Like “Before I Die” (1947), The Golden Spiders (1953) is among Rex Stout’s few works to be adapted for the Nero Wolfe series starring William Conrad and Maury Chaykin, and interestingly, it was selected to kick off both, serving as the premiere episode (1/16/81) of the former on NBC and the two-hour pilot film (3/5/00) for the latter on A&E. The novel finds 12-year-old Pete Drossos offering to cut Wolfe in on a case: wiping windows at the corner of 35th and 9th, he sees the driver of a Caddy, wearing the titular earrings, mouth, “Help, get a cop.” Seen by the passenger apparently jabbing a gun in her ribs, he gets the license number, so Wolfe has Archie report possible illegal activity in connection with it.

   The next day, Purley Stebbins visits to say that Pete was run over on the same corner by a man in the same car, its plate taken from one stolen months ago, and is departing as Mrs. Anthea Drossos arrives. Pete’s last words — spoken to her in the ambulance—were, “Tell Nero Wolfe he got me…. Give him my money in the can,” his savings of $4.30; refusing to return or donate it to the Red Cross, Archie uses it to place an ad asking the woman to make contact with them…since, per “Black Orchids” (1941), “Contact is not a verb under this roof.” She calls to make an appointment while Cramer is there reporting that the car, found parked on 186th Street, had killed Matthew Birch in an alley by a South Street pier.

   Yet the identifying scratch on her cheek, when she offers $500 for Pete’s whereabouts, is recent enough to discredit widow Laura Fromm, who says she was having cocktails at the Churchill with lawyer Dennis Horan when he was killed. Not yet hired, Wolfe agrees to hold her $10,000 retainer and refrain from reporting her visit until the day after, warning her to “beware!” Sure enough, she becomes roadkill, so Archie leaves an account of their conversation for Cramer; in no time, Horan calls, seeking the return of her check, already certified, but Wolfe says he’ll earn it, sending Archie to the Gazette for information, with Lon Cohen revealing that she had dined with Dennis and Claire Horan before her demise.

   The other guests were Angela Wright, the Executive Secretary of Laura’s favorite cause, the Association for the Aid of Displaced Persons (aka Assadip); p.r. expert Paul Kuffner; and magazine publisher Vincent Lipscomb. Hit on the head with a wrench, she was run over by her own Caddy, and had no known connection to I.N.S special agent Birch, so to learn more about her last hours, Wolfe assigns Archie to Laura’s personal secretary, Jean Estey, but he learns little before Kuffner summons her away. When Wolfe asks the ’teers for ideas, Saul suggests posing as a displaced person to seek an Assadip/I.N.S. link, while Orrie tackles the earrings, and Fred tests the hypothesis that Birch was the man Peter saw.

   As they wind it up, Horan and James Albert Maddox, respective counsels for Assadip and Laura, appear unbidden, the latter insisting that as Laura’s executor, he could demand the check from Wolfe, who refuses to reveal what they said, and reports the visit to Cramer. Sent to stir the pot, Archie feigns an offer to spill the beans for $5,000…rejected in quick succession by Jean, Claire, Angela (with Saul slumped in the outer room), and Lipscomb. Back from the offices of Modern Thoughts, he finds Kuffner — clued in by Angela — who tries to accept it, but Wolfe declines; Jean sics the police on Archie, who tells Detective Randall and A.D.A. Mandelbaum, both of Prisoner’s Base (1952), he has broken no law.

   Julius Gerster clams up when Orrie asks about the earrings seen in his shop window, but after Archie — having seen his presumed young son — tells him about Pete, he says Laura bought them. Directed to Horan by Angela and her assistant, Chaney, the undocumented “Leopold Heim” tails the man who tries to extort $10,000 for help; Archie sends Orrie to help as Fred reports learning at bookie Danny Pincus’s bar that Lips Egan has the skinny on Birch. Mort Ervin takes Fred to Lips at Nunn’s Garage, where his cover is blown and they begin torturing him, forcing an eavesdropping Archie to intervene by disarming both thugs, and when the shooting is over, Saul and Orrie appear, having been following Egan.

   Himself tortured (which, while deserved, discomfited me, as it did Steve in his review of the novel), Lips confirms that Birch was in both car and racket, but claims he can identify neither the driver nor the woman who tipped him off to Heim with the password, “Said a spider to a fly.” As Horan appears and is held by Saul, Archie calls for instructions from Wolfe, who has them apologize and suggest that he represent Egan when the pair is taken to the brownstone, where Wolfe brings Cramer up to speed — excepting a notebook listing Egan’s “clients.” In a 180, Horan “reveals” that Laura had fingered Egan, whom he now refuses to represent, and Birch, sending him to Nunn’s to investigate and prevent scandal.

   Tossed to the wolves, Lips returns the compliment; while he is implicating Horan, Wolfe departs punctually for the plant rooms, asking that the trio be removed by an incredulous Cramer, who retaliates by taking Archie, Saul, and Fred as well, but Orrie is on an errand. Hauled before, successively, Deputy Commissioner Neary, boss Skinner, and their fellow mayoral wannabe, D.A. Bowen, Archie is also re-grilled by Mandelbaum regarding Jean, and Cramer interrupts a top-brass confab to say that Horan has been tentatively identified as Pete’s killer. Wolfe summons all and sundry, plus three plainclothes policewomen, to the office to earn his fee, and announces that the murderer was actually a woman in drag.

   Having gotten wind of the blackmailing, and perhaps overheard the password, Laura saw the earrings in the window, gave them to the woman she suspected, and retrieved them to impersonate her, not knowing that she had killed Birch and, fearing he could identify her, Pete. Fetched by Orrie (whose first name, later contradicted in a typical inconsistency, is given here as Orvald), Bernard Levine picks Jean out of Wolfe’s policewoman-enhanced line-up as the woman who bought a man’s felt hat and suit in his Newark clothing store. She claims to have done so on behalf of Claire, whose husband and Lips blow the whistle on Jean; when the dust has settled Wolfe burns the list of the displaced blackmail victims.

   The only episode of Nero Wolfe directed by Michael O’Herlihy, “The Golden Spiders” was adapted by Peter Nasco and David Karp, the latter credited as “Wallace Ware,” as he was on “Murder by the Book” (3/13/81). George Voskovec, playing Fritz opposite Lee Horsley’s Archie, was a scientist in the unsold 1959 Kurt Kasznar/William Shatner Nero Wolfe pilot, “Count the Man Down,” as was John McLiam, later seen in Conrad’s “Death and the Dolls” (4/10/81). Best known as Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady on stage (1956) and screen (1964), Robert Coote played his final role as Theodore, and George Wyner, cast as Saul, had a recurring one as Murray Chase on Horsley’s Matt Houston.

   An Oscar-winner for Tom Jones (1963), series composer John Addison reportedly called his equally whimsical theme for Murder, She Wrote his “old-age pension.” His feature-film credits include Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966) — abruptly replacing a score by Bernard Herrmann, which ended their legendary collaboration — and A Bridge Too Far (1977), depicting a battle in which he had participated with the British XXX Corps tank force. Katherine Justice, cast as Angela (now Bell), also appeared with Conrad in three episodes of Cannon; Dennis Horan is now Michael Doran (John Petlock), the p.r. man is Barry Green (James Parkes), and Paul Kessler (Liam Sullivan) is a colleague of Angela’s.

   Wolfe displays amused tolerance as Pete (David Hollander) — foisted upon him by Archie as payback for a childish outburst at Fritz — reports his brief encounter with Jean (Carlene Watkins) and Birch. Now no longer fatal, the hit and run puts him into the I.C.U., yet it’s “touch and go,” per Archie, preserving the poignancy as his mother (Rhoda Gemignani) brings his inflation-adjusted $12.35.

   Posing as Jean, Laura (Penelope Windust) says that “her” plea for help was a misunderstanding and she wants to thank Pete but, learning of the attack, leaves Wolfe with no check, only her promise to return the next day; after a fatal fall from the balcony of her apartment, she is identified by fiancé Doran and Jean.

   When Cramer (Allan Miller) reveals the murder of Birch, who matches Pete’s description of the passenger, his habit of annoying Wolfe by “get[ting] out of a chair [using] just his legs, never his arms or his hands,” is noted, as it is in the novel. Faux-turncoat Archie is rejected by Jean and Angela; in the Assadip garage, his “trusty burglar alarm” (a match placed between hood and body) forewarns him of the car bomb planted by L.A. hit man Joseph Moore, who then attempts to silence Pete — also anticipated by Wolfe — and dies in a struggle with Archie. Saul infiltrates the “vile scheme to smuggle the riffraff of the world into this country — the murderers, the terrorists, the fascists — for exorbitant fees.”

   Saul’s timely rescue from Frank Egan and an unnamed friend in the garage is interrupted by Cramer, who has tailed Archie ever since fruitlessly telling Wolfe to “lay back” due to federal pressure. Convening those concerned, Wolfe turns Angela, Barry, and Paul over to “the men of the 18th [Precinct]” for arranging the entrance of the refugees; fingered as the murderer, who conspired with Birch to blackmail them and killed him after a falling out, Jean claims Laura fell accidentally as they’d argued because “she was going to leave me.” Befitting Wolfe’s somewhat softer side on the series, the episode ends as he returns to the brownstone after leaving a check and orchid for his hospitalized young “partner.”

   Neither the director of The Golden Spiders, Bill Duke, nor scenarist Paul Monash carried over onto the ensuing series, but producer Susan Murdoch and composer Michael Small did, while two of the regulars were recast, as Saul Rubinek switched roles from Saul here (replaced by Conrad Dunn) to Lon Cohen (replacing Gerry Quigley).

   In a parallel acting career, Duke appeared with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando (1985) and Predator (1987); Monash was the respective producer and writer of the Stephen King adaptations Carrie (1976) and Salem’s Lot (1979). Elizabeth Brown (cast as Claire) and Philip Craig (Maddox) each made their only series appearances in “Disguise for Murder” (6/17/01).

   Featured were soon-to-be repertory players Gary Reineke (as Horan), Beau Starr (Lips), Nancy Beatty (Mrs. Drossos), Nicky Guadagni (Angela), Hrant Alianak (Gerstner [sic]), Peter Mensah (Mort), and Robert Bockstael (Kuffner). As Archie (Timothy Hutton) sits at his typewriter in an opening montage of the brownstone, with expository narration, we see the portrait of Sherlock Holmes hanging above his desk, mentioned as far back as The Rubber Band (1936). The sage vs. saffron and tarragon kerfuffle, almost verbatim, deftly introduces Fritz (Colin Fox); the day after Pete (Robert Clark) reports on Birch (Dwayne McLean) and Jean (Larissa Laskin), Purley (R.D. Reid) brings news of his brutal murder.

   The ad in the Mirror (replacing the Gazette as Lon’s employer) elicits the visit by Cramer (Bill Smitrovich), revealing the Birch/Drossos link, with Laura (Mimi Kuzyk) hard on his heels; the scratch is omitted, as is Lipscomb, and Wolfe intuits her imposture. Dressed as a mortician, getting him in to Jean, Archie returns as Wolfe tells Orrie (Trent McMullen), Fred (Fulvio Cecere), and Saul, “I resent the assumption that those who come to seek my help may be murdered with impunity.” Saul’s encounters with Angela at the Association of European Refugees (AER), Horan, and Lips are depicted, rather than merely related in the book, while young Irving (Brian Miranda) is explicitly identified as the jeweler’s son.

   The top brass confronting Archie is consolidated in the person of Neary, now “promoted” to Commissioner and given a first name, Walter (James Purcell). Wolfe’s final gathering, where he observes, “This is the first time I’ve undertaken to single out a murderer from a group of mostly strangers” before producing surprise witness Levine (Jack Newman, later seen in “Poison à la Carte” [5/26/02]), is true to Stout, as Chaykin invests his retelling of the crimes with dramatic tension. Monash replaces the burning of Egan’s notebook with an effective coda in which, because Wolfe and Pete were “partners” on the case, Anthea is presented with half of Laura’s fee by Archie, given Wolfe’s aversion to crying women.

         — Copyright © 2023 by Matthew R. Bradley.
   

Up next: Three Witnesses

Edition cited —

      The Golden Spiders: Bantam (1955)

Online sources —