jennifer Murdock, whose exploits — if Jennifer can be said to engage in exploits — Olsen has chronicled before and after this novel, go to Sacramento, Calif., to house-sit for Cousin Julia, who for reasons she doesn’t explain must leave the house and does not want her roomers left alone together.

   Miss Rachel is the active one of the pair, and she embroils herself in the roomers’ affairs and those of the next-door neighbors. Before she can meddle much, though, one of the roomers is murdered.

   For those who enjoy little-old-lady detectives, this should be a pleasing mystery, particularly if active lol’s are preferred. For my part, I have always thought Jane Marple was the perfect type. Not for her the burglary at dead of night or skulking in gardens eluding who knows what.

   The motive for murder is both interesting and unusual. However, I had difficulty in accepting the murderer, for reasons which I won’t go into since it would give away the murderer’s identity. Warning: Cat lovers may be upset by one of the incidents in the novel.

   (D. B. Olsen is a pseudonym of Dolores Hitchens.)

Bibliographic Note:   The Murdock sisters, Jennifer and Rachel, appeared in thirteen mystery novels by D. B. Olsen between 1939 and 1956, all with “Cat” somehow worked in to the titles and all published by Doubleday and their Crime Club imprint. Cats in detective stories is not a new idea.

“ACCORDING TO HOYLE.” An episode of Maverick, 6 Oct 1957 (Season One, Episode 3). Based on the story “A Lady Comes to Texas,” by Horace McCoy. James Garner. Guest Cast: Diane Brewster, Leo Gordon, Jay Novello, Ted de Corsia, Esther Dale, Tol Avery. Producer: Roy Huggins. Director: Budd Boetticher.

   When Maverick gets beaten, badly, in a poker game, by a woman, no less, he has has to wonder how, especially when she’s such a bad player. When he gets beaten again, but only by a strict following of the rules as laid down by Edmond Hoyle, he has to wonder why. Why him?

   There are a lot of twists and turns that follow, in this the third episode, and the first that really begins to define the character of Bret Maverick. Each of the first three episodes were directed by Budd Boetticher, and this was to be his last. What is striking is how great an emphasis was placed on Maverick’s honesty. He might take delight in taking money at the poker table, it is understood, but only according to the rules, and all the more so if the losers deserved it.

   I don’t know the rules of poker all that well. Whenever I’ve played, I know the basics, and otherwise let the other players tell me the rules as we go along. I lose a lot of hands that way. In any case, I had to look it up on the Internet to see if the rule quoted in this case was legit, and alas, it is not quite so. Here’s a webpage that will tell you all you want to know about that.

   But even if a bit flawed, the story itself is a lot of fun to watch, and I have a feeling this is the episode that helped the series catch on. The lady gambler who bests Maverick twice but not the third time, Samantha Crawford (Diane Brewster) has a devious mind behind that pretty face, and watching her at work is a pleasure.

   The character proved to be so popular that she was brought back as a friendly but worthy adversary for Maverick to deal with in several future episodes.

   There is one question I have that I haven’t found the answer to yet on the Internet. There is a scene toward the end of this episode in which one hell of a fight breaks out in a saloon, practically smashing it bits. The scene was taken, I’m sure, from some other old movie I’ve watched recently, and it will come to me, eventually.

   [Later: It may be Dodge City (1939), which I thought either Jon or I had reviewed for this blog, but apparently not. I’m going to have to watch the movie again, but the fact that the film was also a Warner Brothers production is a strong factor in its favor.]

   One other thing. I have not tracked down any other reference to the story by Horace McCoy this movie is supposed to have been based on. I suspect, without anything more than a guess to to support my hypothesis, that the story in question may be the one also by McCoy that Texas Lady (1955) was based on. That one starred Claudette Colbert in the role that Diane Brewster plays in this Maverick episode. From the synopsis found on Wikipedia, the openings are almost exactly the same.

“PLAYING FOR THE ASHES.” An episode of The Inspector Lynley Mysteries. BBC television: Season Two, Episode One, 10 March 2003. Shown on PBS television in the US. Nathaniel Parker, Sharon Small, Lesley Vickerage, with Clare Swinburne, Phylllis Logan, Joe Duttine, Neve McIntosh, Curtis Flowers. Based on the novel by Elizabeth George. Director: Richard Spence.

   This is the first of the second season as shown in England in March 2003. It’s not quite clear to me yet, but I believe that each season has consisted of a month’s worth of four adaptations of Elizabeth George’s novels, following a one-shot pilot show which appeared in 2001. [Season Six, 2007, the final season, had only two episodes.]

   In the US they’ve been shown as part of the PBS Mystery! series, and this sample of size one was enough to show me that they’re hands-down better than 99% of the mystery and detective fare that US networks provide.

   Not that I have ever read any of the books they’re based on. They’re huge, and sometimes I intimidate easily. Truth be told, though, I tried one and (a rarity for me) I stopped after two or three chapters, thinking the book to be only one of those gloomy class-based rants where one’s socio-economic status is the primary factor in one’s standing with the rest of the populace.

   Well, it could be that I was right, but if I’m wrong, you can tell me. All I’ll do is to promise that I’ll go back and read another as soon as I can, either way. I have the feeling, though, since the paperback version of this particular book consists of over 700 pages of small print, and the TV movie is only 90 minutes long – well, they couldn’t have gotten it all in, could they? So they streamlined the story (I’m assuming) and concentrated mostly on the mystery – the mysterious death by fire of a soccer star who’d been having problems recently, domestic and otherwise.

   There are class differences between Lynley (Nathaniel Parker) and his partner in investigation, Sgt. Barbara Havers (Sharon Small), to be sure, emphasized by the fact that I had to concentrate quite a bit to follow the [lower class] accent of the chirpy Havers. The soccer star was black, his wife white (Swinburne) and their son Jimmy (Flowers) in this hugely dysfunctional family is an emotional mess, and he is the one who confesses to the murder. (Lynley doesn’t believe him.)

   The soccer star’s benefactor, the wealthy Miriam Whitelaw (Logan) has an estranged daughter Olivia who is even more of a mess, doing tricks on the street, doing drugs, and doing things for the pro-animal activists led by Chris Farraday (Duttine), who has taken Olivia in off the streets for his own reasons.

   So, OK, there’s still enough socio-economic differences between all of these people to make a pretty good book, even without the mystery, but the detective work is solid and well above average in competency, and that’s what will have me coming back for more. The rest is a bonus, and altogether it makes for an excellent hour-and-a-half’s worth of entertainment.

   Definitely a highlight: Neve McIntosh’s performance as the mostly distraught and definitely disturbed daughter. Somewhat puzzling: Lynley’s attraction to case profiler Helen Clyde (Lesley Vickerage). There’s no chemistry between them at all, and she makes her disagreements with him on the investigation seem as much personal as they are professional.

[UPDATE] 01-12-15.   Note that two additions to the original text, which appeared in one the paper editions of Mystery*File, which issue not known at this time, appear in brackets.