Sat 4 Apr 2015
Mike Nevins on “The Judge and His Hangman,” SIMENON, JOHN DICKSON CARR, and DANGER (the TV series).
Posted by Steve under Authors , Columns , TV mysteries[24] Comments
by Francis M. Nevins
I own very few European crime novels in both their original language and in English, but one of those is Der Richter und Sein Henker or, as it’s known over here, The Judge and His Hangman (1952; U.S. edition 1955), the first novel of Swiss playwright Friedrich Duerrenmatt (1921-1990).
I read it in both languages many years ago and again last month. It’s about Hans Bärlach (whose last name in English is missing the umlaut), Kommissär of the Swiss police, a man clearly near death, and his 40-year-long struggle against a sort of existential criminal who committed a motiveless murder in front of the Kommissär’s eyes and dared Bärlach to pin it on him.
More than sixty years after its first publication the book is still a compelling read, and the German edition (designed for students who are learning the language) adds several dimensions to what readers of the translation are offered, including two maps that make clear the relationship to each other of the various small towns near Bern where much of the story takes place.
Reading the German side by side with Therese Pol’s English version also reveals where Pol now and then goes her own way. At the end of Chapter 11 (Chapter 8 in the translation), the diabolical Gastmann breaks into Bärlach’s house beside the Aare River and steals the Kommissär’s file on him. “I’m sure you have no copies or photostats. I know you too well, you don’t operate that way.”
A procedural this novel ain’t. He throws a knife at Bärlach, just missing him, and goes his way. “The old man crept about the room like a wounded animal, floundering across the rug on his hands and knees…, his body covered with a cold sweat.” He moans softly in German: “Was ist der Mensch? Was ist der Mensch?” This simply means “What is man? What is man?” but Therese Pol expands it to: “What sort of animal is man? What sort of animal?”
That’s not too much of a stretch compared with the last chapter where Bärlach learns that his young assistant Tschanz “sei zwischen Ligerz und Twann unter seinem von Zug erfassten Wagen tot aufgefunden worden,” meaning that between two of the villages shown on the first map he was found dead under his car, which had been struck by a train.
In English the report is simply “that Tschanz had been found dead under his wrecked car….” The train has vanished, but at least Ms. Pol doesn’t make up Duerrenmatt’s mind for him on whether Tschanz’s death was an accident or suicide. Such are the joys of reading a book in two languages at once. If only my French were good enough to allow me to read Simenon in his own tongue!
You don’t need to be a linguist to catch some amazing blunders in the versions of Simenon that we get to see. In L’Affaire Saint-Fiacre, first published in French in 1931 and first translated by Margaret Ludwig as The Saint-Fiacre Affair in the double volume Maigret Keeps a Rendezvous (1941), a threat on the life of a countess brings Maigret back to the village where he was born and raised.
Very early in the morning he wakes up in the village inn and, purely for professional reasons, gets ready to attend Mass in the church where he’d been an altar boy. He goes downstairs and, in one of the later translations, the innkeeper asks him: “Are you going to communicate?” Even one who knows no French and nothing of Catholicism should be able to render the question in English better than that.
I don’t remember the title of the novel or who translated it but I vividly recall another Simenon where Maigret wakes up in yet another country inn and phones down for, as he puts it in English, “my little lunch.” Again, you don’t need to know more than a soupçon of French to figure out what the translation of petit déjeuner should be.
As this column is being cobbled together I’m in the middle of going over The John Dickson Carr Companion. And learning some odd trivia about Carr’s novels and stories that had never struck me before. How many of you remember that in the Carter Dickson novel She Died a Lady a gardener claims that on the previous night he went to see the movie Quo Vadis? The book was published in 1943 but, according to the Companion, its events take place in 1940.
Either way, Carr certainly couldn’t have been referring to the Quo Vadis? that we remember today if we remember the title at all, the 1951 Biblical spectacular that starred Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr. There was a German silent version of the same story, released in 1924 and starring Emil Jannings, but what would a German silent be doing playing in England long after silents had been displaced by talkies and at a time when England and Germany were at war? More important question: What was Carr thinking?
The adaptations of Carr’s work dating back to the golden age of live TV drama back in the Fifties are not covered in the Companion, at least not in any detail. I happen to have some information on that subject, and chance has now given me an excuse to share it. Anyone remember Danger?
It was a 30-minute anthology of live teledramas, broadcast on CBS for five seasons (1950-55). My parents hadn’t yet bought their first set when the series began, and when it went off the air I was a child of 12 who hadn’t yet even discovered Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Chan at my local library.
I don’t think I ever watched the program, certainly not with any regularity, but I vaguely remember that one of its shticks was a background score of solo guitar music played by a guy named Tony Mottola (1918-2004). Obviously the producers of the show were hoping to duplicate the success of the CBS radio and TV classic Suspense, and the two Carr tales that were broadcast on Danger happened to be radio plays that he had written for Suspense back in the Forties. “Charles Markham, Antique Dealer” (January 2, 1951), was based on the radio play “Mr. Markham, Antique Dealer” (Suspense, May 1, 1943) and starred Jerome Thor, Marianne Stewart and Richard Fraser.
The director was Ted Post (1918-2013), who later moved into filmed TV series like Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel and Rawhide and, thanks to impressing Clint Eastwood with his Rawhide work, got hired to direct big-budget Eastwood features like Hang ’em High (1968) and Magnum Force (1973).
We don’t know who directed “Will You Walk Into My Parlor?” (February 27, 1951) but it came from Carr’s radio drama of the same name (Suspense, February 23, 1943). The script was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 1945, and collected in Dr. Fell, Detective and Other Stories (1947) and, after Carr’s death, in The Dead Sleep Lightly (1983).
The cast was headed by Geraldine Brooks, Joseph Anthony and Laurence Hugo. Among the other top-rank mystery writers whose stories were adapted for Danger were Philip MacDonald, Wilbur Daniel Steele, A.H.Z. Carr, Anthony Boucher, MacKinlay Kantor, Steve Fisher, Q. Patrick, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler and Roald Dahl.
The roster of authors who scripted original teleplays for the series included Paddy Chayefsky, Reginald Rose and Rod Serling, and among the directors who rose from this and other live teledramas to Hollywood household-name status were John Frankenheimer and Sidney Lumet.
The final episode of Danger was a live version of Daphne DuMaurier’s 1952 short story “The Birds,” which Alfred Hitchcock later adapted into one of his best-known films. I can’t imagine anything like Hitchcock’s bird effects being possible on live TV, but either I was watching something else on the night of May 31, 1955 or I went to bed early. If anything from this series is available on DVD, I haven’t heard of it.
Considering the dozens of scripts Carr wrote for Suspense as a radio series, one might have expected a pile of his radio scripts and short stories to have been used when the program became a staple item on prime-time TV.
In fact only one of his radio dramas and one of his short tales were adapted for the small screen. Among the earliest of the TV show’s episodes was “Cabin B-13″ (March 16, 1949), which starred Charles Korvin and Eleanor Lynn and was based on perhaps the best known and most successful Carr radio drama, first heard on Suspense on May 25, 1943 and collected in The Door to Doom and Other Detections (1980).
The second and final Carr contribution to Suspense was “The Adventure of the Black Baronet” (May 26, 1953), an adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story written by Carr in collaboration with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s son Adrian (who according to Douglas G. Greene’s Carr biography did most of the writing) and first published in Collier’s for May 23, 1953, just a few days before the televersion.
As might have been expected, Basil Rathbone reprised his movie and radio role as Holmes. It might also have been expected that Nigel Bruce would have played Dr. Watson as he had so many times in the movies and on radio. I don’t know why he didn’t, but since he died only a few months later (October 8, 1953), the reason might have had to do with his health. In any event the Watson of this Suspense episode was played by Martyn Green of Gilbert & Sullivan fame.
As far as I’ve been able to find, Carr’s contributions to 30-minute live TV drama are limited to these four episodes. If any of his short stories or radio plays became the bases of filmed 30-minute dramas, I haven’t found them. There are two fairly well-known teledramas at greater than 30-minute length that owe their origins to Carr, but this column is long enough already so I’ll save them for next time.
April 4th, 2015 at 11:37 pm
For the last couple months I’ve been reading the fiction of Georges Simenon, both the Maigret crime novels and the psychological novels. I’ve been so very impressed by the quality of his work that I’m now addicted to it.
I’m not a linguist either but every now and then I run across a passage that appears to have been poorly translated but for the most part I’m very impressed with the Simenon translations.
April 4th, 2015 at 11:58 pm
I’ve often wished that there might be a set of Maigret novels, at the least, all translated by the same person with a solid sense of both languages AND a knowledge of mystery and detective fiction.
I know it’s too much to wish for, since how many Maigret novels are there? Seventy-five — I just looked it up — and at, say, three a year, by one person — I won’t live that long.
Off on another note, I was amused when Mike mentioned that beginning German classes often use THE JUDGE AND HIS HANGMAN as one of their first reading assignments. Exactly right, and from first hand experience.
My problem, though, was that I was struggling through the novel word by word, and doing okay, until the end, which surprised me. It was a detective story all the time, and I totally forgot all about the story, seeing only the words.
April 5th, 2015 at 1:06 am
The problem with Simenon is many of those English translations are the original ones from the first English publication (in some cases dating to the thirties), and they weren’t particularly good translations to begin with. Most of them and most of the books still call Commissar Maigret Inspector Maigret.
As far as I know there are no American translations of Simenon’s work including those written in America. The English ones are rife with Anglicanisms like boot for trunk and as I said Inspector for Commissar.
I can’t imagine that an Anglican (most likely since it is a British translation) mistook communicate for communion though. A Baptist maybe, but an Anglican? Sounds like a typesetter or copy editor more than a translation mistake. Actually it sounds like Spellcheck which they didn’t have then.
My French isn’t too good, but short as Simenon is I struggled through and he does indeed read different and better. For a huge difference the San Antonio books in English are nowhere near as anarchic and surreal despite the better translations. Jean Bruce is about the same though a bit better in French. I’ve never seen English translations of Henri Vernes. Ironic, but the Peter Cheyney’s I read in French were somewhat better than in English.
I don’t know if my German is up to a writer as complex as Durrenmatt, but I would love to read a side by side comparison.
Re Carr and QUO VADIS I suspect he was just making up a movie and using a familiar book. I seriously doubt Carr imagined Hollywood making QUO VADIS in the middle of the war. It’s most likely coincidence that someone actually filmed it again in 1951.
It would be unusual is a Golden Age tec novel to refer to an actual film, star, writer, book, or actual production of a play. Writer’s then didn’t use films for short hand the way we do today. Publishers then might even have frowned on the practice for legal reasons.
As you probably know Du Maurier’s story has little in common with the Hitchcock film other than some scenes in the farmhouse. The story had been adapted on radio and could be done with little or no effects but sound, which is how they likely did it.
The book sounds great. Anything on Carr has my attention as well as anything by you.
April 5th, 2015 at 5:26 am
Surely the translater simply means ‘take communion’ which the Oxford English Dictionary illustrates with instances from the sixteenth century through to 1998? So it seems to be good English. If it wasn’t you wouldn’t expect the writer to pick it after reading presumably ‘communier’.
April 5th, 2015 at 6:04 am
JUDGE/HANGMAN is worth reading in any translation. I’ve often considered it a dark variation on the relationship between the Saint and Inspector Teal.
As for SHE DIED A LADY: Mike, would it be a spoiler if you told us whether the QUO VADIS? bit was essential to the plot? I have visions of Inspector Merrivale saying something like, “That’s how I knew he was the murderer; QUO VADIS? won’t be filmed for another twenty years.” and everyone applauding his genius.
April 5th, 2015 at 8:43 am
Thanks, Dan. This I’m sure will be my laugh of the day. Out loud, too!
April 5th, 2015 at 10:33 am
Re: QUO VADIS. I read some movie review blogs and yesterday I read a review of the DeMille SIGN OF THE CROSS which stated it was based somewhat on QUO VADIS. It was re-released near the beginning of World War II somewhat censored and with an added prologue which had some military chaplains making reference to the religious story. Perhaps, that was Carr was recalling.
April 5th, 2015 at 3:06 pm
You may be on to something there, Ray — certainly within the realm of possibility, at least.
The reissue of SIGN OF THE CROSS was in 1938. Here’s more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sign_of_the_Cross_%28film%29
April 5th, 2015 at 4:23 pm
Nigel, Comment #4, you are of course correct, but to my ears, the simpler and more easily understood version of the question is “Are you going to take communion?”
Or is that only my American ears?
April 5th, 2015 at 5:44 pm
Carr was far more popular in radio than television. Besides the anthology adaptations he did at least two weekly series. After CABIN B-13 aired on CBS radio series SUSPENSE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWh92hCpx2g ) the story would form the basis of a radio series called CABIN B-13 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE29TFH0EPs ). I seem to remember seeing Cabin B-13 listed in several anthology series but can’t remember if they were radio or TV or a faulty memory. There was of course the CLIMAX version at 60 minutes. I keep finding more and more radio anthologies of the 50s as short forgotten TV attempts and seemingly endless number of “movie stars” with their own anthology series and many reusing old radio scripts so I would be surprised if more of Carr’s stuff did not get adapted for TV. But the lack of a CABIN B-13 TV series has always surprised me.
For those who would like to hear the voice of Carr here is a episode from a radio series he often hosted MURDER BY EXPERTS, the episode is “Two Coffins to Fill” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWxzt1IxHho )
But my favorite TV work based on Carr’s writing is COLONEL MARCH OF SCOTLAND YARD (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjmMoN34yT0 )
April 5th, 2015 at 6:00 pm
Translating from one language to another can’t be literal (the problem with some translation apps) since there are different matters of tense and verb noun relationships.
Will you be taking communion, becomes …
Serez-vous de prendre la communion?
Are you going to communion?
Allez-vous à la communion ?
However, are you going to communicate is
Allez-vous communiquer?
There’s room for a mistake there. I still hold this was done at the level of the typesetter or copy editor and not the translator who surely spoke better French than to mistake communion for commuinquer in that context.
The way French is structured it was most likely: Vous irez à la communion ? or You will be taking communion?
English does not translate directly into French, Italian, Spanish, or other Romance languages. But I find it hard to believe any translator mistook communion for communiquer in that context.
That said, the translations of Simenon are mostly taken from their first British publications, and as I said, full of Anglicanisms, and often changing the meaning of phrases since in French how the question is formed and the verb noun relation can have different meanings. Early books like PETER THE LETT don’t always agree on the proper title of the book.
It’s a tribute to Simenon he is so well respected despite those inept translations.
Those of you who took Spanish in school recall the dreaded Como se llama? But no one in English would literally say How are you called, rather than what is your name.
A good translator like Xan Fielding or Richard Howard works to preserve the meaning while recreating the original in grammatical English. Hemingway’s “Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?” becomes “Serait-il pas plutôt à le penser ?” which translated literally back into English is “Would it not be pretty to think so?”
Translation itself is an art, and those early Simenon’s were not getting the best treatment, but most of them have not changed since those early Penguin paperbacks. Even American reprints have simply used the English original. Simple mistakes like the one Mike mentions simply continue edition after edition after edition.
Keep in mind that in recent years new translations of Jules Verne have caused English and American critics to recognize he was a better writer than the poor translations that came before. If Verne is only now being translated properly you can imagine Simenon’s dilemma.
In Simenon and Verne’s case publishers simply didn’t care as long as they got the works in print in English and sold books.
They are still translating THE ODDYSEY and 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS in new editions. The Fitzgerald, Lawrence (T.E. no less) and Fagles translations of the former are radically different in places. Simenon, despite his critical reception and world wide sales, has never received that kind of respect from American and British publishers.
Until he does those annoying gaffes will be repeated generation after generation.
April 5th, 2015 at 9:09 pm
Dangerous Crossing evolved from Cabin B – 13 with Jeanne Crain, Michael Rennie, Max Showalter, Carl Betz and Mary Anderson. Joseph Newman directed. The reviews hailed its adequacy, I thought they were generous. 20th Century Fox 1953. Pretty well put paid to Crain’s career as a grade – A movie star.
April 6th, 2015 at 7:05 am
Steve, Comment #9, no, as you say “take communion” or “receive communion” is more normal English than “communicate” in England too (or has been in my lifetime); but the translator may have deliberately been going for something more technical (I don’t know what the register of the French verb “communier” is either).
April 6th, 2015 at 10:37 am
The current series of Simenon reprints from Penguin have new translations, though not all from the same translator and presumably again British in origin. I remember that instance where Maigret demands his “little lunch” when he’s really asking for his breakfast. The person on the other end might have no idea what he was talking about. I thought it was a nice touch to use that literal translation as a way of underlining Maigret’s difficulty communicating in another language.
April 6th, 2015 at 9:05 pm
Super clever, if that’s the case, Jon!
April 7th, 2015 at 9:29 am
As chance would have it, Simenon’s L’affaire Saint-Fiacre is another of the European crime novels I have in both the original language and in English. The line where the innkeeper asks Maigret if he’s going to take communion is: Est-ce que vous communiez? The point is that if he’s going to take communion he can’t have petit dejeuner until afterwards. Somebody else will have to tell us if that’s still true for Catholics.
For one of the most knowledgeable websites dealing with Simenon, I strongly recommend http://www.trussel.com. It’s run by a fellow named Steve Trussel whose interests are amazingly diverse. Among the other authors he covers in depth is Howard Fast. My essay on Fast’s novel The Winston Affair and the Robert Mitchum movie Man in the Middle which was based on the book is accessible with my permission on his website.
April 7th, 2015 at 2:03 pm
I have to admit that I had never heard of the TV series DANGER before. Except for maybe the last year it was on, all we had in our house was the radio, no TV until maybe 1954.
It’s been difficult to look up information about the series, other than the usual sources, and they all have very limited information about it. The title DANGER is just too generic.
If all of the episodes were shown live, it seems doubtful that copies of any of them exist today. It was probably one of those programs that wasn’t deemed worth saving, even on kinescope recordings.
April 7th, 2015 at 8:39 pm
The television museum in New York might have kinescope’s of DANGER but they don’t usually allow their material to be used save for research and on site as I understand it.
April 7th, 2015 at 11:23 pm
David Bushman used to be my contact to the Paley Center in New York, but I think the bloggers were let go in a cost saving mood. Last I heard from him he was back teaching.
There is the UCLA TV Film library, Paley on both coasts and other TV libraries around the country. When I was searching for the truth behind the mysteries of CASES OF EDDIE DRAKE, I was offered a chance to look at their copies but only on site. David Bushman had been kind enough to look for me.
I have not had the time or health to search for DANGER but I see what I can find.
April 8th, 2015 at 1:03 am
DANGER was a half hour anthology series on CBS TV network. It aired on Tuesday night at 10pm Eastern following SUSPENSE. Both were half hour live programs but with different sponsors.
According to Billboard (10/4/52) sponsor Ami-dent considered filming DANGER for sales to other stations but changed its mind.
Broadcasting had Block drug the series main sponsor in October 1952 at 31 stations and 51 stations in October 1953.
According to TV Tango, the episode “The Birds” that aired on DANGER May 31 1955 aired opposite the last half hour of ABC’s ELGIN TV HOUR that aired “Mind Over Mama” and NBC aired TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES.
The theme song was a blues tune. In a review of Jane Turner singing “Danger Blues” the “Billboard” reviewer wrote the blues song sounded like the theme song of the DANGER tv series. (11/13/54).
April 8th, 2015 at 10:49 am
From “Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-“Present” by Tim Brooks and Earle F. Marsh:
DANGER (Sept 19, 1950 – May 31, 1955) CBS – Tuesday at 10-10:30 or 9:30-10pm
Host/Narrator: Richard Stark
…Psychological dramas and various types of murder mysteries were the weekly fare in these live plays telecast from New York. “Death and Murder,” in fact, might have been an even more appropriate title, since those words kept popping up in the titles of individual episodes. There were “Murder Takes the A’ Train,” “Operation Murder,” “Murder’s Face,” “Motive for Murder,” and “Inherit Murder” on one hand, and “Death Gamble,” “Death Among the Relics,” “Death Beat,” “Prelude to Death,” “Death for the Lonely,” “Flowers of Death,” and “Death Signs an Autograph” on the other.
Directors included Yul Brynner, Sidney Lumet and John Frankenheimer. Actors included John Cassavetes, Grace Kelly, James Dean, Lee Grant, Charlton Heston, Carroll Baker, Paul Newman, Nina Foch, Walter Matthau, Kim Stanley, Jack Lemmon, Cloris Leachman Rod Steiger and Anthony Quinn.
From IMdb the writers included Rod Serling, Reginald Rose, Paddy Chayefsky, Alvin Sapinsley, W.R. Burnett, and Howard Rodman. There were adaptations of stories by (besides John Dickson Carr) Agatha Christie, Bret Harte, Roald Dahl, Edgar Wallace, Q. Patrick, and Philip MacDonald.
April 8th, 2015 at 12:40 pm
With all of the talent involved with putting DANGER on the air, you’d have to assume — or at least I do — that if any of the series still existed, someone would have put them out on DVD by now. What an honor roll of directors, authors, actors and musicians!
April 8th, 2015 at 12:03 pm
Danger!:
I don’t remember this show first-hand (too young), but I do remember Tony Mottola.
The guitarist spent much of his later career as a semi-regular member of the Tonight Show band, under Skitch Henderson, Milton DeLugg, and Doc Severinsen.
Mottola wasn’t on every night – he had a large schedule of club appearances and concerts to work around – but that was true of many members of the band (like Clark Terry, Eddie Shaughnessy, Yank Lawson, et al.).
What I mainly recall is how Johnny Carson, in the wake of a failed joke, would sometimes ask for “the Mottola Chord” – the sting that he would play at the opening of Danger!, just as the knife hit the wall. Tony Mottola, an obliging sort, always went along, and the joke was, if not saved, at least somewhat salvaged.
April 8th, 2015 at 2:21 pm
Steve, my guess is there are some kinescope episodes in collector’s hands (or one of the TV film libraries) somewhere.
Problems with DVD is its requires a number of episodes such as four in watchable quality surviving. There are still series such as CHARLIE WILD that exist but never seen DVD.
DANGER appears to have been a series produced by the sponsor which may not have saved any of the live episodes. But with that talent one would suspect some collectors saved an episode or two. I miss David Bushman who could have checked the Paley collection for us who live too far away to check for ourselves.