Wed 5 Apr 2023
Nero Wolfe on Page and (Small U.S.) Screen: The Silent Speaker by Matthew R. Bradley
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[11] Comments
The Silent Speaker
by Matthew R. Bradley
The Silent Speaker (1946) was Rex Stout’s first Nero Wolfe novel after a wartime hiatus, and the first from Viking, his publisher for the rest of his life, during which he wrote only of Wolfe. Titular victim Cheney Boone, the director of the government’s Bureau of Price Regulation (BPR), is found in a small room off the stage of the Waldorf-Astoria’s Grand Ballroom, bludgeoned to death with a monkey wrench — an exhibit for the speech he was about to deliver to the National Industrial Association (NIA). The court of public opinion having convicted the NIA, which is bitterly opposed to Boone’s policies, president Frank Thomas Erskine hires Wolfe to investigate, for which he convenes the interested parties.
On one side of his office, Erskine is joined by son Ed, NIA assistant P.R. director Hattie Harding, Dinner Committee Chairman Don O’Neill, and Executive Committee members Breslow and Winterhoff. On the other are Boone’s wife, Luella, and niece, Nina; Alger Kates of the BPR’s Research Department; and Deputy — now Acting — Director, Solomon Dexter. “In between the two hostile armies were the neutrals or referees,†i.e., Inspector Cramer (whose initials, contradicting the previous novel, are indicated as “L.T.C.â€), Sgt. Purley Stebbins, and the FBI’s G.G. Spero, although Wolfe’s telegram inviting them is not accepted by Boone’s confidential secretary, Phoebe Gunther, or the Waldorf’s Rohde.
Everybody has an alibi and nobody has an obvious personal motive, with no clues given by the text of the speech, although a case containing cylinders from a dictating machine, which Boone made after a mysterious emergency conference in Washington and wanted Phoebe to transcribe, is missing.
Ed displays apparently nonreciprocal interest in Nina, while Archie — sent to fetch Phoebe after they disperse in acrimony — finds Kates there, but her interview with Wolfe is inconclusive. Archie watches O’Neill retrieve the leather case from the parcel room at Grand Central Station, bringing them both to Wolfe; O’Neill arranges for the loan of a Stenophone, but is ejected by Archie before they listen to them.
The case contains 10 cylinders dictated before the day of Boone’s murder, but although it was presumably switched for another of the 12 he used, Wolfe has Archie transcribe their seemingly innocuous contents.
Desperate due to a lack of progress, Cramer agrees to his request to have Lt. Rowcliffe (sic) reconvene everyone, yet as the party is getting started, Fritz finds Phoebe by the basement gate; friend and neighbor Doc Vollmer confirms that she’s been bludgeoned with a piece of iron pipe, so now, nobody has an alibi, and all had opportunity. Nine cylinders are found in her Washington apartment, none with anything useful, but on a scarf in Kates’s coat, Phillips finds microscopic traces from the iron pipe.
It belongs to Winterhoff, who claims it was stolen on his last visit, yet it could have been put there by anybody, so Cramer is again forced to disperse the group; Wolfe hires Saul, Bill Gore, and 20 men from Del Bascom’s agency, sans explanation, and asks Archie to gain Nina’s confidence.
Wolfe declines a $300,000 offer from lawyer and self-described errand boy “John Smith†to pin the killings on Dexter or Kates, presumably on behalf of the NIA, and equally willing to toss O’Neill to the wolves. Commissioner Hombert says that Cramer has been relieved and replaced by Inspector Ash, one of his former captains, now in charge of Homicide in Queens, who summons Wolfe to Centre Street police H.Q.
Ash gets a literal slap in the face, from Wolfe, and a figurative one, from Hombert, who says he’ll handle it with D.A. Skinner; Wolfe is impressed when told Cramer was fixating on the 10th cylinder. Luella says Phoebe confided that she knew who’d murdered Boone, had the cylinder, and would use it after maximum damage was done to the NIA, to whom Wolfe has tendered his resignation.
To avoid the fallout, he has Vollmer certify that he is having a nervous breakdown until realizing that Phoebe hid the cylinder in his office, and Boone, living up to the title, reveals a warning from O’Neill’s VP, Henry A. Warder, that O’Neill was buying information from Kates, who killed Boone in an angry confrontation.
“The Silent Speaker†(7/14 & 21/2002), a two-part second-season episode of A Nero Wolfe Mystery, was adapted and directed by Michael Jaffe (tripling as an executive producer); soap star Cynthia Watros and Second City Television legend Joe Flaherty make their only appearances as, respectively, Phoebe and Vollmer.
Most other parts were, as usual, filled by repertory players such as James Tolkan, returning as FBI Agent Richard Wragg, a role he created in “The Doorbell Rang†(4/22/01), also written by Jaffe. Stout used Wragg in that book, but had yet to introduce him here, so in a logical move, Jaffe makes Wragg, in effect, a composite of Spero and another federal agent, Travis, from The Silent Speaker.
Unlike the William Conrad series, Maury Chaykin’s has no uniform title theme or credit sequence. After a brief pan across a New York skyline, each episode opens with a unique Michael Small score and animated montage introducing “The Players,†in which Timothy Hutton, also the show’s most frequent director and an executive producer, is significantly billed first.
“The Silent Speaker†segues from a drawing of the BPR to an informational film about the NIA, symbolizing a conflict mirroring that between the real-life Office of Price Administration (OPA), run by Chester Bowles — note the similarity in name — and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).
When Archie (Hutton) requests permission from Cramer (Bill Smitrovich) to examine the “murder room,†Jaffe interpolates his wife (Nicky Guadagni), who reveals his first name; his bank balance low, Wolfe (Chaykin) baits the hook, having Archie “accidentally†drop the memo in Hattie’s (Christine Brubaker) office and ask Wragg for any reason he should not take interest.
A montage conveys the time Archie wastes fencing with Hattie before Wolfe receives Erskine Sr. (David Schurmann), Jr. (Matthew Edison), Breslow (George Plimpton) and Winterhoff (Bill MacDonald). Later, Wolfe denies to O’Neil (sic; Richard Waugh) that he was asked to shift attention elsewhere, and invites him to their discussion.
This is well choreographed with Cramer, Wragg, and Purley (R.D. Reid) observing while they face Luella (Debra Monk), Nina (Manon von Gerkan), Kates (Julian Richings), and Dexter (Robert Bockstael); in her solo visit, Phoebe makes an impression on Archie, with whom she flirts, and Wolfe (“A woman who is not a fool is dangerousâ€). Jaffe supplants Gore with series regular Fred Durkin (Fulvio Cecere), and gives Fritz (Colin Fox) a more active role in O’Neil’s humiliation.
Lunching with Nina at the Tulip Room, Archie gets a call from Wolfe, livid at being served by Ash (Doug Lennox), and repertory players Gary Reineke and Steve Cumyn make one-off showings as Hombert and Skinner, respectively.
The comic potential of Vollmer’s diagnosis is maximized, with Jaffe adding “some tests to rule out any sort of neurological problems here,†e.g., inkblots identified by Wolfe as “an Eastern European village where the inhabitants have coins as heads†and “a piece of veal,†and a search for phrenologic bumps. The denouement is delicious: Wolfe, having returned the NIA’s fee, still collects their $100,000 reward for the killer, and after Archie posits his finding the cylinder days earlier, he hypothesizes the delay to further Phoebe’s ends (having told her in the novel, “I don’t like the NIA. I’m an anarchistâ€). Vindicated, Cramer gives Wolfe an orchid in gratitude for handing the murderer directly over to him.
— Copyright © 2023 by Matthew R. Bradley.
Up next: Trouble in Triplicate
Edition cited —
The Silent Speaker in Seven Complete Nero Wolf Novels: Avenel (1983)
Online source —
April 5th, 2023 at 2:27 am
Whew! This will take several re-reads.
In the meantime: ermmm …George Plimpton?
April 5th, 2023 at 6:24 am
You’ll be seeing a lot of him, especially in Season 2. He’s very effective, and well cast in suitably patrician roles, including Stout’s recurring characters of Wolfe’s lawyer, Nathaniel Parker (twice), and General Carpenter.
April 5th, 2023 at 9:01 am
I happen to be reading The Silent Speaker at the moment; I am reading all the Wolfes in order. Has anyone else noticed how often there are additional murders AFTER Wolfe is hired? I know it is not his and Archie’s brief specifically to prevent such, but still…
April 5th, 2023 at 9:59 am
A Passing Thought:
If you’ve watched enough police shows in recent times, you’ll have noticed that the commanding detectives usually hold the rank of Lieutenant.
Their subordinates address them as “Loot” or “Lieu” – or sometimes as “L.T.” (for “lieutenant”).
Of course, we all remember that Rex Stout was never a “continuity nerd”, as so many of us here are; still, might it be possible that something that Inspector Fergus Cramer held on to, dating back to when he was a Detective Lieutenant, might be labeled “LTC”, and the good inspector simply kept it after all these years?
… Or something like that there …
Just potshotting around for fun …
April 5th, 2023 at 10:03 am
Oh, By The Bye:
Those opening title montages were credited to Aurore Giscard D’Estange, who was married IRL to Timothy Hutton during the making of the series.
So There Too.
April 5th, 2023 at 5:24 pm
Well, I learned something new. I hadn’t realized Plimpton had ever turned his hand to acting, to the extent of appearing in a series.
I’m a fan of Plimpton. Amusing writer, witty raconteur, and shrewd critic of the world around him.
He was always so carefree and kooky and fun-loving. A real zest for living, that guy.
April 5th, 2023 at 6:51 pm
I’m really enjoying these and hope Matthew is at least considering collecting these. They are fun to read and excellent Wolfe scholarship as well.
April 5th, 2023 at 6:53 pm
Lazy,
George Plympton appeared as one of the bad guys in Howard Hawks RIO LOBO and, in Hawks tradition, got to design his own death stunt.
April 5th, 2023 at 11:26 pm
You don’t say! Geez. Well I’ll certainly accept this at face value. News to me.
George Plimpton always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, for merriment and larks. He was a cut-up. A throwback to a less-serious era.
Infectious humor. I wish we had more like him around today.
April 6th, 2023 at 9:47 am
In re George Plimpton:
His “acting career” (such as it was) seems to have been something he did for his own fun (and if he could turn a buck or two at it, so much the better).
That bit he did in Rio Lobo was for one of a brief series of ABC-TV specials: Plimpton would put himself into an unlikely occupation, the cameras would follow him trying to get into the new job, and amusement ensued.
Some of George Plimpton’s other specials saw him try his hand at circus aerialistics, stand-up comedy, and auto racing, plus another shot at football.
As to A&E’s Nero Wolfe: this is just guesswork on my part, but most likely George Plimpton was a long-term fan of Rex Stout’s books, and when the opportunity presented itself to appear in the TV movies, it was just too good not to get involved (I don’t know for sure, but it’s at least possible that Plimpton and Stout might have known each other socially in days gone by; correction welcomed, if needed).
April 8th, 2023 at 11:06 am
Mike: Had not known about the opening title montages; thanks very much!
One of the best-known examples of Plimpton’s “participatory journalism” is, of course, the book and Alan Alda film of Paper Lion, as mentioned in my Over My Dead Body post.
David: I’m intensely gratified by your generous comments. In my personal lexicon, “scholarship” is the highest of goals/praise, so by chance or design (if you already knew that), you couldn’t have said anything nicer. I plan to see the series (Stout, Conrad [adaptations only], and Chaykin) through to the end, and am honored to have you along for the ride. Hadn’t thought of collecting them but, as I always say, I rule out nothing.