ROBERT B. PARKER – Chasing the Bear. Philomel Books, hardcover, 2009. Speak, paperback, 2010.

   
   It is a Sunday in Boston, and on this particular one while Spenser and Susan Silverman sit on a bench in the Boston Public Garden, Spenser decides to open up about his childhood in the West with his father and three uncles. What follows once in a while almost evolves into a coming of age story, but mostly meanders from one incident to the next of Spenser being Spenser, just a younger version of himself with his Father and Uncles as his wingmen rather than Hawk.

   The longest and most involving section involves a teen girl fleeing her abusive father (Jeannie Haden wasn’t my girlfriend. She was a girl who was my friend. We spent a lot of time together. Things were bad at home for her. Her mother and father were getting divorced, and they fought all the time. Jeannie was scared of her father. She only went home when she had to.), and Spenser helping her in the wilderness eventually killing the father. Of course nothing comes of this because the wise deputy is a friend of Spenser’s father, and the man was a near cartoon of an abusive father, so no one really cares a teenage boy killed him in self defense.

   It is that kind of book, a Spenser novel in miniature, written for a juvenile audience to give a glimpse of Spenser’s formative years, but by the time the book opens he is already Spenser full blown, and whether protecting a girl from an abusive father or a new friend from racist thugs, only Hawk and the guns are missing.

   You would expect in a Hemingwayesque novel of coming of age set in a rural Western setting (“Western Flub Dub” as Spenser describes it) some sense of the outdoors, scenes of hunting and descriptive passages of the world Spenser grew up in, but you barely get that. Like the later novels the book consists of mostly talk, a few descriptive passages of violence, and asides from Spenser about his past, but there is not much more to it than that.

   Spenser is Spenser, Spenser kills a man, beats up some bullies, grows up, has a couple of adult conversations, casually mentions blowing a sports scholarship and goes to college. There is precious little about growing up without a mother or the other drawbacks of being raised by four hard fighting sem-literate fathers in the rural West. Characterization is so bare bones you couldn’t cast the characters in a film based on the bare detail provided.

   Parker takes 37 chapters to do considerably less than Jim Harrison in the in the novella Legends of the Fall.

   Before it starts, I loved Parker and Spenser when they debuted, and I stayed with them much longer than many others I know, but over time I just stopped enjoying the books. There was a sameness about them that I couldn’t remember if I had read one or not, too much cuteness with Susan, too much wisecracking with Hawk, one too many big fights that read like the big fight in the book before.

   I recognize that the things I mention are why millions of readers read Parker and still read the continuing series by Ace Atkins and others, and more power to them. For me it was a camel’s backbreaking straw.

   I had hoped this would actually give a little insight into Spenser (incidentally we still get no idea he has a first name, for all we find out his father called him Spenser), and sense of how he became the man he was, but instead the boy he was is exactly the same as the man he is, just younger and smaller and needing four Hawks instead of one.

   I suppose growing up enough to only need one preternaturally capable killer is some sort of coming of age, but I really can’t imagine many young readers rushing to read this or many older readers being satisfied by it.

   I still have great affection for Parker. I loved the early books and still do, loved the Robert Urich series, spent many happy hours with his works, but I can’t pretend the books didn’t wear thin as plot took a farther and farther place in the background.

   Spenser even tears up a little at the end as Susan reminds him he has not left his family behind.

   I only wish Parker had given us enough of a connection to the characters that the final touching tribute actually meant anything to the reader.

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Hesitant Hostess. Perry Mason #41. William Morrow, hardcover, April 1953. Pocket, paperback; 1st printing, September 1956.

   Every once in a while, there is one of the Perry Mason novels which does not end up in a courtroom, with Perry giving D.A. Hamilton Burger his lumps one more time. One such was The Case of the Silent Partner (1940), the TV version of which I watched not too long ago. (And as such it was a shame, as the theatrics in the courtroom is what every reader or viewer always sits back and waits for. Disappointing!)

   But as if to make up for that earlier lapse, Hesitant Hostess actually begins with a courtroom scene. It does not go well for Perry, however, as a witness he was counting on disappears from the small room where he had her waiting. Luckily it is a Friday, so he has an entire weekend to track her down and find out why she bailed on him so precipitously.

   She is a hostess at a local night club – hence the title – and Perry’s first ploy is to pretend that he is a paying customer. There is one long chapter, a rather risque one for a Gardner novel, I should think – in which the curious reader begins to wonder how far the flirtation of sorts will go.

   Perry’s client is purely pro bono – a 50ish retiree who is accused of a robbery at gunpoint from one car to another – but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t pull out all the stops in defending him. His bill from Paul Drake – he the private eye with hundreds of operatives working for him – must have ended up in the thousands of dollars.

   It seems like a very minor case until around page 90 or so, when the police suddenly tie the robbery to the murder of a young woman from a few weeks earlier, and all seriousness breaks out. Even Della Street gets into the act, breaking and entering a suspect’s apartment to do some fingerprint work.

   And the plot gets equally confusing – does the missing hostess have a double, a twin sister, perhaps? – but not so confusing as to make the final explanation (almost) intelligible. It’s 100% certified as a doozy, though. This was a lot of fun to read. Recommended.

EDWARD S. AARONS – Assignment Bangkok. CIA agent Sam Durell #33. Gold Medal, paperback original; 1st printing, May 1972.

   If the listing before the title page is correct, this is #33 in Aarons’ long-running Sam Durell series. Durell is the Cajun-born CIA agent whose adventures ranged over three decades of world disorder, from the dark, dismal days of Europe soon after the Iron Curtain began, on through the era of deep-trenched US involvement in Southeast Asia, and beyond.

   His mission in Thailand in this book is on three levels. Ostensibly he is in Bangkok as part of an economic/agricultural advisory team. He thinks he’s there to retrieve another agent who has been investigating revolutionary forces in the northern part of the country. Soon after his arrival, however, he discovers that opposing forces know more about his real mission than he does.

   In other words, Durell is in deep trouble from the very first paragraph on. And this is an action story, through and through. And once again, Aarons’ eye for exotic, picturesque detail does not fail the reader: this is a part of the world I have never been in, and probably never will be, but as far as it’s possible, I feel as though I’ve just returned from a prolonged visit there.

   Unfortunately, I think that with this number of entries in a single series, Aarons’ zest for a spine-tingling story might have been beginning to fail him. There are plots and subplots, but none of them seem to amount to much. Durell and his cohorts in espionage simply have too easy of a time of it (even though they would never say so themselves, if you ever had a chance to ask.)

   All the ingredients are here, but in this book, I think Aarons was only going through the motions.

IN OLD SANTA FE. Mascot Pictures, 1934. Ken Maynard, Evelyn Knapp, George Hayes, Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette. Director: David Howard.

   This movie was made before Gabby Hayes was Gabby, but not before he was gabby. He’s known as “Cactus” in this picture, and he’s as prickly as old character as he ever was. Key Maynard is the star. He shoots and rides with the best of them, and is bashful around the women (one in particular), but Gene (whose first movie this may have been) outdoes him in the singing category, at least.

   If it weren’t for the songs, the races, the catching of runaway horses and wagons, and the gunshooting, this 64 minute movie would have been 15 minutes long. But in those 15 minutes is hidden a halfway decent detective story: one main clue is a footprint in the dirt; the other is the caliber of the bullet that killed the blackmailer’s number one henchman.

   There is also a gold robbery, and Ken is framed for it. He’s also framed for the killing of the henchman. Does he get out of all of these scrapes? Yes and no. At movie’s end the rancher’s daughter has him sewn up as tight as you could please. (To the complete disgust of his grizzled old sidekick named Cactus.)

SCOTT MITCHELL – Double Bluff. Brock Devlin #5. Herbert Jenkins, UK, hardcover, 1968. No US edition.

   My nominee for obscure title of the month, unless you live in England, since I don’t believe any of Mitchell’s sizable collection of mystery and detective novels have ever been published in the United States. This despite the fact that the hero in most of his books was Brock Devlin, a medium-boiled PI whose main stomping grounds is Los Angeles. (A very strange LA, by the way, one that has kerbs instead of curbs.)

   He is also singularly slow on the uptake. In Chapter One, after having a falling out with his girl friend, Devlin goes bar-hopping and during his travels he comes across a strange girl whose name (she says) is Zoe Gordon. In Chapter Two (the disagreement with his girl friend still not settled) he is hired by a conservative Jew-hating industrialist to find the man’s daughter-in-law, a woman by the name of Zelda Ganzer.

   Bingo! But not until he sees a photograph of the woman does Devlin make the connection. (They are the same person. I don’t believe that Devlin’s been in as many detective novels as I’ve read. (*)) But even he recognizes this as a gigantic coincidence at best, or (which is infinitely more likely) there is something far more sinister behind it.

   And there is. This book is nothing anyone in the US should write their friends in the UK to be on the lookout for, but except for the constant use of the words “baby” and “sweetie,” dating the story more than the author could possibly have recognized when he wrote it, this is a moderately good time-passer.

(*) [WARNING: Subtle Plot Alert ahead.] Well, actually, in violation of Someone’s Laws of
detective story writing – S. S. Van Dine’s? – the sentence before this one isn’t really true, either. It’s probably where the title came from, and believe it or not, I didn’t realize it until right now.

Bibliographic Update: Scott Mitchell was the pen name of Lionel Robert Holcombe Godfrey, (1932- ). He wrote 16 mysteries under this name, all but one of which are known to be cases for Brock Devlin. Under the pseudonym of Elliot Kennedy, Godfrey wrote six more mysteries; in at least five of these a fellow by the name of Griff Dexter was the leading character. Other than the fact that his adventures also took place in the US, primarily in Los Angeles, I know nothing about him.

   Just over a year ago saw the passing of American Golden Globe-winning actor Brian Dennehy, best known for his roles in Rambo: First Blood, Cocoon, Romeo + Juliet and the two fondly remembered F/X action thrillers. In a weird coincidence, I had only seen this pair a couple of weeks previously – they had passed me by for years – and this may be a good excuse as any to share the love.

   The first film, 1986’s F/X: Murder By Illusion, was a hit at the box office and went on to become the biggest-selling film in video rentals. Critics loved it too, including Roger Ebert, and it now enjoys an impressive 88% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was followed by a sequel and a short-lived television version, while a remake has been in the offing for the last decade. So, keen to see what I’d been missing out on, I set the DVD and waited to be impressed. And colour me thus.

   Hunky Australian Roland “Rollie” Tyler (Bryan Brown) works in the American film industry as a special effects artist. You should see his flat. It’s full of alabaster heads and mannequins that look like murdered spouses. He’s so good at his job, in fact, that Department of Justice agent Martin Lipton (Cliff DeYoung) wants his help in faking the murder of a mob informant named Nicholas DeFranco (ironically, Law and Order’s Jerry Orbach), before the mafia do it for real.

   Rollie reluctantly accepts the assignment, fixes DeFranco up with fake blood packs and even gets talked into playing the killer by head honcho Edward Mason (Mason Adams). The staged hit at an expensive Italian restaurant goes as planned and Rollie believes his part is over – until Lipton tries to kill him as a “loose end”. Rollie escapes, but as more blood is spilled – the real stuff, this time – he is forced to confront a conspiracy which involves some very corrupt lawman and many millions of dollars.

   Fortunately, Rollie is resourceful, with a career’s worth of Tinseltown trickery to surprise and snare his murderous pursuers. Meanwhile, middle-aged maverick homicide detective Lt. Leo McCarthy (Dennehy) becomes suspicious of DeFranco’s supposed death, but his investigation is frustrated by senior officials who have the power to keep their secrets buried – along with anyone who gets too interested.

   Although somewhat hampered by an enigmatic title, the film has a shrewd, playful script and a convincing turn from purse-lipped Bryan Brown, here caught between his breakout role in the Australian mini-series A Town Like Alice and Tom Cruise’s bottle-juggling juggernaut Cocktail (also, somewhat less illustriously, a supporting role in the vacuous Paul McCartney vehicle Give My Regards to Broad Street).

   Early on, his ineffective flailing with a wily sniper demonstrates just how alien Rollie is in a world of cold kills and glibly indifferent corruptors, yet his ingenuity with practical illusions quickly evens the odds, and it’s then that the film goes from a conventionally Hitchcockian man-on-the-run thriller to one which is confident enough to throw some black comedy and charismatic character business among the squealing car chases.

   Rollie is an everyman, and confident in his abilities, yet the script doesn’t bother explaining the specifics of his armoury, but instead lets him deploy each trap – which is what they manifestly become, original usage be damned – to the gleeful surprise of the audience.

   Running alongside all this is the police investigation, coloured by Dennehy’s roguishly charming renegade, but anyone hoping that these two characters will meet and spar will be disappointed as the threads don’t link up until the end. As such, the narrative may risk becoming disjointed yet avoids it, more or less, by slowly explaining the mayhem which Rollie is experiencing elsewhere. This makes it different from, say, The Fugitive, which gave us lawmen searching obsessively for our hero, and North By Northwest, which omitted the chase entirely.

   The film isn’t without its flaws, however. Although there are some charming scenes between a gently flirtatious McCarthy and savvy computer geek Marisa Velez (Jossie DeGuzman), a couple of other promising characters are perfunctorily dropped, including a guileless sergeant (amusingly played by Joe Grifasi) and original antagonist Lipton.

   More awkwardness is found at the climax. At first, it’s handled well, with yet more slickly mischievous pyrotechnics, and the main bad guy is disposed of in a particularly clever way, yet we’re afforded an unnecessary postscript which robs the story of a satisfying, slam-dunk conclusion.

   The sequel, 1991’s F/X: The Deadly Art of Illusion, wasn’t as well received, but there’s still plenty to enjoy and in some ways it’s better than the first. I love sequels (it’s even my favourite word) as it means we get to spend more time with characters we like, and this time they do too, sparing together like they couldn’t before.

   The plot again sees Rollie enlisted to work his movie magic on a police sting, one involving a rapist who has served time in prison yet is too dangerous to remain free. Things go wrong, of course, and, as before, Rollie discovers it was an inside job, the bad guys want him dead and he relies on his technological know-how and smart survival tactics to stay alive.

   The recipe, then, is largely the same, but with a couple of new ingredients. There’s a scheme involving antique gold medallions crafted by Michelangelo which is very National Treasure, and a couple of truly novel action sequences, most memorably a chase around a supermarket in which baked beans prove every bit as dangerous as natural uranium, and a surreal yet surprisingly exciting fight against an imitative robot clown.

   However, in giving the hero a distinctly technological approach to combat, as opposed to letting him use his fists (perhaps he’s a pacifist, but what this man can do with an aerosol spray would impress MacGyver), the script forces him to do this every time. At one point, instead of simply bonking some henchmen over the head, we’re expected to believe he has previously infiltrated the villain’s heavily-guarded house in order to set traps which shall enable him to infiltrate it again.

   It’s a paradox worthy of Steven Moffat-era Doctor Who. Of course, that’s the nature of the beast, and writer Bill Condon (future Oscar winner of such impressively diverse films as Chicago, Mr Holmes, the last two Twilight films, Kinsey and The Greatest Showman) does all he can to keep it roaring. By the end of this sequel, the premise may seem a little tired, but it’s a solid one nonetheless, with both films playing out like an adult, city-wide Home Alone, somehow balancing psychological realism with a wry sense of humour. And, like most of Rollie’s gadgets, it makes for a neat trick.

KAREN KIJEWSKI – Kat Scratch Fever. Kat Colorado #8. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, June 1997. Berkley, paperback, June 1998.

   In her next-to-last recorded outing, Kat Colorado is hired to help determine if a well-known insurance agent committed suicide or not. The police think so; the man’s lawyer is not so sure, and his widow, a much younger woman, is completely distraught. Thinking it an extremely minor matter, she takes the case, but 350 pages later, both she and the reader have gone though a figurative wringer.

   It’s a long and complicated case, in other words, and there are times when a list of characters after the title page would have come in very handy. (Do mystery novels ever do that any more?) It seems as though everyone in Sacramento has a deep dark secret that they’ve been keeping forever, and somehow a blackmailer, the same one in each instance, has managed to unearth all of them.

   What’s different this time around is that all of the money — $10,000 at a time — goes to charity, a foundation that grants wishes to disadvantaged kids, and with one exception, the blackmailer does not come back for more. But when Kat’s investigation gets too close, he (or she) has no hesitation in striking back, in more ways than one.

   Kat Colorado was a PI definitely in the Kinsey Millhone mode. For each of these two female Pis, their friends and family get all tangled up in the tales about them, and in this case for Kat, deeply involved in the case itself as well. Both tell their stories in a consistent conversational tone, and snarky and wittily at times as well, but if you prefer the loner type of detective, you’d best stay away.

   Another possible flaw for you, as a potential reader of this book, may be in the detective work, if you perceive it that way. When Kat eventually comes to a dead end, as indeed she must, as none of the blackmail victims are willing to talk, her only recourse is to offer herself up as bait. We’ve all read that sort of recourse before, but you can’t convince mystery writers to do otherwise, since as smart as the killers always are up to then, it’s a ploy that always works.

THE WIFE TAKES A FLYER. 1942. Franchot Tone, Joan Bennett, Allyn Joslyn, Lloyd Corrigan, Cecil Cunningham, Hans Conreid. Screenplay by Gina Kaus (her story) & Jay Dratler, with additional dialogue by Harry Segall. Directed by Richard Wallace. Available for viewing online on several sites, including this one.

   With World War II coming at the end of the heyday of the screwball comedy of the Thirties, it was only natural that the new war movies would cross genres with the popular romantic comedies of only a year or so before, and perhaps natural too that the fit and the public reaction would be mixed.

   While Lubitch’s To Be Or Not To Be with Jack Benny was the hallmark of absolute genius for the genre not everything worked quite so well, and even that classic met mixed reactions when it came out.

   Even before the war there had been some uncomfortable if admirable attempts at mixing the two like Mitchell Leisen and Billy Wilder’s Arise My Love, a romantic comedy that turns quite dark and serious as the war intrudes or Leo McCarey’s Once Upon a Honeymoon with American stripper Ginger Rogers married to Nazi provocateur Walter Slezak encountering American radio journalist Cary Grant (who at one point comes close to being sterilized in a Concentration Camp) and ending with a jolly turn as Slezak falls overboard on a passenger liner on the way to practice his provocations in the States giving Grant, Rogers, and the ship’s Captain pause to debate whether they should rescue him … they don’t.

   These films are a slightly different genre than out right comedies like All Through the Night or various versions of comedic stars battling comic opera Nazi’s (Cairo even does it to music as bumbling Robert Young sinks a German sub while American spy Jeanette MacDonald warbles), and as the genre goes none are stranger than 1942’s The Wife Takes a Flyer.

   Allyn Joslyn is Major Zellfritz, a total Hitlerian idiot replete with a Sergeant whose only job is to massage his arm as he tires of Heil Hitler-ing. Along with every other Nazi in Occupied Holland he is out to find a flier shot down the night before who saw secret Nazi installations. His search leads him to the home of the Woverman’s whose daughter in law, the beautiful Anita (Joan Bennett) is divorcing their son who is due back from the sanitarium that evening.

   Zellfritz is instantly smitten and moves himself in, which would be bad enough save that the missing flier, Christopher Reynolds (Franchot Tone), has just shown up hiding in the cistern, and in desperation gets passed off as the returning husband the insane Hendrik (Hans Conreid), and Reynolds is instantly smitten with Anita too.

   Reynolds is playing madman and flirting, Zellfritz is blocking him and madly jealous, the Woverman’s (Lloyd Corrigan and Barbara Brown) only want to keep the Nazis from realizing they are hiding an Allied flyer, and Anita only wants her divorce the next day and to get out of the madhouse.

   Meanwhile rather than be released Hendrik has broken out.

   Oh, and of course Reynolds needs to make a clandestine meeting and arrange to get out of Holland so he can report on the secret installations he saw. But first the has to sabotage Anita’s divorce because he is so smitten with her he doesn’t want her to go away.

   Before it’s over there is divorce proceeding where Reynolds goes completely nuts, Anita moves in with a home full of man crazy older ladies who get enlisted in Reynold’s mission, a public trial (for an assault the real Hendrick perpetrated) where Reynolds joins the Nazi Party, and all the time he and Anita are falling in love.

   At no point does anyone address how American flier Reynolds and the other flier he meets up with happen to speak Dutch well enough to pass as natives among the Dutch or the Germans.

   Granted screwball comedy operates on a different level than the mundane reality we all live in, but this film is almost surreal in its disregard for any kind of linear storytelling or human behavior. In most screwball comedy there are at least a handful of normal people to react against and poke fun at. Here everyone but Bennett is completely nuts, and even her character seems totally indifferent to WW II.

   And that doesn’t even address Allyn Joslyn’s performance as Zellfritz, a broad even cartoonish interpretation that makes Sig Ruman look restrained. His face screwed up as if he had been sucking on alum, his walk strangely stiff, and his behavior better suited to a Daffy Duck cartoon than a human it is the ultimate comic opera Nazi in a genre where comic opera Nazi’s were the standard.

   The problem is that at no point are any of the Nazis in the film even vaguely threatening. Granted To Be Or Not To Be was broad, but this never quite rises to that level of genius and instead is just strange, an odd relic of two genres that weren’t really compatible colliding head on and ultimately not making a lick of sense. It is fun, with that cast of actors it would almost have to be, but if you engage your brain at all you may find it slightly bruised by the effort to make sense of the goings on.

   It’s hard to believe that no one at any point during the filming of this did anyone speak up and ask what the hell was going on.

   Maybe they were afraid someone would tell them.
   

DESMOND CORY – Deadfall. Frederick Muller, UK. hardcover, 1965. Walker, US, hardcover, 1965; paperback, 1984. Also: Fawcett Crest, US, paperback, 1967.  Film:  1968, starring Michael Caine.

   Desmond Cory (a pseudonym of Shaun Lloyd McCarthy) has published a wide variety of suspense fiction, including espionage novels, detective novels, and thrillers. He has a firm grasp of psychological principles, and his characters show considerable depth. The details of his settings – frequently Spain – are richly evocative and suggest careful research and firsthand knowledge.

   He is best known for his books featuring British agent Johnny Fedora; in five of these, Fedora matches wits with Soviet spy Feramontov. There is a powerful tension in these novels – Undertow (1963), Hammerhead (1964), Feramontov (1966), Timelock (1967), and Sunburst (1971) – and their plots are complex and action-packed.

   One of Cory’s best books, however, is a nifty caper novel, Deadfall. Set in his favorite locale, Spain, it features an unlikely trio of characters: Michael Jeye, an acrobatic burglar; Moreau, a genius who plans jewel heists; and Moreau’s wife, a beautiful and mysterious woman named Fe. As the three work together to steal a fortune in jewels, Jeye finds himself falling in love with Fe. This loss of emotional control is dangerous, both to their plans and to Jeye personally – especially since the relationship between Fe and Moreau is soon revealed to be not exactly as it seems.

   Against a background of professional crime, Cory weaves a thrilling plot with deep psychological undertones. The three complex personalities are caught up in deadly motion, and themes including incest and homosexuality emerge. The pacing of Deadfall is more deliberate than the nonstop action of the Fedora series, and the overall effect is haunting.

   Deadfall was disappointingly filmed in 1968, with Michael Caine and Giovanna Ralli. Other Cory novels notable for their psychological depth are A Bit of a Shunt Up the River (1974), in which a sociopath escapes from prison; and The Circe Complex ( 1975), which deals with a former prison psychologist who finds himself imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit.

     ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

FORSAKING ALL OTHERS. MGM, 1934. Robert Montgomery, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Charles Butterworth, Billie Burke, Rosalind Russell. Director: W.S. Van Dyke.

   I taped this by mistake. It was supposed to be some other Joan Crawford movie, but I watched it anyway. I’m not really a Joan Crawford fan, but this early in her career, I find her on-screen image much more pleasing than the hard-boiled one I picture her as in many of her later films. (In the early 30s she’s also lovelier to look at, if I might be permitted a small sexist remark.)

   I’m not usually a Clark Gable fan, either. He always seems a little slick for me. I wonder how women today feel about him, watching his old movies now. Ladies, tell me: Is he still the “dreamboat” he was back then?

   At any rate, this moderately entertaining love triangle amongst members of the champagne set – and note that Robert Montgomery makes up the third party in this regard – must have been the height of sophistication in its day. It still has its moments, but when it comes down to it, the immorality that’s briefly suggested stays firmly under the leash.

   Did I mention that this was a comedy? And as such, Charles Butterworth – totally forgotten today – seems to have gotten all of the funniest lines.