Thu 16 May 2024
A Book! Movie!! Review by Dan Stumpf: MURRAY FORBES – Hollow Triumph // THE SCAR (1948).
Posted by Steve under Films: Drama/Romance , Reviews[4] Comments
MURRAY FORBES – Hollow Triumph. Ziff-Davis, hardcover, 1946. Stark House, trade paperback, 2023.
HOLLOW TRIUMPH. Eagle-Lion, 1948. Also released as The Scar (Paul Henreid, Joan Bennett; directors: Steve Sekely, Paul Henreid).
Murray Forbes’ Hollow Triumph has an interesting idea for a book: Henry Mueller is a failed medical student and small-time chiseler with an over-sized ego, fresh out of prison when he discovers he bears an amazing resemblance to Viktor Bartok, a prominent psychologist.
Readers of this sort of thing will figure at once that Mueller will kill Bartok and take his place, and that’s pretty much what happens, but Forbes gives it a cute twist: Mueller’s impersonation becomes a greater success than he figured on (The American Dream: if you fail at one thing, re-invent yourself as something else.) and as time passes, he wins even greater fortune and honor… and he can’t stand the fact that the murdered man is getting all the credit for his killer’s work: Mueller rubbed out Bartok, but it was Mueller who got erased, and his overweening pride leads him to….
It’s a clever thought, and somebody should write a book about it someday; Murray Forbes just didn’t seem too interested. Time and again he just tells us about things when he should be showing them. So we get lines like “She felt suspicious,” or “He was scared,” which ain’t exactly deathless prose. There are even points where Forbes seem to lose interest entirely, and instead of storytelling, he resorts to synopsis, resulting in passages like, “He went to New York to received the honor, then came back and continued work with his patients …”
I kept reading, but I’m not sure why.
Fans of Old Time Radio may recall Forbes as an actor on Ma Perkins and other programs, but this was his only novel, and in 1948 the Movies bought it, discarded most of the plot, noired up the rest, and released it under the original title and as The Scar. Like Forbes’ writing Paul Henreid’s acting is just perfunctory, but there’s fine photography by john Alton, and Daniel Fuchs’ script makes intelligent use of a plot twist that would have been a facile punch-line in lesser hands.

May 17th, 2024 at 10:47 pm
The film, pardon the play on words, always rang a little hollow to me. It almost makes for a good noir, but it doesn’t quite make it.
May 17th, 2024 at 11:51 pm
I saw the film as a romance in a noir setting, but the relationship between Bennett and Henreid was front and center. They are warm together.
May 18th, 2024 at 12:24 am
To change the subject a bit (since I haven’t seem the movie, and I can’t comment on that) another well-known radio actor that went into writing books later on his career was Eliott Lewis (no relation), who wrote seven books about Fred Bennett, a tough cop who eventually became a private eye. From Wikipedia:
“The series was published by Pinnacle Books from 1980 to 1983.
Two Heads Are Better (1980) ISBN 0523414390
Dirty Linen (1980) ISBN 0523406533
People in Glass Houses (1981) ISBN 0523414374
Double Trouble (1981) ISBN 0523414382
Bennett’s World (1982) ISBN 0523415931
Here Today, Dead Tomorrow (1982) ISBN 0523414390
Death and the Single Girl (1983) ISBN 0523414773
“Death and the Single Girl was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best Original P.I. Paperback from the Private Eye Writers of America in 1984, but lost to Dead in Centerfield by Paul Engelman.”
May 18th, 2024 at 6:58 pm
re: book
The relationship between the two characters is possibly based on Doctor Faustus & Mephistopheles? Just a guess.
re: movie
Daniel Fuchs and John Alton are were huge talents in their respective fields. It’s a shame this flick is a little wan around the gills.
re: radio
Elliott Lewis, aka ‘Mr. Radio’. I did not know he was also an authoring. Is there anything that guy was not good at? I heard him recently in a performance of Chekhov’s ‘The Bear’ and even though I know him well from Scarlet Queen’ he still surprised me with fireworks.