Sat 25 Jul 2009
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS review: MARCO PAGE – Fast Company.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[4] Comments
by Bruce Taylor:
MARCO PAGE – Fast Company. Dodd Mead, hardcover, March 1938. Pocket #222, paperback; 1st printing, July 1943; Paperback Library 52-192, ca.1962. Film: MGM, 1938 (scw: Marco Page, Harold Tarshis; dir: Edward Buzzell).
Harry Kurnitz (a.k.a. Marco Page) will be remembered, if at all, as a screen writer. He penned the weakest of the Thin Man films — The Thin Man Goes Home (1944 ) — but partially redeemed himself in 1957 with his excellent script for the screen adaptation of Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution.
His novels, including the bibliomystery Fast Company, have sunk into a more or less deserved obscurity. In this novel, rare-book dealer and part-time sleuth Joel Glass teams up with his wife, Garda, to solve the murder (referred to as “the blessed event”) of a much hated fellow New York book dealer.
It seems there are two main suspects in the killing of Abe Selig. The prime suspect is Ned Morgan, a former assistant of Selig’s, who happens to be a convicted book thief recently paroled from prison. Suspect number two is everybody else who ever met Ab Selig.
There are several other murders, and rare books keep disappearing and reappearing, but it’s all rather ordinary. There are some interesting glimpses into the world of rare books and book forgery.
There is even an occasional good line: “[He] had an alibi tighter than a Scotch auditor…”
But the parts add up to less than the whole. The plot is predictable and doesn’t begin to live up to the “hard-boiled” promise of the dust jacket.
Fast Company was the winner of the 1938 Red Badge Best First Mystery Prize, which says something about the quality of the competition that year. It was made into a movie called Fast and Loose that same year (screenplay by the author) — an obvious attempt to capitalize on the success of the Thin Man series. The movie version isn’t very good either.
The other Marco Page novels are The Shadowy Third (1946), which also has a New York setting; and Reclining Figure (1952), which takes place in California.
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
Editorial Comments: An earlier review of Fast Company by Bob Schneider appears here on the blog.
Question: It seems obvious that the movie Fast Company (MGM, 1938) was based on the book, and that’s the only one I’ve included in the bibliographic details so far. (See above.)
But both Al Hubin (in the Revised Crime Fiction IV) and Bruce Taylor say that Fast and Loose (MGM, 1939) was also based on Fast Company. Can both movies, made so close together, be based on the same book?
There was a third film in the same series, Fast and Furious (MGM, 1939). What’s remarkable about the three films is that they all had the same leading characters, Joel and Garda Sloane, but in each of the three outings there was a different pair of Hollywood stars playing the parts.
In order: Melvyn Douglas & Florence Rice; Robert Montgomery & Rosalind Russell; and Franchot Tone & Ann Sothern. I have all three on tape, probably from TCM at various times over the years, but I’ve yet to watch one.
[UPDATE] 08-08-09. On the ‘Golden Age of Detection’ group on Yahoo, Monte Herridge left the following comment:
“It may never have been published in hardback, but at least there is a sequel for those interested.
“The cover of Argosy for 2/25/39 describes the novel as ‘The Newest Hit from Hollywood!'”
And the release date for the film, for which Page (as Kurnitz) was the screenwriter, was 17 February 1939, making it difficult to say which came first, the novel or the screenplay. What you have to wonder the most about, though, is why the serial in Argosy was never published in book form.
July 25th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Kurnitz wrote the orignial story for Fast and Loose, not based on his novel Fast Company, and the screenplay for Fast and Furious.
MGM was looking for a companion series to the Thin Man and trying out various teams to hopefully have the same impact as William Powell and Myrna Loy. They also tried Van Heflin and Virginia Gray in Grand Central Murder, Robert Montgomery and Constance Bennett as Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane in Haunted Honeymoon (British made but released by MGM), Mr.and Mrs. North with Gracie Allen, and a few lesser efforts that all failed.
Fast Company and Fast and Loose are played very much in the Thin Man manner, though the humor in Fast and Furious with Franchot Tone and Ann Southern is somewhat whackier with an escaped lion in a hotel among the plot elements.
A number of other studios tried the same thing but with no success in everything from A pictures to poverty row programmers. Probably the most interesting was Remember Last Night with Robert Young and Constance Cummings,based on Adam Hobhouse’s novel and replete with a minstrel show in black face, but fascinating to watch because of the stylistic touches of director James Whale.
Despite writing the last two lesser Thin Man outings Kuntiz had a major screenwriting career including penning I Love You Again, They Got Me Covered, One Touch of Venus, The Adventures of Don Juan, A Kiss in the Dark, The Inspector General, The Man Between (for Carol Reed), Land of the Pharaohs (for Howard Hawks with William Faulkner among others), Witness for the Prosecution, Surprise Package (based on Art Buchwald’s satiric caper novel), Hatari, and based on his play Shot in the Dark the best of the Pink Panther films.
Like the Page novels or the two Thin Man films he wrote or not he had a major screenwriting career including at least three outstanding films, The Man Between, Witness for the Prosecution, and Shot in the Dark.
The Marco Page books weren’t really meant as hard boiled in the sense we may mean today though they used the wiseacre American voice and many elements of the genre. Page is closer to Latimer, Homes, Craig Rice, and Kurt Steel than to Hammett or Chandler. His books tend to be plot oriented with some touches of the fair play mystery. The Page books probably have more in common with Erle Stanley Gardner’s A.A. Fair Lam and Cool books or Rex Stout’s books than they do with Hammett, Chandler, or James M.Cain. A number of writers wrote these hybrid hard boiled mysteries including George Harmon Coxe, Dwight Babcock, and Hugh Pentecost.
I like the books and movies much better than these reviews may suggest someone might, and would recommend Reclining Figure and The Shadowy Third to anyone wanting to sample the Page novels.
Reclining Figure was dramatized in 1957 as an episode of Robert Montgomery Summer Theater.
July 25th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
David
Just as I suspected, and thanks for confirming it: only the first of the “Fast” films was based on the book. I’ll pass the word along to Al Hubin. He may research it some more, but I’m 99 and nine 9’s percent sure that you’re right.
Lightning was caught in a bottle only with the Thin Man films, and as good as the other pairings might have been, I think William Powell and Myrna Loy had a lot to do with it.
Of the imitation ones you mention, I think only the one with Gracie Allen has been written up on this blog: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=946
But maybe The Patient in Room 18, based on the Mignon G. Eberhart novel, would qualify: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=930
Of the other Harry Kurnitz movies, I don’t think any of them have been reviewed here. I will have to do something about that!
July 25th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Re the Thin Man magic they even tried teaming Powell with Ginger Rogers (Star of Midnight) and Jean Arthur (The Ex Mrs. Bradford), both good, but not the magic of the Nick and Nora films.
Other attempts included Loretta Young and Brian Aherne as Halia and Jeff Troy (Remember the Night), The Bermuda Mystery (reviewed here on the blog), Lady in Scarlet with Reginald Denny and Patrica Farr, and a couple of Brit films such as This Man is News and Francis Durbridge’s long running series about Paul Temple and his wife Steve (Stephanie) on radio and television, and in comic strips and films.
I’m sure there are others. Thin Man like elements show up in The Strange Case of Dr. Rx with Patric Knowles and Anne Gwynne. To some extent the reason for the Nikki Porter character in the Ellery Queen films was an attempt to cash in on a Thin Man style set up, as was the running gag of Bulldog Drummond’s postponed marriage in the John Howard series. You could even say that when Howard Hawks made Hildy Johnson a woman in His Girl Friday he was taking advantage of basic Thin Man concept, while the banter between George Brent and Bette Davis in Front Page Woman owes something to the Nick and Nora style byplay.
Errol Flynn and Brenda Marshall ended Footsteps in the Dark with a hint of shared adventures to come and certainly that was the idea behind Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck in The Mad Miss Manton. There is a distinct Thin Man pace to Big Brown Eyes with Cary Grant and Joan Bennett. MGM even tried to turn Philo Vance into a Nick and Nora clone with Paul Lukas and Rosalind Russell in The Casino Murder Case. Having A Wonderful Crime (reviewed here) took it one step further throwing Pat O’Brien’s John J. Malone into the mix with George Murphy and Carole Landis Jake and Helene Justus.
I suppose we should all just be grateful that no one in Hollywood read Rex Stout’s “Watson Was a Woman.”
July 25th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Now that’s what I call a long list of watchable movies. Even if none of them completely captured the flair and style of the Thin Man movies, I don’t think there’s one of them that isn’t worth a movie fan’s time of day — or evening, for that matter.
I see that I’ve reviewed two more in this Thin Man vein than I thought I had earlier. While I’ve seen some of the others (and will be seeing them again, I’m sure), there’s quite a few I’ve never had the pleasure.
All I can do is add them to the list!