Thu 1 Dec 2011
Reviewed by Dan Stumpf: CHARLES WILLIAMS All the Way [Book and Film, 1960]
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[21] Comments
â— CHARLES WILLIAMS – All the Way. Dell First Edition A165, paperback original, 1958. UK title: The Concrete Flamingo. Cassell, hardcover, 1960.
â— THE 3RD VOICE. Columbia, 1960. Edmond O’Brien, Julie London, Laraine Day. Based on the novel All the Way, by Charles Williams. Director: Hubert Cornfield.
This speculation began in a roundabout way while watching Deadlier Than the Male (reviewed here ); I noticed that one of the credited screenwriters was listed as “Liz Charles-Williams.”
Hmmm. Seems to me the oughta-be legendary writer Charles Williams was doing things at Universal about that time: The Wrong Venus was being filmed as Don’t Just Stand There!, and wasn’t The Pink Jungle some of his work? So could “Liz Charles-Williams” have some connection with the author of Dead Calm and The Big Bite?
Well, after several minutes of painstaking research, I still couldn’t say, but I was prompted to pull out my video of The Third Voice and my copy of the Charles Williams book it was based on, All the Way, and revisit both.
Williams’ novel is a compact, neatly built thing based around an intriguing premise: in order to commit the perfect crime, Jerry Forbes has to spend a week impersonating a man he doesn’t resemble… whom he helped murder.
The hook is that the victim is a neurotic Midwestern businessman on vacation in Florida, and Forbes’ voice sounds exactly like his, so the plot — hatched by the dead man’s jilted mistress — is to kill the businessman, then drain his accounts by phone calls to his underlings back home, all this with her help.
It takes talent to hold a complicated thing like this together in a novel, much less put it across in 160 pages, but Williams was at the top of his form here, with well-wrought characters and nicely judged situations that build suspense beautifully.
Hence All the Way emerges as a deft little book that deserves to be better known. I particularly liked the little character quirks that lead up to an emotional double-cross that you won’t see coming, even now that I’ve told you it’s on its way.
In 1960 Columbia filmed this as The Third Voice which may make it the first paperback original made into a movie; I don’t know. At any rate, while not quite up to the level of the book, Voice is a nice, sick little item which falls well short of Classic Status but still repays watching.
Voice was written and directed by Hubert Cornfield, who put some interesting things on film (Plunder Road, Pressure Point) before the experience of trying to direct Brando in Night of the Following Day crippled his talent.
Or maybe there wasn’t much talent to begin with: Cornfield’s films all look like the work of a promising new talent, but somehow he just never followed through. At any rate, The Third Voice is still nasty and promising.
It’s set in a swanky Mexican resort, but there are no sun-drenched views of lovely beaches; just lots of sweaty close-ups of Edmond O’Brien moving through rooms of cloying chintziness as he bullies strangers over the phone and plots his own little turnabout, leading to a typical noir ending. The effect is claustrophobic, but tellingly so, and I like this movie perhaps more than it deserves.
December 1st, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Lionel White’s paperback original THE BIG CAPER (Gold Medal) was filmed earlier by several years, I think.
December 1st, 2011 at 8:10 pm
THE BIG CAPER, the film, came out in 1956, so at the moment, that’s the first known PBO made into a movie.
This review of Dan’s appeared earlier in the print version of Mystery*File 40, and I was under the impression that people came up with other answers later on in subsequent Letter Columns, but I must be wrong. So far I haven’t found any.
December 1st, 2011 at 8:15 pm
Do you know what’s strange? If there ever was another edition of ALL THE WAY, other than the British one, I couldn’t find it. It’s a great book, too, even better than Dan says, if it’s possible.
December 1st, 2011 at 11:26 pm
Dan discusses two of my favorites: Charles Williams and Edmund O’Brien. I have a stack of Williams novels and since I like film noir, I have many of Edmund O’Brien’s movies. He’s not the usual good looking, young, slim, noir victim. Instead he plays aging, overweight guys caught by fate in some criminal plot, usually with a woman involved.
My noir master list says I have THE THIRD VOICE. I’ll have to try and find it among my bootleg dvds.
December 2nd, 2011 at 9:26 pm
I don’t seem to have a copy of this one, which is strange, considering the presence of Julie London in it. I think she looks thoroughly “noirish” in that photo I found taken from the film — even more so that the lady on the paperback cover (painted by Darcy).
December 3rd, 2011 at 7:25 am
The pilot for the TV series CANNON was based on the Charles Williams paperback original TALK OF THE TOWN although as far as I can tell it’s not acknowledged anywhere. The credits at the start just say teleplay by Edward Hume.
December 3rd, 2011 at 10:12 am
Now that’s interesting! You’d told me this before, Jamie, but I’d forgotten:
https://mysteryfile.com/GM_Williams/Williams.html
At the time you added “…if you compare the names of the characters, many of those in the book are kept in the film: Georgia Langston (Diane Langston in the film), Kelly Redfield, Magruder, Calhoun etc etc. The plot is definitely the same, though I admit it’s a long time since I read the book. I’m going to read it again now – now if I can only track down a copy of Cannon. I wonder if Charles Williams got paid for it?”
Here’s the description of the story as given on IMDB:
“A private detective investigates the murder of his ex-girlfriend’s husband and gets entangled in small-town corruption. ”
Here in the US at least the first season of CANNON is now out on DVD. Were you ever able to find a copy you could watch?
December 3rd, 2011 at 4:54 pm
I forgot I’d told you before but it’s worth mentioning again. I never did track down a DVD of CANNON (it’s not been released in the UK so no cheap ones about). I’ll have to see if I can find an import.
Nicholas Flower’s Mystery*File article on the author is well worth reading if anybody out there hasn’t seen it
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=1004#comments
December 6th, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Also a worthy contestor in “the earliest paperback original to be filmed” contest:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050661/
Cornfield’s first feature, based on a book by Gil Brewer.
December 6th, 2011 at 12:56 pm
Thanks, Juri. LURE OF THE SWAMP (1957) was based on HELL IS MY DESTINATION, and a movie I didn’t know about before.
It’s a worthy contender, as you say, but the Lionel White novel that Bill Crider suggested is still the leader, since that came out in 1956. What I’d love to see is a list of the first 10 or 20 PBO’s made into movies. I don’t suppose there is one anywhere, but somebody really ought to do one.
December 7th, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Mike Nevins once told me that THE BURGLAR (1957) was the first movie based on a paperback original (Goodis’ 1953 novel) but I see by IMDB that LURE OF THE SWAMP beat it by a month.
December 7th, 2011 at 3:42 pm
Do you think we now have the first three?
Lionel White, THE BIG CAPER (1956)
Gil Brewer, LURE OF THE SWAMP (May 1957, based on Hell is My Destination)
David Goodis, THE BURGLAR (June 1957)
…
Charles Williams, THE 3RD VOICE (1960, based on All the Way)
December 8th, 2011 at 12:46 pm
Does TIMBERJACK by Dan Cushman (Gold Medal 1953) count? It is marginal in Hubin and the film (1955) is listed as a Western on IMDb
December 8th, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Jamie
Nothing in Dan’s original question specifies that the book be crime fiction, only that it be a paperback original.
So unless we make up some rules as we go along, then yes, TIMBERJACK counts.
I have a sneaking suspicion that some paperback novel from the 30s or 40s is going to squeeze ahead of all of the books we’ve come up with so far.
December 8th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
Was the first publication of DOUBLE INDEMNITY in the US an Avon paperback original?
December 8th, 2011 at 2:14 pm
From Hubin:
JAMES M. CAIN
Career in C Major and other stories (Avon, 1945, pb) Film (from title story): TCF, 1939, as Wife, Husband and Friend
The Root of His Evil (Avon, 1952, pb) Film: Universal, 1939, as When Tomorrow Comes. Note: At least one scene from When Tomorrow Never Comes, and perhaps several, were reputedly taken from Cain’s novel Serenade (e.g., the protagonist and the woman in the story are isolated in a church during a storm.
The Embezzler (Avon, 1944, pb) Film: Warner Bros., 1940, as Money and the Woman
Double Indemnity (Avon, 1943, pb) Film: Paramount, 1944
I’m not sure whether the first three of these “count” or not, with the films being made before the stories appeared in book form.
December 8th, 2011 at 2:41 pm
There’s a review in Time magazine from May 1943 of THREE OF A KIND which contains DOUBLE INDEMNITY so maybe the Avon paperback is not the first. The wikipedia article on the film says the film rights were bought after THREE OF A KIND was published. The story originally appeared as a serial in LIBERTY magazine so I guess my suggestion doesn’t count anyway. It’s one of my favourite films so it’s always worth mentioning!
December 8th, 2011 at 3:26 pm
I’ve always meant to untangle the first appearances of all of Cain’s work, but for various and sundry reasons, I never have. THREE OF A KIND, which according to Hubin was published in 1944, contains Career in C Major, The Embezzler, and Double Indemnity.
But a dealer on ABE states for his copy: “Knopf,, New York:, 1943. First edition. Three short novels: CAREER IN C MAJOR, THE EMBEZZLER and DOUBLE INDEMNITY, with a nine-page preface by the author. All three were subsequently issued separately in paperback form by Avon.”
This agrees with the date of the TIME review you found, May 1943.
But then Al is then incorrect on the first appearances of the three short novels, which he states came out first as Avon paperbacks.
So at this point, it’s still a tangle.
December 9th, 2011 at 3:54 am
One of these days, I might check upon some film noir books and check out some possible connections. There must be some Westerns made from paperback originals out there. Were Louis L’Amour’s books published in hardcover or in paperback in the fifties?
December 9th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
From wikipedia:
“Hondo is a movie that was made in 1953 by 3-D Warnercolor western film starring John Wayne, directed by John Farrow. The screenplay is based on the 1952 short story “The Gift of Cochise” by Louis L’Amour. The book Hondo was a novelization of the film also written by L’Amour, and published by Bantam Books in 1953.”
Almost but not quite, the movie having come first. Here’s another:
Blackjack Ketchum, Desperado (1956), based on the novel Kilkenny (Ace, pbo, 1954).
In between the two are several other films, but they seem to be based on L’Amour stories or story treatments, not novels. (Basing this on L’Amour’s IMDB page.)
December 9th, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Juri, To follow up on your comment, yes, I think there might be quite a few western PBOs that were made into films in the early 1950s that we’re not thinking of yet.
There’s still a possibility that DOUBLE INDEMNITY qualifies also.
With more than an outside chance that a silent film was based on a dime novel, which may or may “count” depending on our definition of a “paperback original.”