TRIAL WITHOUT JURY. Republic Pictures, 1950. Robert Rockwell, Barbra Fuller, Kent Taylor, Audrey Long, Barbara Billingsley, Dabbs Greer, Jack Larson. Directed by Philip Ford.
A playwright [Kent Taylor] finds himself in a jam after the producer he has just had an argument with is found murdered. Worse, his girl friend’s brother is the police lieutenant assigned to the case, and he is convinced the writer did it. Solution: turn amateur detective.
Rockwell, more famous in some circles for his career on TV, does not make very convincing [homicide] detective. The real star is Kent Taylor as the prime suspect, but any story in which you find a killer by making yourself bait does not have very much going for it.
Nero Wolfe on Page and (Small U.S.) Screen: 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.
HAL G. EVARTS – The Long Rope. Dell First Edition A172, paperback original, 1958. Pocket, paperback, 1973.
Long Ropestarts with the brutal massacre of a squatter family and the near-fatal wounding of luckless drifter Will Landry by persons unknown — but not for long. The scene quickly shifts to the modest cow town of Antelope, run by acting sheriff Roy Kell, who is holding Landry, with the narrative that he got shot while murdering the squatters and will be tried and quickly hanged as soon as he recovers.
Enter Dan Croft, an old trail buddy of Landry’s, keeping his cards close to his vest, playing it cool and cagey while he surveys the situation, figures out who he can trust, who really killed the squatters and why Kell is so anxious for Landry not to stand trial—even to the point of hiring Croft to kill him!
This first part of the book is confined to the town of Antelope, and I use the word “confined†advisedly because it reads more like a film noir than a western, as Croft walks mean streets knee-deep in double-crosses, trying to out-bluff adversaries who hold all the cards, and spring his buddy from Jail.
At which point (and I’m not giving away anything that ain’t on the back cover) the tale moves out into open country, and The Long Rope becomes a tale of pursuit and survival in the wilderness as the fugitives cross forests, snow-capped mountains, and dusty plains to escape a lawman bent on murder.
Evarts writes this just as vividly as he did the first part, with a keen appreciation of the rigors of the terrain and the vagaries of the chase, with Kell closing in, falling behind, and finally…
Well I’ll just say that The Long Rope comes to a terse and satisfying conclusion, and I’ll be looking for more by Evarts!
PHILIP WYLIE – The Savage Gentleman. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1932. Dell #85, paperback, 1945. Avon #390, paperback, 1952. University of Nebraska Press, softcover, 2011.
Betrayed by his wife, newspaper magnate Stephen Stone takes his small son Henry and with his trusted companion Jack, a giant black man, and with the Scotsman McCobb travels to a savage paradise where he runs his yacht the Falcon aground. “Suddenly I remembered this island … I knew then that my son was going to be brought up without the influence of women. Without the knowledge of women they imbue in men.â€
So the small group of men carve a world on the island and young Henry grows into manhood, a copper haired bronzed giant, perfect in mind and body, but a savage as far as the outer world goes. Eventually Stephen repents of his anger and madness and tries to make it up to Jack (respectfully written for the era, but unfortunately a sacrificial figure, a trope still too common), McCobb, and especially Henry, but dies before he can guide Henry’s entry into civilization. While he will be fabulously rich in the real world, is Henry ready for the modern world and is the modern world ready for Henry Stone, the savage gentleman?
Henry is none the less a superman in body and mind save for his one weakness, he is completely guileless when it comes to women, which is why when Henry meets Marian Whitney the daughter of his father’s attorney and oldest friend Elihu Whitney Henry is knocked for a loop.
His face was bloodless
The great muscles in his jaws were knotted.
His hands hung limp.
Henry isn’t just love struck, he practically has a stroke. It doesn’t help that the first thing Marian does is to enter the room laughing at the newspaper story about the recently rescued Henry Stone, a savage who probably will have to be locked up in the zoo.
If that all sounds vaguely familiar it must be pointed out that even Lester Dent admitted he had read Wylie’s Savage Gentleman. Henry may not trill when he’s thinking or be a polymath in all subjects, and he doesn’t have an Arctic fortress or five of the most brilliant men in the country as an entourage, but he is that favorite figure of the Twenties, the superman, and somewhere between Tarzan and John Galt, he hits New York by storm.
Of course Philip Wylie was an old hand at this. Science fiction pioneer, pulpster, sophisticated writer of stories for the slicks, literary maven, humorist, early environmentalist, philosopher, and gadfly, his career encompassed classics in all those genres.
Even the most shallow of overviews of his career include Gladiator which inspired Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster to create Superman, When Worlds Collide, which inspired Alex Raymond to create Flash Gordon (and its own strip Speed Spaudling), The Murderer Invisible (as much the inspiration of the Invisible Man films as H. G. Wells novel). the Crunch and Des stories that helped influence John D. MacDonald to create Travis McGee, and works such as Finlay Wren, As They Reveled, Generation of Vipers, They Both Were Naked, Triumph,Tomorrow, and The Disappearance. He was a respected science fiction author, mystery writer, and literary figure all the while letting his mind and imagination range free where ever it lead him (often as not into controversy).
Meanwhile Henry has returned to find his father’s newspaper has, under the guidance of corrupt newsman Voorhies, been commandeered by the forces of crime and corruption and of course Henry isn’t going to bother with the courts to take that on ending with a wild melee as Henry reclaims his legacy with fists flying amid a hail of gunfire.
As a wounded Henry lies in his hospital bed at the end, Marian comes to tell him she loves him, and in scene that will be copied in a million variations in countless Hollywood newspaper movies to come…
He lifted himself on his elbow “I don’t know what to say, I — yes I do — get me a stenographer! I’ve got to dictate an editorial! You can help me!â€
“But —â€
“Say! I’m a newspaper man now. Get a stenographer. But give me a kiss before you go and have another kiss ready when you get back!â€
Just how this one avoided Hollywood I don’t know. You can practically see it as you read it as a Frank Capra film with Gary Cooper or Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur or Carole Lombard. The Savage Gentleman is a relatively short book, very much a pulp adventure tale, and more of interest as a yarn than philosophy, but that is all to the good, and there is no such think as superficial Wylie, his active mind at work in even the simplest of tales his eye every bit as savage as his hero.
STUART PALMER & CRAIG RICE “Once Upon a Train.†Hildegarde Withers & John J. Malone. First appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, October 1950. Original title or published later as “Loco Motive.†Collected in People vs. Withers & Malone (Simon & Schuster, 1953; Award paperback, 1965). Filmed as Mrs. O’Malley and Mr. Malone(MGM, 1950, with Marjorie Main as Harriet “Hattie” O’Malley and James Whitmore as John J. Malone).
In Ellery Queen’s introduction to the collection of Withers-Malone stories, of which there were six, they say that this was the first known collaboration between two mystery writers on a tale in which their respective primary characters showed up to solve a case together. This could very easily be true.
When Malone, a somewhat disreputable Chicago lawyer finds that his most recent client, a city official accused of embezzling $30,000 from municipal funds, and a man he has just gotten off from those charges, is on a train headed for New York City — and without paying him — what is there to do rush to the station and board the very same train.
Along with several other people crying for his scalp, as it is clear that the man’s innocence is still very much in doubt. It is no wonder that his body is found at length very much dead. And in whose train compartment? None other than the horse-faced schoolteacher Miss Withers, whose accommodation adjoins Mr. Malone’s.. As they furiously move the body back and forth between their separate compartments as needed, which is often, they still manage to find time to solve the case together.
Which case is one the screwballiest detective stories you can imagine, with a laugh or a chuckle every other paragraph, if not oftener.
When they made a movie out of this, they had to change Miss Withers name to Mrs. O’Malley for copyright reasons, and no, Marjorie Main is not my idea of Miss Withers, either, but James Whitmore did passably well as Mr. Malone, if not better.
H. A. DeROSSO – .44 . Lion #129, paperback original, 1953; Lion # 145, paperback, 1956. Leisure Books, paperback, 1998.
Harland is a reluctant gunfighter. He got sucked into it without wanting to. He beat a famous gunslinger in a drunken pique, and his reputation grew and followed him. He only wanted to be a hired hand. But anytime he got hired these days it was because the rancher wanted him to shoot somebody. They’d say he was just another hand. But they’d lie.
Finally he figured he might as well accept his fate. If he’s gonna have to gunfight, he might as well get paid for it.
His first hired kill is a man named Lancaster. He tracks down the man, out beyond the range in the middle of no man’s land. Betwixt some craggy straggly chasm. Lancaster stops and waits.
What are you following me for, asks Lancaster. I mean to kill you, Harland responds. You mean you were hired to kill me. Well go ahead and draw.
And they draw. And Lancaster has him beat. Handily. No doubt. But he sadly smirks and doesn’t fire. And Harland does, his finger jerks, the bullet flies, and Lancaster dies. Smiling.
Now Harland is wracked with regret. Why didn’t Lancaster fire? What was that sad smile about. What the hell is going on? So Harland he can’t let it go. He has to find out what was behind Lancaster’s desire to die.
Harland turns detective trying to figure out why he was hired to kill Lancaster. Turns out Lancaster and a couple of other men made off with $100,000 in a train robbery. Then Lancaster screwed his partners and made off with the plunder.
But the partners don’t want Lancaster dead — at least not until they get their grubby hands on the loot. So who was it then? Who is it that wants Lancaster dead, that already has their hands on the money, that made a gunfighter give up the ghost?
Harland can’t stop til he finds out, meanwhile falling in love with Lancaster’s widow. A woman who all the men fall for and long to protect.
HEC RAMSEY “The Century Turns.†NBC, 08 October 1972 (Season One, Episode One). Richard Boone, Rick Lenz, Sharon Acker, Harry Morgan. Guest star: R. G. Armstrong. Screenwriter: Harold Jack Bloom. Directors: Daniel Petrie, Charles Ziarko (uncredited). Most of the series is available on YouTube.
First broadcast in 1972, Hec Ramsey was part of the NBC Mystery Movie, a “wheel” series format, starring Richard Boone in the title role for ten episodes over two seasons, in a part that might have had viewers thinking that Ramsey was the lawman Paladin might have become when he got older. (I have read that this was denied by people involved in producing the series, but I’m sure they didn’t mind the publicity it generated.)
The premise behind itwas that the stories took place just after the turn of the century, with Ramsey showing up to be the new deputy for the police chief of a small town in Oklahoma after a long career of fighting outlaws with a badge and a gun. What takes the townsfolk by surprise, however, is that the aging Ramsey has learned new tricks: fingerprinting, ballistics and taking plaster casts of horseshoe prints at the scene of the crime.
In this, the pilot episode, he uses all three to catch a gang of outlaws who held up the stage he was riding in on his way into town, and to solve a pair of murders first thought to be a murder-suicide. It’s all told in a light-hearted way, beginning with the instant antagonism between Ramsey and his new boss, later giving way to mutual respect.
Western action fans need not have been worried. There’s a very good shootout at the en of the show as well. There is even a hint of romance between Ramsey and Sharon Acker’s character, but if so, it was decided early on not to have the show go in that direction. (She appeared in only one later episode.)
Richard Boone was in his late 50s at the time, but he was in fine form as always in playing the gruff, rumpled, non-compromising Hec Ramsey, never one to take fools seriously.
I somehow missed seeing any of the series at the time. What was I thinking? I enjoyed this one. Highly recommended!
THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE. RKO Radio Pictures, 1947. Lawrence Tierney, Ted North, Nan Leslie, Betty Lawford. Based on the novel (McBride, hardcover, 1938) by co-screenwriter Robert C. duSoe. Director: Felix E. Feist.
A traveling salesman, a happy-go-lucky sort of guy, with a good job and a wife waiting home for him, makes a serious mistake. He picks up a guy thumbing a ride. They then pick up two girls who are hoofing their way to Hollywood, then stop and have a party.
A deadly one. Lawrence Tierney is perfect in the role of a killer on the run.With his cold and shifty eyes, he was made for the part. Everybody is fine in their roles, even the minor ones. I even recognized the voice of Arthur Q. Bryan as a local cop. (Among others, he played the role of Fibber McGee’s friend Doc Gamble on the radio.)
PATRICK KELLEY – Sleightly Invisible. Harry Calderwood #3. Avon, paperback original, 1986.
Another mystery with magic involved (*) – Kelley’s detective (this is his third adventure) is a magician named Harry Calderwood. Harry was once a big name, on TV and all, but he is now doing street corners. I don’t know why. Maybe I should read the earlier books.
But maybe I won’t, since I found this one rather disappointing. It involves a missing coed that Harry is forced into finding. Harry has a glib tongue, but his attempts at humor seem to miss tw7o times out of three. The mystery he solves also needs some work.
– Reprinted from Mystery.File.6, June 1980.
____
(*) I was referring here to the book The Wealth Seekers, the Shadow paperback by Maxwell Grant reviewed a few days ago on this blog.
A disappointing book turned into an intriguing film.
THINK OF A NUMBER starts out with a neat little hook and develops it with some skill and suspense. Bork, a meek bank teller with a thoughtful streak, perceives hints that someone plans to rob his bank – probably his own station—during the busy Christmas Season, and decides to get in on the act himself.
Bork makes a practice of hiding away large sums of cash, and when the robber strikes, he gets away with a few thousand Kroener while Bork carries off a few hundred thousand. And so crime pays…
Until the robber decides to go after Bork’s share.
What follows is a battle of wits between Bork and the Bad Guy, complicated by the appearance of a Mystery Lady who may be a key piece in the game. But what makes it readable is that the wits involved are genuinely sharp, with Bork somehow keeping one jump ahead of the others, even as they out-think him.
Unfortunately, author Bodelson seems to have mapped out his ending without considering the characters, because in the last third of NUMBER, everybody gets stupid. And I mean Everybody: Bork, the mystery gal, the robber, even a cop on their tail… all of them, after being sharp-witted for so long, suddenly commit the most obvious and unforgivable mistakes imaginable. And I say “imaginable†because what we have here is clearly a case of a writer shepherding his characters to a tidy ending that reads like the author himself descended from on high to personally arrange it.
So when our neighbors to the North made this into the movie SILENT PARTNER, they wisely opted for a more convincing resolution, one that is rich in irony, yet seems to rise naturally from the characters. And it may be the casting, but those characters, as played by Elliott Gould, Susannah York and a nasty-nasty Christopher Plummer, seem more rounded and interesting than the predestined losers of Bodelson’s novel.
I should add that there’s some surprisingly graphic violence here, mostly directed at women, but it helps that PARTNER is directed at a brisk pace, acted with enthusiasm, and written with an air of spontaneity that breathes freshness into every scene. This is a film not to be missed by lovers of tricky caper flicks who want to see a few new wrinkles in the celluloid fabric.
Devoted to mystery and detective fiction — the books, the films, the authors, and those who read, watch, collect and make annotated lists of them. All uncredited posts are by me, Steve Lewis.
