Tue 7 May 2024
A Gold Medal Review by Tony Baer: JOHN McPARTLAND – The Wild Party.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[8] Comments
JOHN McPARTLAND – The Wild Party. Gold Medal #596, paperback original; 1st printing, 1956. MacFadden 60-367, paperback, date? Film: United Artists, 1956.
Tom Kupfen is a hulking psychopath. Former football player. Hell with the ladies who love a sweaty bull.
Gorgeous debutante Erica London is out on the town with her fiancé, Lieutenant Arthur Mitchell, fighter pilot. They decide to go slumming with the lowdown miscreant jazz musicians living hand to bop.
Erica falls for psycho Tom. For just a moment. But the moment is long enough for Tom to dream dreams of what a rich foxy lady like Erica could do for him. And he for her. He won’t let go. He kicks her fiancé’s ass. And the only out is death.
Forgettable. Made into a 1956 film with Anthony Quinn as the bad guy.
May 7th, 2024 at 7:35 pm
May 8th, 2024 at 6:26 am
I’m not familiar with this one, but your rating surprises me. McPartland was generally a pretty good story-teller. Not among the best, but solid 2nd-rank.
May 8th, 2024 at 9:26 am
Dan,
Yes, I agree. I’ve generally liked what I’ve read from McPartland. I was looking forward to this one and it’s not readily available. I had to haggle with a seller on ebay for an affordable copy.
It just seems that McPartland didn’t have the courage of his convictions with this one. There’s an interesting moment where the debutante nearly throws everything away on her base animal attraction for the brute in a swell of sweaty avante-jazz in a derelict dive.
Her beau, proud Naval officer, of good family, tries to stand up to the ape, but is beaten like a ragdoll into a pulpy pulp. The debutante is titilated.
There’s something dark and vicious in her heart that she nearly acknowledges, pulling back at the last second, with no explanation, settling for her hoity toity mediocre destiny with her prissy, dissipated beau.
If McPartland had gone where he almost went, the thing would’ve been shocking. But, at the very last second, he shrinks from the setup and whitewashes the moment and pretends it didn’t happen. Everyone lives happily ever after.
The ending felt false and forced. Which bummed me out. And then McPartland immediately flips the script (which he wrote) to Hollywood. It’s a bummer.
May 8th, 2024 at 12:30 pm
For more on McPartland, he does indeed have his own Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McPartland
Here’s the first paragraph:
“John Donald McPartland (1911–1958) was a writer specializing in pulp fiction crime whose career was ended by an early death at age 47. In addition to his pulp work, he is known for his more standard novel, No Down Payment, which was later made into the movie of the same title, directed by Martin Ritt and starring Joanne Woodward and Tony Randall, among others.”
Quoting from later on from the same page:
“Most of McPartland’s books were published as Fawcett Gold Medal paperback originals. His novels, aside from No Down Payment, fall under the hard-boiled pulp category. The settings of his books were usually the seamy underworld of urban and suburban America, and featured plots involving romantic intrigue, international espionage, extortion, drug trafficking and crime syndicates. Japan was the backdrop for three of his books, of which two were set during the period of the post-WWII Allied occupation, a setting McPartland seemed to have experienced firsthand, particularly the sections of “sleazy, vice-ridden, post-Occupation Tokyo.”
and then, later still:
“McPartland also wrote four Hollywood screenplays that become movies, of which one was derived from his own work, The Wild Party, which was adapted to the screen for the 1956 movie, The Wild Party, starring Anthony Quinn. To date, three of McPartland’s novels have been brought to the screen: No Down Payment; The Kingdom of Johnny Cool which became the 1963 movie Johnny Cool (starring Elizabeth Montgomery and Henry Silva); and the aforementioned The Wild Party.”
Tony, I don’t suppose you’ve seen the movie. Not a whole lot of Gold Medal novels have been turned into films. Whenever one is, I always wonder how close the film follows the book, especially in this case the ending, which made you the unhappiest.
May 8th, 2024 at 12:33 pm
I have just found a solid reference to McPartland on Ed Gorman’s blog, from some 12 years ago:
http://newimprovedgorman.blogspot.com/2012/06/john-fraser-john-mcpartland.html
Thank goodness Ed’s blog is still online. I sure miss reading it every day.
May 8th, 2024 at 12:53 pm
Steve,
Nope–yet to see the movie. But I’d be (happily) shocked if the film changes the ending. The ending is very Hollywood.
These days I only rarely watch films. I feel like books are much more direct–instead of the story being filtered thru producers and directors and actors and editors and test audiences and script doctors….Plus a writer never has to worry about the budget for spectacular scenes or the costs of shooting on location.
May 8th, 2024 at 1:10 pm
Tony, you say
“…I’d be (happily) shocked if the film changes the ending. The ending is very Hollywood.”
I’d have to add to that the fact that McPartland also wrote the screenplay. I have been wondering in fact which came first, the book or the film. Note that the cover of the paperback touts the movie quite noticeably.
May 10th, 2024 at 10:13 pm
The film is no great shakes, though of course Quinn adds a bit of class to the business. I generally like McPartland’s books, but this one just feels a bit seedy rather than tough or noirish.