Wed 15 May 2019
Friday, February 6.
NERO WOLFE. “Wolfe at the Door.” NBC, 60m. Season 1, Episode 4. Cast: William Conrad as Nero Wolfe, Lee Horsley as Archie Goodwin, George Voskovec as Fritz Brenner, Robert Coote as Theodore Horstmann, George Wyner as Saul Panzer, Allan Miller as Inspector Cramer. Guest Cast: Richard Schaal, Mary Frann, Eugene Peterson. Based on characters created by Rex Stout. Teleplay: Lee Sheldon. Director: Herbert Hirschman.
I’m a little surprised to find myself saying this, but the people chosen to play Rex Stout’s famous characters are starting to grow on me, miscast as much as some of them are. Archie is too young, Wolfe too short, Panzer too silly-looking, and Cramer??
But Archie has the smirks, Wolfe has the orchids and the yellow pajamas, Panzer is not the wimp he was in the first episode, and Cramer???
Obviously the show will never appeal to Wolfian purists, nor to those who have never heard of Nero Wolfe, but — there is a lot of middle ground in between, and maybe, just maybe, the show will catch on.
Last week I thought the third episode [“Before I Die”] had been the best, the most enjoyable so far, and after tonight, I have no reason to change my mind. I don’t recall the story, entitled “Wolfe at the Door,” as being one of Stout’s, but then, I’m not the expert in the crowd [I was right. It wasn’t.]
It seems that both Archie and Wolfe are being impersonated in order to fool some prospective clients, the purpose being to obtain possession of a certain green lacquer box. Right now I don’t think that any of the rest of the plot made any sense, but it did make for good television, if that makes any sense. (All right, I’ll explain. Don’t ask questions, turn your mind off, and sit back and relax.)
[UPDATE] There were only 14 episodes in the run, the last being shown on June 2, 1981. About half of them were based on Rex Stout’s novels and short stories. The series is available on DVD. Released as Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: The Complete Series, it includes all 14 episodes and the 1977 pilot starring Thayer David.
May 16th, 2019 at 9:15 am
I thought the series was better than terrible, but not by much, and the casting is only a starting point. The stories, whether adaptations or not, fail to reflect Stout’s handling, and Stout is and was the star. The film dramatizations do not perform better, although Edward Arnold was at least an idea that might have worked. Walter Connolly, a better actor but less imposing is somewhat shaky too. As for ideal casting: Cary Grant is Archie, and not just because he was a guy with that name, but Wolfe seems unplayable. No one, then or now comes to mind, but Robert Coote keeps his job, and is given a little more to do.
May 16th, 2019 at 10:36 am
I think Edward Arnold matches my idea of Wolfe best, at least physically. Of all the various versions of Rex Stout’s work on the screen, both big and small, I’d say the recent series on A&E with Tim Hutton and Maury Chaykin was the most faithful to the stories themselves, hands down. I wish they’d been able to do more of them.
Here’s my review of THE DOORBELL RANG, the first episode.
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=1017
May 16th, 2019 at 1:36 pm
I was disappointed by the NBC version as well as the A&E version. I could never accept Lee Horsley (MATT HOUSTON) as Archie. The A&E used the old theatre company gimmick (used by early TV series such as RICHARD BOONE SHOW) where the same actors would play different characters in each episodes.
I liked the ABC TV Movie the best. Tom Mason was my idea of Archie. The writing by Frank Gilroy was better as well.
Here it is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A_U3ykbpDs&t=2s
May 16th, 2019 at 3:25 pm
I’m more or less with you about Lee Horsley, but I kind of liked the old theatre company gimmick. I hope you don’t think less of me for that!
May 16th, 2019 at 3:02 pm
I thought the A&E series was the best. Maury Chaykin looked like the Wolfe on the book covers, and the stories faithful to the canon.
Still, I remember enjoying the Conrad stories, although Lee Horsley didn’t seem like he was from Ohio for sure.
May 16th, 2019 at 3:30 pm
Another non-Lee Horsley fan!
May 16th, 2019 at 4:54 pm
I liked Lee Horsley, both here and in MATT HOUSTON.
He might not be the Archie in the books – but does that matter?
If you want the original Archie, you can just read Stout’s tales. Which I do, frequently.
My favorite episode of this was GAMBIT, based on Stout’s BOOBY TRAP. Haven’t seen these shows since the 1980’s.
Tom Mason is a very good actor. He was good in OUR FAMILY HONOR, a crime series from the 1980’s that had quality but not ratings. Will have to check him out as Archie.
May 16th, 2019 at 6:02 pm
Barry’s “less than terrible” pretty much fits my impression of this series, mostly saved by good actors and a couple of decent adaptations of Stout books (and a few simply awful too), and the basic likability of Conrad and Horsley. Robert Loggia as Arnold Zeck, Wolfe’s Moriarity, was a high point for me. The younger slicker Cramer worked well enough and the rest of the characters were well cast.
Radio had the perfect Wolfe in Greenstreet (I agree though Edward Arnold looked the part best), though Santos Ortega was good, but film and television I have to go with Chaykin and Hutton with a nod toward David and Mason (at least Chaykin and David didn’t smile and chuckle all the time, an affectation of Arnold, Conrad, and Connolly — equally miscast as Father Brown too).
My ideal screen team for Wolfe and Archie would have been British actor Francis Sullivan (THE SECRET FOUR, PLUNDER IN THE SUN, CARIBBEAN, many others) and Dennis O’Keefe. I suspect Wolfe, is often best portrayed by actors who generally play villains.
The Italian serie (episodes are available on YouTube), while cheaply done, and not quite right for Wolfe physically is actually pretty good, adapting Stout’s stories faithfully enough you don’t really have to speak the language if you recall the story, but then they did a faithful and handsome Philo Vance too.
I think we can all agree though Lionel Stander was horibly miscast as Archie.
May 16th, 2019 at 6:42 pm
7. For you Mike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYyD0AquMwg&t=4s
You can find all the NBC episodes on YouTube and many of the A&E as well.
May 16th, 2019 at 8:10 pm
Thank you for the GAMBIT episode!
May 17th, 2019 at 1:15 am
Casting About:
I started reading Nero Wolfe when I was in high school – the mid-’60s.
Back then, there was a popular news anchorman here in Chicago named Alex Dreier.
He was a portly man (all right – fat), with a deep, booming voice and a stern on-camera manner.
Alex Dreier (say DRY-er) came to radio and TV news after spending much of WWII in the OSS, working overseas. Back in the US post-war, he joined UPI and later NBC, doing the news on radio and television, eventually landing at the NBC station in Chicago.
There, Dreier became a popular late evening (10 pm) anchorman for many years; in the early ’60s he made front-page news in Chicago by jumping to the ABC station, which up to that point wasn’t doing late news.
Dreier’s popularity, coupled with his WWII credentials, led to his getting picked up by the ABC net for a daily afternoon news program.
My reason for bringing him up here:
When I was a teenage reader of Nero Wolfe, I always pictured him as Alex Dreier, booming out orders to Archie as he would boom out the daily news to all of us.
Circa 1968, Alex Dreier relocated to Los Angeles, first as a newsman, but deciding to start up an acting career; his stated model was Sydney Greenstreet.
Dreier got a kickstart through his friendship with Robert Wagner, who was doing It Takes A Thief at the time. Dreier did Thief twice, and thereafter did a whole bunch of movies and TV shots.
When Rex Stout died in ’75, and his family put Wolfe in play for adaptation, Alex Dreier was almost 60, and in reasonably good health; I always hoped he’d get a shot at Wolfe – alas, it never happened …
Anyway, although he’s been gone since 2000, I still see Alex Dreier as Nero Wolfe, and I guess I always will.
So There Too.
May 17th, 2019 at 7:43 am
Alex Dreier when he was a Hollywood actor:
And this is one of his radio news broadcasts for NBC in 1946. (The opening commercial takes up the first minute or so.)
May 17th, 2019 at 4:11 pm
I was always improved by Wolfe’s description as weighing one-seventh of a ton. It implied a monstrosity of being, like Jabba the Hutt. Then I calculated it out. One seventh of a ton is 286 pounds. Sadly I weight more than that. Don’t find it debilitating the way it was implied in the books. I did not know that Sydney Greenstreet did the voice of Wolfe on radio. Greenstreet always looked to me like what Wolfe should look like as well.
May 17th, 2019 at 5:08 pm
From Wikipedia, some notes to back up your computation, more or less. I remember the seventh of a ton myself:
Rex Stout prepared a confidential memo dated September 14, 1949 to assist the producers of the Sydney Greenstreet radio series The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe. Under the heading “Description of Nero Wolfe,” Stout begins: “Height 5 ft. 11 in. Weight 272 lbs. Age 56.”[1]:383
In Too Many Women (1947, chapter 5), Archie estimates Wolfe’s weight at close to 340. In In the Best Families (1953), Wolfe temporarily sheds 117 pounds.
May 17th, 2019 at 7:23 pm
Re Wolfe’s weight, height and weight alone don’t tell us much, some of it depends on body build — and a slimmer and smaller boned body 272 might be greater than on a fullback. Where the weight is carried might mean something too. If Wolfe is built liked his supposed father then 272 might appear quite heavy on that Sherlockian frame.
May 21st, 2019 at 12:47 am
Hello Steve. Your blog is great!
I’m on a mission, and it occurred to me that you and your blog followers might be able to assist me. I’m helping someone identify a film they watched on TV many years ago. My efforts so far have failed to find a match, despite the fact that they can recall quite a bit of detail about what they saw. Here is their description:
A sci-fi film (or possibly a TV episode), from the 1970s-1980s.
A woman reporter is recruited into a secret spy organization. The agency is accessed by an elevator where you insert a key and the control panel flips over to a second one.
At the end of the movie/episode, the lead male character bumps into the woman just as the clock strikes the hour, and she suddenly forgets everything that has happened (like ‘Men In Black’, but this was decades before that movie).
The ‘Agency’ is organized by color-coded sections, and I think the black one had the power to make anyone forget their experiences with them.
Seen on Canadian TV (Ontario). Possibly a TV pilot movie, or from a TV series (I believe it’s American), and was definitely live-action. Set in locations that were summer-weather like.
[description ends]
Steve, it sounds like something I would probably enjoy watching myself, so I’m kind of hooked! I’ve been digging pretty deep trying to unearth it, and I feel my best hope now is finding that one human out there who recognizes this – whatever ‘this’ is.
Thank you,
Harry
August 25th, 2020 at 9:56 pm
Hands down the best Nero Wolfe is the Timothy Hutton-Maury Chaykin winner. Half the strength is in the setting which they nailed. The acting is top-notch, as is the cinematography, and everything. Brilliant! The essence of it is right. Why it was cancelled was a shame. It had high production values (every dollar showed on the screen)! Maybe it was too expensive for A&E. Great show!