Thu 26 Feb 2015
Inquiry about the film CIRCLE OF DANGER (UK, 1951).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Inquiries[18] Comments
Hi Steve,
I read in one of our newspapers yesterday a review of the film Circle of Danger out soon on DVD in the UK. Doing the usual thing I do and look on IMDB it says, Writer: Philip MacDonald (novel).
A little further googling says based on his novel White Heather. There’s no book I can find by him called White Heather or anything similar, nor can I find a book under that title by any other author. The plot does not remind me of any MacDonald book. Do you by any chance have it on DVD?
Thanks,
Jamie [Sturgeon]
This is Steve. The reason Jamie asked if I had a copy on DVD was to check to see if White Heather is included in the opening credits. I don’t, but perhaps someone reading this does.
I also Googled the book title in conjunction with Philip MacDonald’s name and got no farther than Jamie did. Almost every reference I came across copied the same wording from each other. The closest to a solid reference source is this one:
The Complete Index to Literary Sources in Film
Any assistance from this point on would most certainly be welcome. The fact that the film was directed by Jacques Tourneur may be of some help, as quite a bit of critical attention has been directed his way.
February 26th, 2015 at 2:57 pm
That last comment I made about the film having been directed by Jacques Tourneur reminded me that Jonathan has Chris Fujiwara’s book on the man and his films on a shelf here at home and easily accessible.
In the chapter on CIRCLE OF DARKNESS, Fujiwara has this to say:
“Mystery writer Philip MacDonald wrote the script, which was based on his own novel WHITE HEATHER (under which title the film went into production)…”
I suppose this could mean an unpublished story or novel by MacDonald. No other screenwriter is listed for the film on IMDb.
February 26th, 2015 at 3:24 pm
The credits do not list a novel but a story by Philip MacDonald, and since he was an active screen writer it may be jumping to conclusions to assume it was a published story and not a screen story. I cannot find WHITE HEATHER as even an alternate title for any MacDonald novel and the story is not in any of the short story collections.
It’s possible its loosely based on some obscure story or novel no one had heard of, but since the story has a clear post WWII theme (revenge for a dead commando brother) it would most likely have come from that era and there are no post WWII novels by MacD I have not read.
Unless he has some pseudonyms I don’t know of other than Martin Porlock my best guess is this is not based on a novel or a published story. Writers do unpublished stories that get made into films when they have the contacts he had in the film industry. Looking for the source in those cases can be very frustrating.
This may even have been a contact through Ray Milland who was in at least one other film written by MacD and may well have known him personally.
If there is a novel called WHITE HEATHER by MacD written post WWII it is certainly an obscure one. WHITE HEATHER may have been the original title of a screen story however.
February 26th, 2015 at 3:27 pm
Sinister Cinema has had this on DVD for some time.
February 26th, 2015 at 5:18 pm
There’s no novel by Macdonald with this title in the BL so it wasn’t published in the UK if it exists at all. If it’s a short story, these are the candidate collections:
Fingers of Fear, and other stories. 1953
The Man out of the Rain, and other stories. 1957
Death and Chicanery. A collection of tales. 1963
Could “White Heather” be a misprint for “White Feather”?
February 26th, 2015 at 6:25 pm
Circle of Danger, aside from the reputation of its director, is not much of a film, and works up nothing. No suspense, and no danger. Patricia Roc and Marius Goring acquit themselves well. Milland is miscast. see it for yourself. Nothing.
February 26th, 2015 at 6:25 pm
Roger
A typo is possible.
The story is that Ray Milland comes to England to avenge his brother who was betrayed and killed on a mission during WWII and hits a conspiracy of silence around what happened. There is a twist at the end that re cast the conspirators and their motives. WHITE FEATHER would fit but so would WHITE HEATHER since there is a stalking scene at the end in the country.
The actual credits that run in the film do not identify this as a novel, but a story.
February 26th, 2015 at 8:09 pm
Roger
The stories in the three collections you list in Comment #4 are listed in Al Hubin’s CRIME FICTION IV, and none have titles anything close to “White Heather.”
I think a typo is unlikely, but the possibility has to be looked into. David, does “White Heather” appear that way in the credits? or does it only say “a story by…”
The most likely probability is that “White Heather” was a never published story that MacDonald based the screenplay on. Note that the Tourneur book (my Comment #1) says that the movie actually went into production as WHITE HEATHER.
February 26th, 2015 at 8:18 pm
Quick, quick! Is the movie any good?
February 26th, 2015 at 8:25 pm
Randy
For one opinion, did you see Barry’s comment, #5?
For another, here’s part of a comment left by Ilya Mauter on IMDb:
“Circle of Danger marked Jacques Tourneur’s return to Europe, namely Great Britain where he went in order to make this movie. Though the Circle of Danger doesn’t belong to the Film-Noir genre it might be considered the bleak shadow of Jacques Tourneur’s Film-Noir classic Out of the Past. Parallels can be drown especially in terms of the story, which in both cases concerns the main character’s past, only in Out of the Past Robert Mitchum’s character Jeff Bailey tries to forget it, to hide from it, which ultimately proves to be impossible and results in tragic ending, while in Circle of Danger Ray Milland’s character Clay Douglas decides to travel back in time and uncover its mysteries related the unclear circumstances of his brother’s death in world War II. Only in Circle of Danger everything is much more `primitive’, much more simplistic in terms of the story and character’s development and their interactions as well as in lacking of that great wittiness of dialogs which is one of the main masterpiece ingredients of the Out of the Past, and finally the film’s ending, a time where a question might arise in our minds: Is it was worthy the time we invested in seeing it? 6/10”
February 26th, 2015 at 9:26 pm
I liked it, and there is one really good performance in it by the actor in the film you would expect it from, but I wouldn’t suggest anyone make a big effort to see it. The ending has some emotional impact, but at the same time doesn’t really have the cathartic effect another ending might have.
The credits mention no title. They just say story by Philip MacDonald. That’s it.
I wonder if WHITE HEATHER might be registered with the WRITERS GUILD as many screen stories are and that was how it was mistaken for a novel?
Hammett wrote the story for ANOTHER THIN MAN, but it didn’t see publication until the BLACK MASK revival in the eighties as a story.
It would not be the first case where a screen story had little or no publication before the film and the same after.
MIRACLE ON 4TH STREET, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, and MR. LUCKY are all credited as being based on stories, but in the first two cases they were never published in book form until the 1980’s and I don’t know if the MR. LUCKY story ever appeared in print anywhere. As far as I know those were stories written for films even though in MR. LUCKY’s case the story had a different title like WHITE HEATHER.
Story does not necessarily mean a short story as we think of it published in a magazine or anthology. In Hammett’s case his ‘story’ was almost an outline with dialogue. In the past story might also mean something that appeared as radio drama since those were seldom identified as radio plays the way teleplays are.
MacDonald could have set down and written a few paragraphs on the back of cocktail napkins and still have gotten story credit.
As for IMDb, really, is anyone surprised? It’s a great tool I applaud, but like Wikipedia it’s best taken with a grain of salt, and I say that having been a reference there once or twice thanks to Steve.
My guess is this is an unpublished screen story existing as not much more than expanded notes by MacD and likely registered with the Screen Writer’s Guild as WHITE HEATHER. There is likely not enough there to publish if you wanted to.
This could be as simple as someone asking MacD if he had a story they could use, and he either dashed this off or had it and sold it to them.
Anyone who knows films knows screen credits are a landmine of strange rules and bizarre compromise.
Max Brand was the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood, but you won’t find his name on many screenplays because he worked behind the scenes as a screen doctor primarily. William Goldman was an accomplished pro before he ever got his name on screen. You can be a successful screenwriter and never have a single film actually made from your work.
February 26th, 2015 at 10:42 pm
I’ll give it a pass.
February 27th, 2015 at 6:28 am
David, MIRACLE ON 34th STREET was published as a book by Valentine Davies in 1947, the same year as the film. MR. LUCKY was published as a TV tie-in by Marvin Albert in 1960. IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE was based on the 1939 story by Philip Van Doren Stern; unable to sell the story, Stern eventually used it for a Christmas Card in 1943. RKO bought the rights and the film was released in 1946.
All that aside, yes, it is most likely that the source of CIRCLE OF DANGER was a screen story. In H’wood-speak, a screen story can be an actual story or a concept.
February 27th, 2015 at 4:23 pm
Jerry,
The Albert is a novelization of the television series, I was speaking of the original Cary Grant movie that is attributed to a story that I have never seen published or found a publication date for. I didn’t know about the 1947 book publication of MIRACLE though I read the book when it was reprinted forty years later, but I wonder if the book came out before the film or in relation to it. It’s very short and there isn’t much to it.
I knew the Stern had no real publication before the film.
Hollywood’s cavalier use of story as a word makes it hard to know what kind they meant.
For instance much of Alistair MacLean’s post WHERE EAGLES DARE works are technically novelizations of screenstories and screenplays he wrote, DARE having been written as a screenplay for Richard Burton and Elliot Kastner, then becoming a novel. THUNDERBALL by Fleming was first a screenplay with two others while DOCTOR NO is based on the failed concept for an ABC television series to be called COMMANDER JAMACIA. Dashiell Hammett’s WOMAN IN THE DARK was a screen story turned into a short novel rather than a novel adapted as a screenplay.
Confusing to say the least.
February 27th, 2015 at 6:34 pm
Re Mr. Lucky. My understanding, and this is no way either definitive or complete, is that Milton Homes, a tennis pro and small part film actor, sold the concept to Cary Grant. By sell, I mean he personally, in a sauna or locker room, told Mr. Grant the story. Subsequently but through more regular channels he wrote Johnny O’clock, and for Alan Ladd, Salty O’Rourke, and an Academy Award nomination. In 1952 came Boots Malone with William Holden.
March 2nd, 2015 at 10:39 pm
Barry
Sounds right since those three are all the same basic story — not so bad tough guy goes good. The listing in the screen credit for LUCKY makes it sound like a published story though.
Screen credit is a minefield since you can actually write the final produced script and thanks to some rule or other not have your name on it, screen credit, or a shot at any of the awards.
At one point Max Brand was so valued as a screen doctor he was the highest paid man in Hollywood, pulling down more a week than Clark Gable, but as I said there aren’t a lot of films with Brand screenwriting credits, the only two I know off hand are THE ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN and UNCERTAIN GLORY, both with Errol Flynn for WB. Of course he has more credits as a source for screenplays.
November 7th, 2018 at 1:40 pm
That last comment I made about the film having been directed by Jacques Tourneur reminded me that Jonathan has Chris Fujiwara’s book on the man and his films on a shelf here at home and easily accessible.
In the chapter on CIRCLE OF DARKNESS, Fujiwara has this to say:
“Mystery writer Philip MacDonald wrote the script, which was based on his own novel WHITE HEATHER (under which title the film went into production)…â€
March 18th, 2019 at 7:03 pm
By pure coincidence, having lost a brother in the military in similarly apparently unexplained circumstances, I unwittingly watched ‘Circle of Danger’ tonight on ‘Talking Pictures’. It prompted me to check on the origin of the plot. Having browsed the above comments, it seems that no-one has mentioned that film director Jaques Tourneur was the son of film director Maurice Tourneur and that one of Maurice’s films was indeed called ‘The White Feather’and there was also ‘The ‘White Moth’ and ‘The White Circle’. The plots are different of course but America, and Scotland are common denominators in at least 2 of them. What does not seem to add up is any connection between the title ‘Circle of Danger’ and the film’s plot – except I suppose to say the searching brother ends up on the heather at the mercy of (surrounded by) potential killers, where what he believed to start with is turned full circle when he learns the truth, symbolised by the colour white. I have not yet read of Philip MacDonald’s works but it is interesting that ‘white heather’ is also known as ‘Calluna’ (origin: Greek ‘Kalluno’) which means ‘to cleanse’ and perhaps that is a theme in one or more of his stories or books?
September 9th, 2020 at 10:27 pm
I believe that Philip MacDonald’s connection to this production was not through knowing Ray Milland (as suggested above) but rather through knowing the film’s producer, Joan Harrison. Ten years earlier MacDonald was part of the team which adapted Daphne DuMaurier’s REBECCA for Hitchcock & Selznick, and Ms. Harrison co-wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay.
I too have been confused by this reference to a MacDonald novel called WHITE HEATHER. I tend to agree with the conclusions above that it was an unpublished story, perhaps one written for the screen.
I actually really admire this film, especially its wonderful cinematography (by Oswald Morris and Gilbert Taylor) and its excellent use of locations. The cast is quite rewarding with the curious exception of Milland himself. He does all right in the dramatic scenes, but his acting in the many romantic scenes with Patricia Roc all seem to fall flat, as though he’s playing an entirely different character in a different style. Marius Goring’s performance is uniquely memorable,
The movie is definitely worth a look — it may not be one of Tourneur’s greatest, but it has much to commend it.