THE MANDARIN MYSTERY. Republic Pictures, 1936. Eddie Quillan (Ellery Queen), Charlotte Henry, Rita La Roy, Wade Boteler (Inspector Queen), Franklin Pangborn, George Irving, Kay Hughes, William Newell. Based on the novel The Chinese Orange Mystery by Ellery Queen. Director: Ralph Staub.
Currently streaming on Amazon Prime and YouTube (see below, but I think the running time on the latter has been cut).
Remarkably enough, the actor who plays Ellery Queen in the bottom basement of a movie has the same initials, but alas he has absolutely no other credentials for playing the role. Eddie Quillan had a long successful career in making movies and in television, but in The Manadarin Mystery he plays the part of Ellery Queen as a brainless twit, more interested in getting a date with the girl in the leading role than solving a mystery.
The girl being Charlotte Henry as Josephine Temple, owner of a rare, one-of-a-kind Chinese stamp worth thousands of dollars, and that was back in 1936. Obviously with a small piece of paper worth that kind of money, there are many others who wouldn’t mind having their hands on it, and one of them does so badly that they don’t mind committing a couple of murders to accomplish it.
The movie follows the book, sort of, with a dead man found in a room with with his jacket on backwards and held upright with two long poles through his clothes. But with a running time of just over an hour, there’s no way to stuff all the complexities of the original text in, and the whole affair ends up being, in technical terms, a muddled mess.
I can’t tell you to whom this movie was meant to appeal to, but it certainly wasn’t those who read and enjoyed the early day Ellery Queen books, written about strange mysterious affairs, true, but with clues and alibis that really meant something.
Nothing at all like that here. Only cheap banter and little more. When I say “avoid,†I mean it.
BEHIND GREEN LIGHTS. 20th Century Fox, 1946. Carole Landis, William Gargan, Richard Crane, Mary Anderson, John Ireland, Charles Russell, Roy Roberts, Don Beddoe, Bernard Nedell. Screenplay: W. Scott Darling & Charles G. Booth. Director: Otto Brower. Currently streaming on YouTube (see below) and Amazon Prime.
There really is a PI in this movie, but his part is so small that the actor who plays him (Bernard Nedell) does not even get on-screen credit. Besides being a PI, he also dabbles in blackmail on the side, which makes him an ideal victim of a blackmailee as well, making his role in the film exceedingly small.. Quite remarkably his body is found in a car left in front of the local police station, which causes the lieutenant in charge (William Gargan) all kinds of problems.
It seems as though a young girl (Carole Landis), who is the daughter of the reform candidate for mayor in an upcoming election, had an appointment with the dead man just before his body was found, and all kinds of political pressure is placed on the cops to book her, at least for being under suspicion, if not for the murder itself.
The pacing is fast. I think the whole movie takes place all in one night, without much of a letup. It’s a black-and-white crime movie, so it’s probably called a noir film by viewers who don’t know better, but it isn’t. Well, I’ll take that back. The lighting and the camera work is often the same as in true film noir.
What makes the movie really enjoyable, though, is the acting and story line, both glossier and more professional than for any of the so-called Poverty Row productions. That’s what having a movie produced by 20th Century fox will do for it. As for the two leads, I confess I do not see William Gargan as a leading man in any film that has a hint of romance in it (and yes, it’s there), but any movie graced by the presence of Carole Landis in it makes it very easy to recommend this one.
PostScript: I do not know from whence the title comes. Perhaps the lights in the globes beside the front door of the police station are green, but who would know in a black-and-white movie?
This is not really a review because what use is there of talking about a good old-fashioned game of charades? On one side are the challengers: Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale, William Hopper, and William Talman, versus the Stump the Stars All-Stars: Sebastian Cabot, Hans Conried, Beverly Garland, and Ross Martin.
A good time was had by all, including me, when I watched this last night.
Nero Wolfe on Page and (Small U.S.) Screen:
“Immune to Murder”
by Matthew R. Bradley
Three for the Chair (1957) is a somewhat transitional work, containing the last two Nero Wolfe novellas originally published in The American Magazine — as all others had been: “Immune to Murder†(November 1955) and “A Window for Death†(as “Nero Wolfe and the Vanishing Clue,†May 1956). Rex Stout’s longtime outlet ceased publication with its August 1956 issue, so “Too Many Detectives†(September 14, 1956) debuted in Collier’s(which ironically followed suit soon after). “Window†concerns a murder committed in the Churchill Towers, and thus occasions mentions of “Tim Evarts, assistant house dick, security officer to you,†although Archie himself later repeats the “house dick†reference.
“Detectives†also marks the first appearance in the canon proper of early female P.I. and occasional employee Theodolinda “Dol†Bonner, who after a solo effort, The Hand in the Glove(1937), figured in the Tecumseh Fox novel Bad for Business (1940), but ended up on the cutting-room floor when the latter was rewritten as the Wolfe novella “Bitter End†(1940).
“I am against female detectives on principle,†Archie begins, but “there are times when a principle should take a nap, and that was one of them.†In Albany, he meets Dol and operative Sally Colt when all 590 private detectives licensed by the state, including a typically tetchy Wolfe, are summoned for questioning due to the “wiretapping scandals.â€
Three confreres from the Association of Licensed Private Detectives of New York State (ALPDNYS) — Steve Amsel (fired by Del Bascom), Jay Kerr, and Harland Ide — are also waiting to follow as Albert Hyatt, a special deputy of the secretary of state, questions our heroes. A man purporting to be Otis Ross had hired them to tap his own phone, which is legal, and disappeared when they learned he was not; Hyatt tells Wolfe he has a surprise, and gets one himself when the client, waiting in another room, is found strangled. Leon Groom, Albany’s chief of detectives, arrests them as material witnesses in the murder of William A. Donahue, who claimed Wolfe knew his identity…and that the tap was illegal.
“Immune†finds Wolfe and Archie as guests at River Bend, the Adirondacks mountain lodge of Hemisphere Oil Co. (Hemoco) tycoon O.V. Bragan, at the request of Assistant Secretary of State David M. Leeson; Ambassador Theodore Kelefy, of “a foreign country with which our country wanted to make a deal,†has asked to catch a brook trout and have it cooked by Wolfe. A friend/advisor, financier Spiros Papps, identifies the others as oil-syndicate representative James Arthur Ferris and spouses Sally Leeson and Adria Kelefy. One of the five anglers doesn’t get to sample the baked brook trout Montbarry: Leeson, whom Archie finds in the river, his skull smashed in, while landing his own “supertrout.â€
Noting that the Kelefys and Papp enjoy “diplomatic immunity from arrest or detention,†D.A. Jasper Colvin says the evidence points to murder by somebody at the lodge, with a club from the woodpile, and the obvious inference a connection with the rivalry between Bragan and Ferris over Kelefy’s oil rights. Wolfe (weight-watch: Archie specifies his as 278 lbs.), who refuses to explain why the 20 trout he cooked included none caught by the ambassador — as verified by cook Michael Samek — wants only to go home. As all await the arrival of state A.G. Herman Jessel, Wolfe reluctantly tells Kelefy, “it amuses me to twist the tails of highly placed persons…I thought it would be nice touch of mockery…â€
Wolfe tells Jessel, Colvin, and Sheriff Nate Dell he’s ready to identify the murderer, but only with everyone present — and after a call to the Secretary of State, in which he reveals the true reason: Kelefy’s trout had been caught prior to the others, allowing him time for the murder. Having conferred by phone (in French, as a trooper listened) with Parker, he knew he might risk imprisonment if Kelefy were maltreated by “officers of the law,†thus the call to Washington. The motive is revealed to have no “relation to his public mission or the negotiations†but was purely personal, as Sally confirms that her husband had been seduced by Adria while he was the embassy secretary in their unnamed fictional country.
Directed by John R. Pepper, and also broadcast in a double-length international version, “Immune to Murder†(8/18/02) was the final episode of A Nero Wolfe Mystery, and the only one adapted by Stuart Kaminsky. The prolific, Edgar Award-winning novelist, film professor/biographer, Mystery Writers of America president, and occasional scenarist — e.g., Sergio Leone’s Once upon a Time in America (1984) — specifies Kelefy (Giancarlo Esposito) as the “Vezenhuegan ambassador.†Local law has been scrambled somewhat, with Colvin, Dell, trooper Lt. Hopp, and Jessel recombined into Captain Colvin Jasper (sic; Richard Waugh), trooper Nate (Matthew Edison), and D.A. Jessel (Steve Cumyn).
A faux news report kicks off the episode, identifying Bragan (David Schurmann), Ferris (Seymour Cassel, previously seen in “Before I Die†[6/16/02]), and Papps (Carlo Rota), on camera. A reporter (Adam Reid) interviews Leeson (Robert Bockstael), who calls the gathering “an experiment on how being in nature — away from the secretaries, the pens and paper, [and the] long tables of formal diplomacy…may actually be able to change people’s minds,†explicitly compared with Ike’s then-imminent use of Camp David. In his narration, Archie (Timothy Hutton) notes that, “Twenty years ago…Wolfe [Maury Chaykin] got the papers that made him a U.S. citizen,†and thus agreed out of gratitude.
Here, Papps has a predetermined “migraine,†sitting out the angling with Sally (Susannah Hoffmann) and Adria (Manon von Gerkan), as the Cook (George Plimpton) makes an ill-advised joke to Wolfe about his recipe requiring salt and onion. The credits are typically careless: Waugh’s character is addressed as Captain Colvin in the dialogue, and Cassel’s identified as, respectively, “Janus†and “James†in the opening and closing titles. Sadly, the series does not end on a high note, with pervasive scenery-chewing by, e.g., Waugh, Schurmann, and even Chaykin, as he bellows (via Kaminsky, not Rex Stout) about being in “a nightmare, dime-store, frontier theme park filled with bacteria-infested animals…â€
DASHIELL HAMMETT – The Dain Curse. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1929. Reprinted many times since, in both hardcover and paperback. TV mini-series: CBS 1978 (starring James Coburn as “Hamilton Nash”).
The Dain Curse is a bad novel cobbled together from four interlinked stories from Black Mask. I disliked the novel when I first read it many years ago. Then after a recent debate on the Rara-Avis listserve about its merits, I resolved to read it again. This time reading the four stories as originally published to see if that improved my experience. It didn’t.
Taking the four stories separately, however, there are some ebbs and flows of merit. It is Hammett after all. And bad Hammett is still better than a lot of stuff out there. I just wouldn’t recommend a re-read is all.
Story 1: “Black Lives.” (Black Mask, November 1928)
The Continental OP is hired by an insurance company to investigate stolen diamonds. Edgar Leggett had been loaned the diamonds by a local jeweler for the purpose of conducting some experiments adding hue to the stones. The OP begins to suspect that there’s something fishy about the so called theft.
And bad things happen to Leggett and his family. Leggett’s daughter, Gabrielle, is informed by her step mother that all of the badness can be traced to a family curse (her mother’s maiden name was Dain): The Dain Curse: “[Y]ou’re cursed with the same rotten soul and black blood…all the Dains have had, you’re cursed with your mother’s death on your hands before you were five; you’re cursed with the warped mind and the need for drugs that I’ve given you in pay for your silly love since you were a baby. Your life will be black as…mine [was] black; the lives of those you touch will be black”.
In the end the OP solves the crime of the missing diamonds, the insurance company is happy. But the Dain Curse remains!!
Story 2: “The Hollow Temple.” (Black Mask, December 1928)
Story 4: “Black Riddle.” (Black Mask, February 1929)
The so called riddle is this: If you don’t believe in Dain curses, why are all these bad things happening to Gabrielle Leggett? In this horribly told story, the OP mansplains for all to hear the solution to the three prior stories.
He doesn’t show us. He tells us. Giving us a bunch of undisclosed information based on unsupported guesswork that just so happens to be completely right and confessed to by the criminal mastermind. It’s absolutely the worst kind of ending of a mystery. No fair play. No show don’t tell. Just a boring dispositive lecture telling you the answer in a terribly unsatisfying way.
—
So yeah. Hated it. Almost couldn’t finish it. Upon starting the book I immediately remembered who the ‘criminal mastermind’ was. This made my experience of the book infinitely worse as I could witness the lack of fair play in real time as the story unfolded.
If Fast One is ODTAA (thanks, Roger) – -for whatever reason Hammett eschews ODTAA, insisting on a criminal mastermind to tie all of the miscreants and their collective miscreantry together. It’s an unnecessary conceit that spoils the whole thing. Ironically the curse of the Dain Curse is that there’s no Dain Curse.
If Hammett had simply allowed the curse to linger all might have been okay. But Hammett takes such pains to dispel the curse that he destroys whatever mystery is left. Rather than solving the case, the whole thing crumbles in a monologue that neatly ties up everything in a bow. But what results is neither trick nor treat. Turns out the Dain Curse is the cursed book itself.
I’ve lost a lot of time and energy to a stubborn UTI since Thursday, but after being on meds since Friday, I think my wheels are finally back on track. Back in action soon!
(*) If you don’t know what a UTI is, incurred by me following a semi-annual bladder checkup the week before, you can Google it. But even if you do know, what I know is that you don’t want to have one…
EMMA LATHEN – Brewing Up a Storm. John Putnam Thatcher #23. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1996. Harper, paperback, 1998.
Just in case there is anyone left who doesn’t now that Emma Lathen is really Mary Latsis and Martha Henissart, now you do.
Thatcher, Senior VP of Sloan Guaranty & Trust, finds himself in the middle of trouble again when one of the bank’s clients, a brewer of beer both alcoholic and non-, finds itself targeted by an organization against youthful drinking which seems to feel that the brewer is deliberately trying to lead the youth of America from one of its products to the other.
The leader of the organization is a lady who is something of a loose cannon who is in the process of alienating everyone she comes in contact with, friend or foe. The campaign attracts the attention of politicians, special interest groups, and all sorts of other people, and feelings run high. Then there’s a murder.
I like Emma Lathen’s books. Always have. They are predictable in their format, but they are well and smoothly written, and the business backgrounds are always well researched and interesting. Thatcher is not a Great Detective, and indeed is probably not on stage over half the time, if that. After having lurked around the edges for most of the book, though, he usually has a flash of insight that helps bring the case to an end. Good, dependable stuff, and this is one of the better.
— Reprinted from Ah Sweet Mysteries #26, July 1996.
ROBERT SILVERBERG – The Time Hoppers. Doubleday & Co., hardcover, 1967. Avon S372, paperback, October 1968; cover art by Don Punchatz. Belmont Tower, paperback, 1974. Ace, paperback, 1982. Expansion of the story “Hopper,” which first appeared in Infinity Science Fiction, October 1956, and was collected in Next Stop the Stars (Ace Double F-145, 1962).
Quellen, a minor bureaucrat in the Secretariat of Crime, found his own solution to the overcrowded conditions of the world in the year 2490: a secret illegal hideaway in Africa. But others have resorted to time travel as an answer to their problems, and Quellen is assigned the job of stopping the hoppers without disturbing the stability of the present time.
There are the usual paradoxes which are brought out, [and] the obvious course of action occurs soon enough, but there is more. Mankind is becoming dehumanized with the intolerable masses of people. Unspeakable crimes and customs are common, sore of a preliminary interlude before the world of Archexecutive Shale in “Pity about Earth” (Report 93), but here they are more forcefully realized. Time travel has this time become the background to an excellent picture of despair.
Devoted to mystery and detective fiction — the books, the films, the authors, and those who read, watch, collect and make annotated lists of them. All uncredited posts are by me, Steve Lewis.
