Rex Stout published one Nero Wolfe novel every year from 1946 (The Silent Speaker) to ’66 (Death of Doxy), and often a collection as well; the 1954 crop included, respectively, The Black Mountain and Three Men Out. Each novella first appeared in The American Magazine under a different title: “Invitation to Murder” (as “Will to Murder,” August 1953), “The Zero Clue” (as “Scared to Death,” December 1953), and “This Won’t Kill You” (as, oddly, “This Will Kill You,” September 1952). In “Invitation,” Archie lures Wolfe out of the house while trying to determine which of three women aspire to marry a wealthy widower in a wheelchair, and may have made him one with ptomaine poisoning.

   â€œThe Zero Clue” concerns the murder of a probability expert and former math professor, Leo Heller, whose penchant for complex formulae strongly recalls F.O. Savarese of And Be a Villain (1948). Justifying the collection’s sabermetric title, “This Won’t Kill You” opens with the unlikely spectacle of Wolfe acceding to the request by house guest Pierre Mondor — one of Les Quinze Maîtres, introduced in Too Many Cooks (1938) — to attend a baseball game at the Polo Grounds. The murder of a player, and drugging of four others, costs the Giants the seventh and deciding World Series contest against the Red Sox, with Wolfe hired by part-owner and oil millionaire Emil Chisholm, already deeply in his debt.

   A pivotal entry, The Black Mountain builds on the events of Over My Dead Body (1940), and opens as Wolfe visits the morgue to see his boyhood friend Marko Vukcic, owner of Rusterman’s Restaurant, shot outside his home on East 54th Street. Widow Carla Britton (formerly Lovchen), Wolfe’s adopted daughter, believes agents of Belgrade or Moscow killed him for supporting rebels in their homeland of Montenegro (the Black Mountain), now part of Marshal Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia. Sending weapons is against U.S. law, so her disappearance provokes a return visit from G-man Stahl, and after learning of her death in Montenegro from Paolo Telesio in Bari, Italy, Wolfe says he requires a passport.

   As we follow them to London (where Ethelbert Hitchcock is now Geoffrey), Rome, and across the Adriatic, Archie notes, “The basic setup between [us] was upset,” making him rely on Wolfe, as he knows the turf blindfolded, speaks eight languages, and translates as he can. Marko’s nephew, Danilo, is paid by both Titoists and Russians while guarding an arms cache for the Spirit of the Black Mountain, who may harbor a spy; in an old Roman fort, Archie avenges Carla, shooting Moscow’s Albanian puppets as they torture Marko’s killer, Peter Zov. In an impressive con job, Wolfe persuades his superior, Gospo Stritar, that they should bring him back to America for “safety”…then turns him over to Cramer.

   In Before Midnight (1955), Wolfe is hired to find out not who shot Louis Dahlmann, but who took the answers in a million-dollar perfume contest from his body. The novellas in Three Witnesses (1956) also premiered in The American Magazine: “The Next Witness” (as “The Last Witness,” May 1955), “When a Man Murders…” (May 1954), and “Die Like a Dog” (as “The Body in the Hall,” December 1954). “When a Man Murders…” introduces Tim Evarts, described as the Hotel Churchill’s “first assistant security officer, not to be called a house dick,” in Before Midnight; we also learn that “Only two assistant district attorneys rate corner rooms, and [ADA Irving] Mandelbaum wasn’t one of them.”

   In “The Next Witness,” Archie sees him “perform in a courtroom” for the first time as he tries to convict theatrical producer Leonard Ashe for strangling stage-struck Marie Willis and questions employer Clyde Bagby, the president of answering service Bagby Answers Ink.

   She reportedly refused to perform a “special service” eavesdropping on Ashe’s wife, ex-actress Robina Keane, and intended to warn her idol; subpoenaed to testify, Wolfe had turned down Ashe, who says he was summoned to Bagby’s office by an anonymous call, arriving to find her dead. On deck after Bagby, Wolfe risks a fine by taking Archie there to prevent a “justicial transgression” by refuting Mandelbaum’s thesis and clearing Ashe.

   Wolfe seeks to question employees Helen Weltz — now off-duty — Alice Hart, and Bella Velardi, but new receptionist Pearl Fleming was not working there then. Alice, like Lily Rowan, owns a Van Gogh, allegedly bought with her savings; Bella claims she makes her race-track bets on behalf of friends, while Helen has a Jaguar and may have been Marie’s rival for the affections of Guy Unger. Bearding Helen in her Westchester summer rental, and now officially AWOL, they find Guy with her, but although Wolfe is convinced that the quartet is concealing something, Helen refuses to unload in the presence of Guy, who offers a retainer for undefined investigative services, and they head for Saul’s apartment.

   Spotting Purley on his way in, they detour first to defense attorney Jimmy Donovan, who won’t get Wolfe in to see Ashe, and then to Keane, who will; Helen agrees to meet Wolfe chez Saul, the site of “friendly and ferocious poker” on Saturday nights, escorted there by Archie from Grand Central.

   Cut to the courtroom the next morning when Wolfe takes the stand — placed under arrest and threat of a contempt charge by Judge Corbett. Questioned by Mandelbaum, he says Ashe tried to hire him to learn Marie’s identity and propose the eavesdropping, and relates their conversation just one hour ago, noting that an answering service could be a goldmine for a blackmailer, before he is cross-examined by Donovan.

   â€œAs a witness for the prosecution, with a warrant out for my arrest, I was in a difficult situation,” but this stratagem allows Wolfe to get “information which cast a reasonable doubt on his guilt…before the court and the jury…” He concluded that the suspiciously well-off operators had colluded in an eavesdropping conspiracy — as Helen confirmed — with Guy and Bagby, and that Marie became a threat when she’d refused their orders to accept Ashe’s proposal. Wolfe fingers Bagby as the killer; Corbett dismisses the charge of contempt; Ashe shows his appreciation with “a handsome check,” despite not being a formal client; and the case is solved in a narrative set completely outside the brownstone.

   â€œDie Like a Dog” finds Archie trying to return a raincoat to Richard Meegan, who took his by mistake after Wolfe declined to take on a marital case, but arriving at his building, Archie sees Purley on the way in (again) and a black Labrador retriever that follows him, fetching his wind-blown hat. He mischievously brings “Nero” home, perhaps forgetting the rage displayed by Wolfe — who says he had a dog as a boy — at the injustice to Nobby from In the Best Families (1950). Archie’s call to trace his tag number elicits a visit from Cramer, revealing that owner Philip Kampf was strangled in that building, also occupied by lawyer Victor Talento, painter Ross Chaffee, and night-club performer Jerome Aland.

   Arguing that Archie is obliged to see to his welfare, Wolfe refuses to let Cramer take Jet (as he calls him), whose leash was the murder weapon, to Arbor Street to see which door he goes to; to resolve the situation by solving the murder, he sends Archie back with the raincoat. Seeing Talento leaving, Archie tips him off that he’s being tailed by the police, and agrees to make excuses to singer Jewel Jones at their rendezvous in exchange for his pledge to see Wolfe the next morning.

   She comes immediately, and is recognized by the dog (real name: Bootsy), having formerly lived in what is now Meegan’s apartment and been intimate with Kampf, but says they had no quarrel, and Talento is merely her friend.

Wolfe consents to Cramer’s experiment with dog expert Sgt. Loftus, provided Archie is present; Aland credits Bootsy’s dislike to a misunderstanding at a party chez Kampf, and Meegan claims never to have seen him, while Talento and especially Chaffee seem to be on good terms with Bootsy.

   Willfully assumed to be a cop, Archie questions Aland, who got his job through Jewel, and Pittsburgh commercial photographer Meegan, who sought his estranged wife, Margaret Ryan. After seeing her depicted in Chaffee’s Three Young Mares at Pasture, he took the now-vacant apartment in the hope of locating her, since he disbelieved Chaffee’s claim that he couldn’t remember her among his numerous models.

   On a hunch, Archie infiltrates the home of Chaffee’s frequent buyer Herman Braunstein, photographs the painting — which he’d recently lent to the Pittsburgh Art Institute — and confirms that Jewel is Mrs. Meegan.

   Brought to the brownstone, she says she feared for her life due to Dick’s jealousy, and when Wolfe summons the tenants, the rest of whom concealed knowledge of her from Meegan, Cramer and Purley crash the party. Bootsy, it transpires, had followed not Archie but the coat, in reality Kampf’s; having inadvertently switched coats not once but twice, Meegan strangled Kampf (who’d threatened to expose Jewel if she did not resume their relationship), and unwittingly put Archie’s coat on him.

   The second season of A&E’s A Nero Wolfe Mystery included the consecutive episodes “The Next Witness” (4/21/02) and “Die Like a Dog” (4/28/02), both directed by repertory player James Tolkan and adapted by the redoubtable Sharon Elizabeth Doyle. Shown internationally in a double-length version, “The Next Witness” upgrades Mandelbaum (Wayne Best) to D.A. and — unlike the novella— includes Cramer (Bill Smitrovich), who gleefully serves Wolfe (Maury Chaykin) and Archie (Timothy Hutton) personally. They arrive two hours late, eliciting sarcasm from Corbett (Beau Starr); the “Smelly Woman” (Carolyn Taylor) beside Wolfe, applying perfume, is the straw breaking the camel’s back.

   Bagby (Boyd Banks) circumvents labor-law restrictions by having his operators provide their 24-hour service while living and working in the same apartment, so Pearl (Kathryn Zenna) takes a board while Wolfe questions Alice (Nicky Guadagni) and Bella (Christine Brubaker) in their rooms. In Katonah, he notes that Helen (Francie Swift) is “on the edge of hysteria,” and as he confers privately with Guy (Richard Waugh), she breaks down in tears walking with Archie.

   The latter declines to call Donovan (Robert Bockstael) — who as a sworn officer of the court would have to serve the warrants — and after leaving Keane (Rebecca Jenkins), they head for Saul (Conrad Dunn) with no sign of Purley (R.D. Reid).

   In a scene taken straight from Stout, and expanded for the international version, first-time visitor Wolfe commends Saul for “A good room. Satisfactory. I congratulate you,” then feasts on beer, sturgeon, paté, pickled mushrooms, Tunisian melon, and three varieties of cheese.

   Doyle depicts the start of the meeting at which he shares his theories with Ashe (David Schurmann), merely related in the novella on the stand. Under Donovan’s cross-examination, as Wolfe begins to unfold the story of the blackmail operation that included Marie (Brittney Banks) and was run by Alice, Archie’s timely warning to the guard stops her, Bella, and Guy from making a beeline to the exit once they realize that the jig is up…

   Interestingly, while director Tolkan doubles as Loftus in “Die Like a Dog,” the episodes shared no repertory players (so defined, if you’re curious, as those appearing in three or more adaptations), who filled all other roles except the policeman played by Robbie Rox, also seen in “Cop Killer” (8/11/02).

   As usual, Doyle dramatizes events just alluded to by Stout, e.g., Meegan (Bill MacDonald) grabbing the raincoat while leaving in a huff; when Archie returns, she retains his mention of Fritz’s turtle and Theodore’s parakeets, perhaps for the only time in the canon. Seeing Bootsy/Ebony/Inky/Jet/Nero (Jessie and Guinness) while announcing dinner, Fritz (Colin Fox) wryly asks, “Is the animal dining with you?”

   Kari Matchett — whose roles range from Wolfe’s adopted daughter to Archie’s recurring romantic interest, Lily Rowan — is properly seductive as Jewel, intercepted on behalf of Talento (Alex Poch-Goldin). After the experiment with Chaffee (Steve Cumyn), Aland (Julian Richings), and the others fails, Wolfe explains that Bootsy showed no interest in the spot where Kampf was found because he was clad in, first, Meegan’s coat, and then Archie’s.

   Leaving the dog in care of a cabbie (Angelo Tsarouchas), Archie risks letting the tenants assume he is a cop, having been arrested for the same stunt in Prisoner’s Base (1952) by Lt. Rowcliff, aptly also played by MacDonald (suitably abrasive as Meegan).

   In Wolfe’s office, the terrified Jewel says that Kampf “had to go see Dick again anyway, because Dick had gone off with his raincoat. Phil thought it was funny that Dick had his raincoat and he had Dick’s wife. I’ll bet that’s just what he told you, hunh?…that I was coming back to him, and he thought that was a good trade — a raincoat for a wife.” The novella, if not the episode, ends with the implication that Bootsy, who “responds to Jet now,” will remain in residence at the brownstone. But I will not be surprised if, like the aforementioned alleged pets or Felix’s “beloved” parrot in the Odd Couple episode “It’s All Over Now, Baby Bird” (12/3/70), Albert, he will never be seen or heard about again.

         — Copyright © 2023 by Matthew R. Bradley.
   

Up next: Might as Well Be Dead

Editions cited —

     Three Men Out, The Black Mountain: Bantam (1955)
     Before Midnight: Bantam Crime Line (1993)
     Three Witnesses: Bantam (1957)

Online sources —

GIL BREWER – The Red Scarf. Crest 310; paperback reprint, July 1959; cover art by Robert McGinnis. Hardcover: Mystery House, 1958. Stark House, paperback, 2-in-1 edition with A Killer Is Loose, June 2018. First published in Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine, November 1955 (probably abridged).

   Roy Nichols has a dream. A mediocre dream, maybe. But it’s his. To run a motel with his wife, who he adores. He’s got the motel. And he’s got the wife. The problem is, the motel is in the red, and the bank’s gonna foreclose if he can’t come up with a lump sum quick.

   So Roy visits his rich brother. Who turns him down. I’m doing it for you, he says. Wouldn’t want to hurt your pride by giving you the money. Plus, it’s bad for you to be beholden to anybody. Best thing is to pull yourself up by your bootstraps — stop relying on other people to bail you out.

   So that’s that. No money. And he doesn’t know what the hell he’s gonna do now. Except lose the hotel, and his dreams, and disappoint his wife who deserves better. Who deserves the world.

   He decides to hitchhike home to save what little money he has left.

   There’s a Bonnie & Clyde looking couple at the greasy spoon, and he flirts with the sexy Bonnie and gloms himself a ride. Then they crash and there’s a briefcase. With all the money you’d ever need. Plenty to pay off the bank and much besides.

   But the money ain’t free and clear. It’s mob money. And hot.

   The Clyde-looking guy looks asdead as a crash test dummy, so our protagonist and the Bonnie-looking lass make a run for it. To help her get away, she promises half the money. And all of her body. And he accepts. Lustily.

   He hides her out in a room in his motel. And the mob shows up.

   Roy Nichols is such an asshole it’s hard to root for him. He says he loves his wife, and she is clearly devoted to him, and beautiful. Yet he’s a complete douchebag, sleeping with whatever the cat dragged in and lying about it. If he reminds me of anybody, maybe it’s William H. Macy in Fargo. He’s a greedy wimp. He’s hard to root for.

   So when the mob comes to town you figure he’ll finally wake up and get the cops involved. But no. Not Roy Nichols! He’s going to outsmart the mob, pay off his bank loan, and things are gonna be milk and honey from here on out.

   Except the mob isn’t nearly as stupid as Roy Nichols thinks. And neither is his wife.

   He’s a loser who keeps on losing. You don’t like him enough to care if he succeeds. You don’t hate him enough to care if he fails. So, at the end of the day, I just didn’t care what happened one way or the other.

   You’ve heard of love/hate relationships. With Gil Brewer I wouldn’t go that far. I’ve got more of a somewhat-appreciate/hate relationship with him. A Killer Is Loose and 13 French Street are quite successful in their way. Kind of perverted John D. MacDonald/Jim Thompson standalones. Which is high praise.

   But Brewer’s always got a creepy vibe. His protagonists are all lecherous. Even when they think they’re being stand-up guys, every woman they see, they want. And not in an upfront Mike Hammer way. More in a side-eyed repressive lust that takes whatever’s there, and wants whatever isn’t. Vulturous. Sepulcherous. Whatever carrion it can carry away.

   It just leaves me standing there. Mouth agape. Rubber-necking. Shaking my head in disgust.

PHILIP R. CRAIG – Death on a Vineyard Beach. J. W. Jackson #7. Scribner’s, hardcover, 1996. Avon, paperback, 1997.

   This is a series I’ve quit a couple of times because of stupid plots. Oh, well …

   J. W. and his nurse ladylove Zee finally get married, and are no sooner hitched than a rich old man with a shady background who lives on the island wants J. W. to look into an attempt on his life; one that J. W. had serendipitously foiled on their Boston honeymoon. Now Zee is reluctantly taking handgun lessons, and hoping she won’t need them …

   First, let me say that I liked this better than any of this series I can remember. There was no plot foolishness, no cowboy action, and remarkably little violence; just a decent story with believable characters.

   There’s a bit of Robert Parker in Craig’s writing. He likes to describe meal preparation in some detail, and some of the dialogue between Jackson and Zee is a bit reminiscent of the earlier, less egregious Spenser/ Susan relationship.

   I never had any Problems with Craig’s prose, and I still don’t. His first-person narration is well-paced, and he gives a good feel for Martha’s Vineyard without going overboard. Craig finally wrote the kind of book I like to read. Took him long enough, though.

A(UGUSTUS) BOYD CORRELL, according to FictionMags, was “born in South Carolina; Newspaperman, writer for Walt Disney, author of magazine short stories; died in Los Angeles.” In 1948 he co-authored a novel, The Dark Wheel (a.k.a. Sweet and Deadly), with Philip MacDonald.

   Correll specialized in short crime fiction, however, with his over two dozen stories being placed in the major detective pulps of the ’40s and ’50s; in the ’60s he generated two episodes for Robert Taylor’s Detectives TV series, and the ISFDb credits him with three works of SFF (Science Fiction-Fantasy). Although we’re sure more of his stories are lurking out there somewhere on the Internet, for the moment we can locate only two of them, both of which are, not surprisingly, movie-related.
   

(1) “The Corpse That Played Dead” (Thrilling Mystery, Winter 1943) Online here.

   Film actor Ronald Edwards’s movies always lose money, so why does Panamint Studios boss Emil Friml keep making films with Edwards in them? For Friml, the main concern is that somebody is trying to kill Edwards while he’s making a war movie, falling sandbags and flame-throwers blasting real flames at his leading man. This is enough for Friml to call in the studio’s unofficial detective, Jimmy Lee, our first-person narrator. In spite of Lee’s presence right there on the sound stage, though, someone succeeds in doing Edwards in just as they’re filming a battle scene on a bridge:

   Lee doesn’t realize it at the time, but the apparently pointless act of the body being dragged across the floor is the key that will unlock how — and who — murdered failed matinee idol Ronald Edwards.

   Here’s a nice bit of descriptive writing that also serves to delineate the character of the studio boss:

(2) “Death on Location” (Mammoth Mystery, January 1946). Online here.

   
   Tom Ferguson’s normal occupation is scouting for movie locations, but when he embarked on this particular expedition he never anticipated finding an old woman with her throat torn out — or getting attacked by a swamp monster that walks on two legs (a “gibbering thing that smelled of putrefied flesh”), a creature straight out of a nightmare that, oddly, seems a mite too protective, not of its territory per se, but of some small shiny, round things that your average monster wouldn’t think twice about, but which would definitely excite human interest, enough human interest to lead to murder . . .

KATHLEEN MOORE KNIGHT – Three of Diamonds. Elisha Macomber #15. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1953. Detective Book Club, hardcover, three-in-one edition.

   The detective of record in Three of Diamonds is one Elisha Macomber, chairman of the Board of Selectmen of Penberthy Township, Penberthy Island, Massachusetts, a man perhaps in his 70s. Although there is a Chief of Police on the island (think Nantucket), whenever there is a serious crime (murder, for example), he is the one who is charge of the investigation that follows, and over the years, there were quite a few. (See the list below.)

   He’s off stage for much of this one, however. The action centers instead around the Crockett family, long time residents of the island, an older woman who lords it over a young sister and brother, both used to living under her thumb all their lives. In a pottery barn out back live a husband and wife, plus a young female assistant, not, as it turns out, all that harmoniously

   It is the younger brother Titus, not generally considered to be the smartest whip in the barrel, who finds the body, shot between the eyes. But when others go to find it, the body is gone. At the scene of the “crime,” however, is a playing card. The three of diamonds.

   It is difficult to solve a murder, obviously, when there is no body to be identified, if indeed there was a body. Macomber is convinced, however, and does more than due diligence to determine what indeed had happened. The case also involves some recent strangers on the island, who may be connected with some jewel robberies up in Boston,

   There is a chapter or two soon before the ending in which all of the participants in the tale spend their time skulking around in the dark, following each other at times, and in at least one instance, one hitting another over the head. The ending itself is one of those all of the suspects together kind of affairs, in which the obvious suspect sits there with Elisha in charge with a entire collection of least likely suspects.

   One might suspect that author Kathleen Moore Knight would things index control at this point, but she does not. What follows is a fast-paced mixture of confusion and chaos that could easily boggle your mind, if you were to let it. It is better just to sit back and fasten your seat belts. The ending of this one is a doozie!
   

      The Elisha Macomber series —

Death Blew Out the Match (1935)
The Clue of the Poor Man’s Shilling (1936)
The Wheel That Turned (1936)
Seven Were Veiled (1937)
Acts of Black Night (1938)
The Tainted Token (1938)
Death Came Dancing (1941)
The Trouble At Turkey Hill (1946)
Footbridge to Death (1947)
Bait for Murder (1948)
The Bass Derby Murder (1949)
Death Goes to a Reunion (1952)
Valse Macabre (1952)
Akin to Murder (1953)
Three of Diamonds (1953)
Beauty Is a Beast (1959)

THE GIRL IN THE KREMLIN. Universal International Pictures, 1957. Zza Zza Gabor, Lex Barker, Jeffrey Stone, Maurice Manson, Kurt Katch. Screenplay by Gene L. Coon & Robert Hill. Story by DeWitt Bodeen & Harry Ruskin. Directed by Russell Birdwell. Currently streaming on YouTube (see below).

   
   This twisty and twisted little thriller mostly from the Universal back-lot and sets from the horror movies is something of a cross between a Men’s Sweat Mag, the National Enquirer, Sterling Noel’s bestselling I Killed Stalin, and a government propaganda short.

   We open in Moscow at Joseph Stalin (Maurice Manson)’s deathwatch. A team of surgeons, including a noted plastic surgeon and nurse Greta Grisenko (Zza Zza Gabor) are there to operate on Stalin, but first he has to indulge his fetish for watching women have their heads shaved and oversee the murder of his double before the operation and the announcement of his death as he absconds from the USSR with half the national treasury.

   Several years have passed and we are in West Berlin where American Private Eye Steve Anderson (Lex Barker) and ex-OSS agent meets Lili Grisenko (also Zza) a naturalized American who hires him to find her sister who went missing in Russia after they were separated as war refugees and who was known to have been a nurse for Stalin.

   Steve’s friend, one-armed Mischa (Jeffrey Stone), who runs an underground group of Russian expatriates, informs Steve and Lili that he believes Stalin is still alive and that their best chance to find Greta is to find Stalin. That best chance to find the dictator turns out to be his son Jacob (William Schallert) who defected to the West in the War to escape the influence of his evil father and now hides out in a small German village trying to forget his Father, protected by Mischa and his friends.

   Meanwhile both Stalin in his hideout and the Russians in Moscow who don’t want his treachery out  send assassins to kill Anderson before he can find the dictator.

   Stalin’s son (a surprisingly sensitive performance by Schallert for this film) provides them the clue they need to find Stalin, and Anderson polishes off one of the assassins and neutralizes the other (a once wartime friend), while he and Mischa are off to find Stalin who is planning to return to Russia and take power again for a finale of suggested kinky sex (Greta allows Stalin to shave her head for kicks and tortures Steve) and a retribution ending to that first line I quoted.

   
   The Girl in the Kremlin is more interesting than good, sensational and exploitative without ever achieving the kind of pulp level garishness required for that to work and despite a few kinky flourishes –- notably the really disturbing and near pornographic scene in the opening when a peasant girl’s (Natalie Daryll who allowed her waist length hair to be shaved) hair is graphically shorn while Stalin watches intently — it never really manages to wallow in the depths it seeks. It is far too polite for that.

   Barker is appropriately tough in the lead, and Zza Zza is actually fairly good in the twin role, avoiding too much scenery chewing as the evil sister in her bald cap, the big reveal of the film’s second half, along with Barker, bare-chested of course, being whipped by two women. There is even a touch of mystery as we don’t know until the end which of the men is Stalin in his new face.

   This does capture the feel of those popular Men’s Sweat Mags of the era where the garish covers and provocative illustrations and article titles always promised more than the prose dared to deliver. This film is like that but, to borrow a line from Ian Fleming, it reads better than it lives, ending with a title card to inform us piously that man reaps what he sows.

   That sums up this one. You went for Rocky Horror Picture Show and you ended up with Scooby Doo.
   

MICHAEL SHAYNE “Man on a Raft.” Unsold TV Pilot. Aired on the NBC summer replacement series Decision, 28 September 1958. Cast: Mark Stevens (Michael Shayne), Merry Anders (Lucy Hamilton), Robert Brubaker (Tim Rourke), Robert Stevenson (William Gentry). Guest star: Diane Brewster. Teleplay by Steve Fisher, based on thee characters created by Brett Halliday. Directed by Mark Stevens. Currently streaming here on YouTube.

   The summer replacement series that replaced The Loretta Young Show for 13 weeks in 1958 consisted entirely of pilot episodes for various series, most of which never came to fruition. The first one shown was picked up, though, and went on to considerable success, that being The Virginian, starring James Drury.

   Not so for this early attempt to get a Mike Shayne series on the air. (The one starring Richard Denning as Shayne came along later.) In it a young good-looking girl comes to Shayne for help in determining when her playboy husband died. He lost his life in a boat at sea, and a good deal of money depends on whether he died before or after his birthday. The other two men on the boat survived, but barely, and the only way of determining what actually happened is by means of a diary one of them kept.

   You can take it from there, but as usual with private eye shows on television, thirty minutes of running time (less time-out spots for would-be commercial buyers) is not enough for more than a bare bones mystery to develop. Other than Mark Stevens as Shayne, none of the rest of the regulars had time enough to make an impression, and Stevens would not have been my choice of an actor to play him. He’s a little too dour for my tastes. In his series Denning looked as though he was having fun playing the role.

WILD CARD. “Pilot.” Lifetime.. 02 August 2003. Joely Fisher (Zoe Busiek), Chris Potter, Rae Dawn Chong, Bronson Picket. Director: Stephen Surjik.  Currently streaming on YouTube (see below).

   Zoe Busiek is making living as a blackjack dealer in Las Vegas, when she learns that her sister has died in an automobile accident back East, and she decides to quit and head there to take care of her three young children, two girls and a boy. Only the youngest, a girl, takes at all warmly to her sudden abrupt presence in their lives.

   Her new life, in other words, will not be easy. Making matters worse is that the insurance company has determined, on the basis of eye witnesses, that her sister was at fault, and there will be no money coming in from them. Feeling something is wrong, she decides to investigate on her own, and – you will not be surprised to learn – she is right. It takes a lot of perseverance and footwork to get there, but each in its way pays off.

   Not only that, when all is said and done, she is offered a job as an investigator with the insurance company. Or should that last sentence end with an exclamation point?

   I’ve chosen not to. All signs have been pointing to this all episode long. The happy conclusion – and yes, the kids becoming OK with her now as well – comes as all in due course, the way things should be., especially on the Lifetime network. Putting things into a proper perspective, I’d consider the entire production a step up from a similar concept on say, the Hallmark Channel. Not quite as sentimentally cloying, and maybe just a hint more of a solid edge to it, the series lasted for two seasons of eighteen episodes each.

   One additional note: I did not realize until I started writing this review that Joely Fisher is the daughter of Eddie Fisher and Connie Stevens. And a half-sister of Carrie Fisher. Talk about family values!

INTRO. Jon and I went to see this as the first film of a Randolph Scott double feature last night. It was showing at the New Beverly Theater in Hollywood, the one owned by Quentin Tarantino. While tempting we didn’t stay for the second feature, but I think a large number of the audience did. The theater wasn’t jam-packed, but as a rough estimate, it was filled to sixty percent capacity, maybe more.

   It was good to see the film on the big screen in an actual theater, with an audience that came to see the movie, not to have a party. It also made me wonder if anyone involved in making the film back in 1957 had any idea that here and now, some 65 years later, the movie would still be around to keep fans watching an enjoying.

   The review below was first posted on this blog on 19 January 2015.

THE TALL T. Columbia Pictures, 1957. Randolph Scott, Richard Boone, Maureen O’Sullivan, Arthur Hunnicutt, Skip Homeier, Henry Silva, John Hubbard, Robert Burton. Screenplay by Burt Kennedy, based on the story “The Captives,” by Elmore Leonard, published in Argosy, February 1955. Director: Budd Boetticher.

   To start off with, let me tell you that this is one of my favorite Western films of all time. I won’t tell you that it’s number one, because I’ll be honest with you as well as myself and say that it isn’t, but it’s in the top five.

   In part it’s the actors. Randolph Scott isn’t a lawman doing his job with professional dignity and humor, a common role he had in westerns. In The Tall T he’s a struggling former cowhand, no more than that, but he was good at his job. But now he’s living alone and struggling to make a go of his own small ranch, as honest with himself and others as the day is long.

   Richard Boone is the villain of the piece, who along with a pair of low-life outlaws he rides with (Skip Homeier and Henry Silva) holds up a stage only to find that it’s not the regularly scheduled one, but one chartered by the man who married the plain-looking daughter of the richest man in the territory, a rabbit of a man who gives up his wife as part of a ransom scheme to save his own hide. Scott, who just happens to be on the stagecoach, is caught up in the plan and as chance would have it, is made a captive too.

   As their captors, Richard Boone and his two cohorts are as murderous and vicious as they come. For some reason, though, Boone lets the yahoos he associates with do all the shooting, and as he confesses to Scott over an open fire, he has a wish to have a piece of land himself. Only Richard Boone could have played the part. A killer who aches with the need for someone intelligent to talk to.

   I don’t know how they managed to make Maureen O’Sullivan so plain looking, but she is, and at length she admits that she her knows exactly why her new husband married her. But it’s Randolph Scott who makes the movie work. Rugged, steely-eyed and quiet-talking, but with little ambition more than to make a living on his own, he’s also more than OK with a gun, a fact that in the end turns out to be rather important.

   Other than the actors, though, it is the storytelling, the combination of script and directing, that simply shines. The budget probably wasn’t all that large, but the story simply flows, with no wasted moments, every scene essential to the story. This is a movie that’s down to earth and real, and made by professionals on both sides of the camera.

   As for Elmore Leonard’s story, the one the movie is based on, you don’t have to read more than two or three pages before you know where the timing and the pacing of the movie came from.

   Most of the movie is taken straight from the story, at most only a long novelette, with only a couple of substantial changes. The campfire scene between Scott and Boone referred to above was added, and the way Scott and the woman defeat their captors was re-orchestrated, both changes for the better.

   Everyone agrees that Elmore Leonard’s crime fiction was always the best around, but to my mind, his western fiction, which came along earlier, is even better. That includes “The Captives,” beyond a doubt, and the movie is even better yet. To my mind, near perfect.

INTRO. This is the fifth and final story in the February 1936 issue of Dime Detective that I covered in its entirety in my column “Speaking of Pulp” in the April/May/June, 1979 issue of The Not So Private Eye.
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   The cover illustration is taken from the final story, a long novelette by T. T. Flynn entitled “Bride of the Beast,” which sounds more like a horror story from Dime Mystery than it docs a detective story. Flynn was an extremely prolific detective story writer from the pulps. He’s never seemed to have gathered much attention, but his stories are always filled with action, and more, they seem to know where they’re going.

   In this one, a circus is about to go bankrupt — strange things are happening on the midway! Trouble-shooter Steve Waring is sent out by the bank to find out what’s going on, and on his first night on the job an elephant rider in the opening procession is decapitated, almost in full view of the horrified audience.

   The circus atmosphere is excellent, the menace is effectively scary, and no holds are barred in producing sudden and violent death. It ends with a furious train ride through the night and with the nightmarish capture of a crazy killer about to torture Joan Wells, tied and helpless, running the circus in her father’s absence, with a twisted replica of love. Hence the title. I guess it sounds like corn, but it’s still the best story in the magazine.

   As you’ll have already gathered, if you’ve been paying attention, the emphasis [in the stories in this issue of this magazine] has not been on ordinary detective work, This had probably been even more true in earliest days of Dime Detective, which was first published in the early 1930s but the trend away from grotesque mystery had not yet eliminated it from the magazine by 1936, as we’ve just seen. Many people tell me they prefer the 1940s version of DD, when the accent changed slightly from the incredibly fantastic to the merely screwy.

   Give me a hand, will you? Help me clean up these little shreds of brown paper that are all over the floor here …