Fri 12 Apr 2019
A GOLD MEDAL Mystery Review by Dan Stumpf: WILLIAM O’FARRELL – Gypsy, Go Home.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[8] Comments
WILLIAM O’FARRELL – Gypsy, Go Home. Gold Medal s1175, paperback original, December 1961. Cover art by Barye Phillips
Nothing to see here, folks. Just a tightly-written and forgettable tale of murder and detection, with a great cover. In other words, a typical Gold Medal of its time. Move along now.
Author William O’Farrell debuted with Repeat Performance in 1942, and over the next twenty years he turned out about a dozen books, until his death in 1962 (none afterwards) with occasional forays into television writing for Perry Mason and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. It’s perhaps this last that provided background for Gypsy, Go Home and its milieu of small-screen scribes, producers and wanna-bes — and murder.
The lady on the cover is Gypsy O’Brien: loud, grasping, crudely manipulative and usually drunk. I went out with a girl like that in college, but after a couple of dates she dumped me. And after a couple of chapters, Gypsy puts the squeeze on a no-talent writer trying to lever himself into a job on a TV show, and ends up the subject of a murder investigation.
O’Farrell does a competent if unremarkable job of setting up two protagonists: Ken Morse, a television writer with a proven track record, lined up for a job on new series, and Alan Procter, the guy on the cover playing “guess what I got for you†with a poker. When Alan kills Gypsy and (mostly) covers his tracks, he decides the best way to get Ken’s job is to frame him for murder – even if the frame slips, it’ll muddy Ken’s reputation, and besides, Ken’s ex-girlfriend happens to be the daughter of the show’s creator, so if he can insinuate himself with her….
About this time I started seeing similarities between this and the book (not the movie) In a Lonely Place, by Dorothy B. Hughes, which also featured a murderous would-be writer. But where Hughes focused on her deadly dramatist, O’Farrell skips nimbly between his rivals in love and television, with frequent stops in between to sketch out the characters of Gypsy’s complaisant cuckold husband, her confused nine-year-old daughter, and a smart cop who realizes the case goes considerably deeper than Gypsy’s shallow grave.
If anything lifts Gypsy, Go Home out of the ordinary — and I’m not sure it does — it’s the Police, refusing to act according to type by arresting Ken and needlessly prolonging the action. Instead, O’Farrell keeps the story moving fast and in a straight line to a pat solution. In all, there’s nothing very memorable here, except as a relic of the kind of light, compact and easily-enjoyable book they just don’t make anymore.
April 12th, 2019 at 9:29 am
Repeat Performance, the novel, is a thing of beauty. The film adaptation, while of interest, is not at all a reflection , except perhaps at the dirty mirror level, of O’Farrell’s work. Too bad, because the cast and production were there. Louis Hayward, Joan Leslie, Richard Basehart, Tom Conway and more.
April 12th, 2019 at 1:40 pm
Barry, I enjoyed REPEAT PERFORMANCE, book and movie both, quite a lot. It surprised me to see the author here doing something well but rather ordinary.
April 12th, 2019 at 4:44 pm
O’Farrell started out with two good books (WETBACK! was the other), but seemed to lose interest and his later books are readable, even enjoyable, but nothing special.
For me the most interesting character in the film of Repeat Performance is Richard Basehart trying hard to suggest the complex nature of his very gay character (known in the novel as William and Mary) from the novel with all hint of that stripped from the script by everything but the actors knowledge of the role.
That you can still read between the lines despite the role having been censored is a tribute to Basehart.
Even with that it is still and interesting movie saved by a good cast and it’s clever conceit.
April 12th, 2019 at 7:38 pm
David,
All that is right, but the two stories are not really the same. In the novel, Barney is shot and killed by police, and the entire narrative takes place in the few moments it takes him to die. But in the film, he is initially shot and killed by Sheila, his wife played by Joan Leslie, and then after his resurrection by William.
April 12th, 2019 at 9:30 pm
Actually WETBACK was one of O’Farrell’s later books, a paperback original published in the mid-50s. I agree with David that it’s good. Better still (though not on a par with REPEAT PERFORMANCE) are his second and third mysteries, BRANDY FOR A HERO and THE UGLY WOMAN, both published in hardcover by DS&P in 1948. I also have a soft spot for DOUBLES IN DEATH (DD Crime Club, 1953, as by William Grew), which was the basis for the first THRILLER episode, “The Twisted Image.”
April 13th, 2019 at 2:32 pm
I was traveling coast to coast all day yesterday, so couldn’t easily leave a comment until now. Thanks, everyone, for all the information about O’Farrell writings, which was a lot more than I knew before. One thing in particular, it looks as though I’d better catch up with REPEAT PERFORMANCE, both the book and movie. Somehow I’ve never read or watched either one.
Reprinted from his Golden Age of Detection page, located at
http://gadetection.pbworks.com/w/page/7931266/O%27Farrell%2C%20William
William O’Farrell (1904-1962) was an American screenwriter who worked on the Perry Mason TV series and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. His Repeat Performance is ‘one of the weirdest crime novels ever written’. O’Farrell won an Edgar in 1959 for his short story “Over There Darkness” which was later made into an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode starring Bette Davis. He also wrote as William Grew.
Bibliography
Repeat Performance (1942)
Brandy for a Hero (1948)
The Ugly Woman (1948)
Thin Edge of Violence (1949)
Causeway to the Past (1950)
The Snakes of St Cyr (1951) aka Harpoon of Death, Lovely in Death (abridged)
These Arrows Point to Death (1951)
Walk the Dark Bridge (1952 aka The Secret Fear
Grow Young and Die (1952)
The Devil His Due (1955)
Wetback (1956)
Gypsy, Go Home (1961)
The Golden Key (1963)
As William Grew
Doubles in Death (1953
Murder Has Many Faces (1955)
April 13th, 2019 at 7:28 pm
BRANDY FOR THE HERO was one I was trying to think of. It’s outstanding, only just short of REPEAT PERFORMANCE.
September 6th, 2021 at 8:07 am
I think that o’farrell was an underrated writer, one who is almost forgotten today.