Mon 23 Aug 2010
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS review: JOHN D. MacDONALD – Darker Than Amber.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[5] Comments
by Marcia Muller:
JOHN D. MacDONALD – Darker than Amber. Gold Medal d1674, paperback original, 1966. J. B. Lippincott, hardcover, 1970. Reprinted many times. Film: National General, 1970 (with Rod Taylor as Travis McGee, Theodore Bikel as Meyer, and Suzy Kendall as Vangie.)
The Travis McGee series, with its color-coded titles, is one of the phenomenally popular successes of the mystery genre, and it’s easy to see why. McGee, who refers to himself as a “salvage consultant” (in actuality, he gets folks out of trouble the police can’t help them with), has many of those larger-than-life qualities contemporary readers seem to favor.
He’s big, rawboned, handsome in a rugged way. A former minor pro-football player, he now lives an enviable life-style in retirement aboard his “sybaritic” houseboat, the Busted Flush, in Fort Lauderdale. It is a retirement from which he periodically emerges whenever the cash reserves are getting low, and he’s fond of saying he likes taking it in installments rather than all at sixty-five when he won’t be able to enjoy it much anyway.
But McGee’s life is not all girls and glitter; there’s a dark, broody side of him, a part of his mind that tells him he’s capable of being a better man than he thinks he is. And he proves this, time and time again, as he fights the forces of corruption that have victimized his friends and clients.
McGee is no cool professional; he takes on every case as if it were a personal crusade. And it’s there that his true charm lies: He is an emotional man who realizes he’s fallible and constantly strives to overcome it, knowing all the while that he never can.
McGee also has his irritating points, however. He is constantly editorializing, and in the later entries in the series these asides become overly long and predictable. (Eventually one says, “Oh, Travis, not again!” and skips a page.)
He also has a bad habit of indulging in therapeutic sex: A woman character has been traumatized; Travis takes her on a cruise on the Flush, makes love to her, and she is as good as new. And the women characters, while generally likable, all talk alike-a bright, sophisticated patter that makes them fairly difficult to tell apart.
Darker than Amber begins with a unique introduction to one of these women: As Travis explains it in the classic first sentence, “We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge.”
The girl, whom McGee narrowly rescues from drowning, is Vangie Bellemer, a “dead-eyed cookie” who has been working as a high-priced call girl. Unlike many of MacDonald’s women characters, she is not very pleasant, nor is she understandable until McGee’s best friend, economist Meyer, breaks through her tough shell.
What he finds is a frightened woman involved in something way over her head, something that concerns money taken from “dead ones.” Vangie’s associates have tried to kill her once, and she knows they will try again. They do — and succeed.
And Travis, feeling guilty because he didn’t prevent Vangie’s death, interested because there is money involved, and curious because of the seeming magnitude of whatever is going on, starts on his crusade. He finds other high-priced call girls, a setup involving Caribbean cruises, luxury, and death.
And when he and Meyer close in on the truth of the matter, through a series of elaborate machinations that are fun to watch, they find it is of even greater magnitude than they supposed.
Darker than Amber is among the best in this entertaining series.
———
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.
[UPDATE] Later the same day. David Vineyard’s comment about the movie made with Rod Taylor (#1), reminded me that I hadn’t included the film in the opening credits above. So I’ve added that, the photo image below, and regardless of the overall entertainment value of the rest of the movie, here’s a link to one of the greatest one-on-one fight scenes you might ever see on film.
August 23rd, 2010 at 7:19 pm
The film is, sadly, pretty cheaply done, though Theodore Bikel is an excellent choice for Meyer and William Smith a frightening villain who gets his comeuppance thanks to McGee and a two by four he uses on him in a good brawl at the end of the novel.
Rod Taylor tries hard, but is no one’s idea of McGee, and too old for this. He’s not bad, but he is never McGee. Though that said he is more McGee than Sam Elliot was.
Still, just about everyone and everything we associate with McGee but Miss Agnes makes an appearance, and the script stays close to the novel. Taylor is by no means bad, but the whole film has a tired and cheap feeling that works against it.
It’s well worth seeing, just don’t get your expectations up.
August 23rd, 2010 at 8:26 pm
Thanks for the reminder about the film, David. I’ve added some information about it to the original post
The film’s available on DVD on the collectors’ market, and I have a copy, but I haven’t gotten around to watching it yet.
Even so, as you say, I can’t picture Rod Taylor as Travis McGee, no matter how hard I try. I’ll watch the movie sometime, but at the moment it’s nowhere near the top of the queue.
August 23rd, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Steve
As I said it isn’t a great film, but it’s not bad. Leonard Maltin gives it two and a half stars, which is about right. Robert Clouse does a good job on the direction and Suzy Kendall isn’t bad as Vangie.
A few times Taylor almost overcomes the bad casting, and might have made a decent McGee in a better film made a year or two earlier and with a better budget.
Jane Russell has a nice cameo, and James Booth isn’t bad casting as one of the bad guys with some nice location work. That final battle with McGee and William Smith’s blonde giant is a well done brawl and comes very close to the feel of the JDM book.
I don’t want to undermine this. It’s a pretty good little film, it’s only a disappointment because it is Travis McGee and we would have liked to have seen better.
Maybe the Leonardo De Caprio film based on THE DEEP BLUE GOODBYE (currently titled TRAVIS MCGEE) and due in 2011 or 2012 will finally get it right.
But the Taylor film is still ten times better than the made for television film with Sam Elliot which moved McGee from Florida and the houseboat to California and sail boat, and gave us Gene Evans as Meyer. Almost anything would be better than that mis-fire.
August 24th, 2010 at 1:35 am
Have to take one thing back. Miss Agnes is in it, even electric blue. They must have shot half the budget on that alone. This is one of those films that gets a little better every time you watch it. Taylor may not be anyone’s idea of McGee, but with a bit better budget this could easily have been the start of a worthy series.
There’s a nice dark scene when McGee kills and buries a bad guy and gets a start when he looks to be digging out of the grave.
I looked at the YOU-TUBE site and while I agree it is a terrific fight scene, and I might even put it in the top twenty of all time it still comes in behind SHANE, THE BIG COUNTRY, THE SPOILERS, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE and some of the other classics — but only just. For that matter I’d put it behind both the Gordon Scott Tarzan fights in TARZAN’S GREATEST ADVENTURE and TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT and Charlton Heston and Jack Palance in ARROWHEAD and the comic brawls in THE QUIET MAN and NORTH TO ALASKA. But as I said it is clearly in my top twenty.
August 24th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Just watching the clip again just now has changed my mind from what I said in Comment #2. I’m now convinced that I really ought to dig out my copy of the film on DVD, and soon.
And all of those other films you mention, David, none of which I’ve seen in a long long time, onto the queue they go!
— Steve
PS. I went to college at Michigan Tech, which is as about as far north in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula as you can go. So far north that our version of the movie (and song) was SOUTH TO ALASKA.
But I haven’t seen the movie since then (early-60s).
Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
North to Alaska,
They’re goin’ North, the rush is on.
North to Alaska,
They’re goin’ North, the rush is on