The collaboration between French authors Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac is perhaps most famous for producing, among several other works of well-regarded crime fiction, The Living and the Dead (D’entre les Morts, 1954), the basis for the movie Vertigo, considered by many to be the best of Alfred Hitchcock’s many films.
Unfortunately, of the the ten titles included in Hubin, only three have been published in the US. She Who Was No More is one of them, and it’s good to have it back in print again, after a long wait of over 60 years. The story is both easy and not so easy to describe. A man’s mistress helps a man kill his wife. They do it in such a way as to make it seem to be an accident which happened while both have solid alibis. Yet when the husband goes to “discover” her body, it has vanished. Disappeared.
Worse, he begins to find notes from her saying that she’s gone away but will be home again soon. More. His brother-in-law in Paris claims that she has stopped by to see him, even after she is supposed to be dead.
What is difficult to explain is what a feverish nightmare of a novel this is, a pure noir fantasy, if you will. A combination of a guilty conscience with a belief in ghosts floods Ferdnand Ravinel’s very being — and perhaps the reader’s, too. What is also difficult is to write a review without saying more, or even without a hint of saying more.
So I won’t. I will say that I enjoyed this oe immensely — but more than that, no. But it is frustrating!
THE OLD TIME RADIO HOST/ANNOUNCER
by Michael Shonk
One of old time radio’s (OTR) characters most fondly remembered is the series host/announcer. Radio programs needed a way to introduce the series and episode to the listener. Limited to just words and sounds radio created the host role.
Perhaps one of the appeals of listening to radio drama was how often the fourth wall was ignored. It began with the host/announcer who would talk directly to the listener. It gave the program and the listener at home a personal connection, as if the story was being told directly to you.
There were several basic types of host/announcer. It could be an announcer or famous celebrity or a fictional character. He or she could exist separate from the story or be a fictional character narrating the story or a real celebrity who introduces the story and at times joins the cast and performs as one of the characters in the story, or in rare cases a real announcer could interact with the fictional characters (usually to promote the sponsor).
One of the earliest radio series to have a fictional character as host was the 1930 CBS anthology DETECTIVE STORY HOUR. The character with the strange eerie voice was The Shadow, a character that has had a long successful career. For those who wish to learn more about the pulp/radio icon I recommend the book SHADOW SCRAPBOOK by the character’s creator Walter B. Gibson (with Anthony Tollin).
Here is the first episode from the Mutual Network version of THE SHADOW. “Death House Blues†aired September 26, 1937 and introduced him to the Mutual audience. In the story The Shadow played by Orson Welles works to save an innocent man from the electric chair.
Characters such as Philip Marlowe, Rocky Jordan, and Archie Goodwin for Nero Wolfe would break the fourth wall to talk to the audience, set the mood and begin narrating the story.
LIVES OF HARRY LIME was a BBC production and syndicated in America, airing various places including Mutual radio network. The series was based on the character from the film THE THIRD MAN, star Orson Welles would return to play Harry Lime in this prequel to the 1949 British film.
THE LIVES OF HARRY LIME “Too Many Crooks†(Mutual, August 3, 1951), It begins when Harry receives a letter asking for his help rob a bank in Budapest. As zither music sets the proper THIRD MAN mood, Harry profits from the plans of some very untrustworthy bank robbers.
The Shadow’s spooky voice fit radio well for establishing mood. Hosts for series such as LIGHTS OUT began to warn the listeners of the terrors to come. Some of the more entertaining hosts would go beyond the spooky voice to the rantings of an insane lunatic. Among the better ones were GUEST OF DOOM, DARKNESS, WITCH’S TALE, STRANGE DR WEIRD, WEIRD CIRCLE, HERMIT’S CAVE, and BLACK CHAPEL.
Forgotten BLACK CASTLE remains one of the best examples of the madman host. BLACK CASTLE featured host The Wizard and his pet raven Diablo. Don Douglas not only played the host but he also did all of the voices.
A warning about the episode “Jungle Adventure,†it was done during WWII and has a un-PC attitude about the Japanese and island natives.
BLACK CASTLE “Jungle Adventure†(Mutual, September 25, 1943). Two American airmen crash on a small Pacific island.
Some hosts could be downright judgmental towards the fictional characters in the story (THE WHISTLER) or some hosts were notably uncaring to what happened to the people of the story (THE CLOCK, DEVIL’S SCRAPBOOK and THE CROUPIER).
One who was judgmental and uncaring was Fate in DIARY OF FATE, played by Herbert Lytton.
DIARY OF FATE “The Entry of Tyler White†(ABC, April 6, 1948). Tyler White is about to be executed for a murder he did not commit.
Not all hosts were scary some were quite friendly such as in WORLD ADVENTURERS CLUB, and THE CASEBOOKS OF GREGORY HOOD.
The CRIME CLUB host The Librarian (Barry Thomson) was always eager to help us with that book or manuscript we wanted. Many of the stories were adaptations of actual books published by Doubleday’s Crime Club imprint .
CRIME CLUB “Mr. Smith’s Hat†(Mutual, January 22, 1947). Gilbert Shannon calls Inspector McKee to report his own murder. A few moments after he hangs up the Inspector gets a call from Shannon’s daughter who has discovered her father’s dead body. Witty dialog highlights the story based on a book by Helen Reilly and adapted by Stedman Coles.
Celebrities were popular choices to host drama anthologies, such as radio producer Arch Oboler (LIGHTS OUT), writers such as John Dickson Carr (MURDER BY EXPERTS) and actors such as Peter Lorre (MURDER IN THE AIR).
CREEPS BY NIGHT aired on the Blue network with Boris Karloff as host and actor. The series was done on the West coast. When the series moved to the East coast with episode #13 “The Walking Dead (May 16, 1944) Karloff stayed behind and the mysterious Dr. X took over as host. The name of the actor who played Dr. X was never revealed.
CREEPS BY NIGHT “The Final Reckoning†(Blue network, May 2, 1944). George Miller is out of prison after serving 20 years for a murder he did not commit. George feels his life has been wasted and is obsessed with revenge against the man who framed him.
One of the most important roles for the host/announcer was to promote the sponsor. Series such as MYSTERY HOUSE would take a comment made by the characters to remind everyone about the sponsor. INNER SANCTUM Mr. Host enjoyed his creaking door and pun filled introductions but then he would turn to Mary to discuss the perfection and joy the sponsor’s product would bring to the listener’s life.
But no host/announcer was more interested in the sponsor than the host of a kid’s show, radio serials such as CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT, JACK ARMSTRONG ALL AMERICAN BOY, DICK TRACY, and endless others push their promos like maps and code rings and nagged kids to get their Mom or Dad to buy the sponsor’s product.
TOM MIX RALSTON STRAIGHT SHOOTERS “The Green Man†(Mutual, June 30, 1944). A swami arrives and tries to buy Longwind Wilson house that keeps disappearing because of a former cactus now anti-social Green Man. Not the most PC but still fun. In this episode Tom Mix was played by Joe “Curley†Bradley.
Not all serials were aimed at kids and their parents’ bank account. There would be soap operas for Mom (ROMANCES OF HELEN TRENT and BACKSTAGE WIFE), adventure (ADVENTURES BY MORSE and SHADOWS OF FU MANCHU), mysteries (CHARLIE CHAN and I LOVE A MYSTERY), and spies (ANN OF THE AIRLINES).
But no matter the type of radio serial all of them needed the host/announcer to keep the audience up to date on the continuing story that usually aired three to five times a week.
Here is an episode from PERRY MASON, a radio series that would evolve into TV soap opera EDGE OF NIGHT.
PERRY MASON “The Case of the Puzzled Suitor’ (CBS, June 7, 1944). A rich scientist wants Mason to write his will, but a woman had early warned Mason that the scientist was being coerced.
One of the things the Internet has given us is access to the past unlike ever before. You can listen to OTR at YouTube, Internet Archive (archive.org) and various other places on the Internet. Whether you remember when the shows first aired or you are listening for the first time, OTR offers a variety of wonderful entertainment, shows more often than not introduced by a host/announcer.
WEREWOLF OF LONDON. Universal Pictures, 1935. Henry Hull, Warner Oland, Valerie Hobson, Lester Matthews, Lawrence Grant, Spring Byington. Director: Stuart Walker.
Warner Oland gives the overall rather dated Werewolf of London a welcome exotic, mystical flair that makes the otherwise somewhat staid film an enjoyable viewing experience. As the first mainstream werewolf movie ever produced by a major American studio, this Universal Pictures release is also notable for its makeup effects by Jack Pierce. A Hollywood legend in his own right, Pierce would go onto do similar work for the much better known (and better movie) The Wolf Man (1941) starring Lon Chaney, Jr.
Henry Hull stars as the titular werewolf, a botanist named Wilfred Glendon. He has recently returned from an expedition in the Himalayas where he had a frightening encounter with a strange beast. That beast, as it turns out, was one Dr. Yogami (Oland), who himself is suffering from lycanthropy.
Yogami arrives in London to tell Glendon that the botanist is about to turn into a werewolf and that a specific plant, one in the latter’s possession, can serve as an antidote. Glendon finds this preposterous, but he has his doubts. These are only strengthened when Glendon notices his hands are getting unusually hairy.
As in The Wolf Man, which was released six years later, Werewolf of London is fundamentally a tragedy. Glendon’s story is a tragic one. His refusal to take seriously his condition, as well as his persistent neglect of his lovely wife Lisa (Valerie Hobson), lead him down a dark and foreboding path that includes murder and ultimately, his own tragic demise at the hands of a Scotland Yard inspector.
But unlike Larry Talbot (Chaney) in The Wolf Man, who appeared as a character in several follow up feature films and became a Universal Monsters icon who is still beloved today, Wilfred Glendon was a character that appeared once and was never heard from again. That is unless there is a remake that could give some fresh life into this somewhat dated feature, something that would give it a little more of a bite for contemporary audiences. Now that’s an idea that would make some fans of classic fans howl at the moon!
J. D. ROBB – Secrets in Death. Lt. Eve Dallas #45. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, September 2017.
First Sentence: It wouldn’t kill her.
Lt. Eve Dallas investigates homicides, but the victims don’t usually drop dead at her feet. Larinda Mars is a “social information reporterâ€; i.e., a gossip columnist who clearly has an enemy since someone slashed one of her major arteries causing her to bleed out in the middle of an upscale bar. Eve, and her team, are determined to find the killer.
Some readers have an issue with the bedroom scenes in this series. “Outlander†author, Diana Gabaldon, provided an excellent perspective with her reminder to readers that sex is a normal part of an adult relationship and that “it is much more about emotion than the exchange of bodily fluids.†That said, the scenes are easy to skip over without losing the thread of the plot.
The slightly futuristic world in which one finds oneself is just enough to provide for fun imaging, yet not so removed from our reality that it seems implausible. As with much of science fiction, it is not impossible that some of the gadgets and technologies will ultimately be realized.
The primary attraction to the series are the characters, particularly Eve. She is an interesting dichotomy between the tough, smart cop who is dedicated to standing in for the dead even when they may not have been good people themselves, and the woman who is completely indifferent to her appearance, and is unaware of many things outside her job. But she does know baseball.
Secrets in Death is an enjoyable read with a couple of well-executed twists. It is more of a straight police procedural than some in the series.
(Note: This was written in 1981, the early days of Cable Satellite TV, before there were on-screen video guides or anything like that; when cable stations bloomed and vanished daily, and they ran anything — anything — in the small hours of the night just to sell advertising. I was working Third Watch in those days, and on my nights off I sometimes flipped around the dial…)
“There are strange things done ’neath the midnight sun…”
–Robert W. Service
Service would feel right at home with Cable TV. They do things late at night on television that no one ever talks about.
In those bleary hours after the bars close and before the doughnut shops open. Strange images flit across the screen, interspersed more or less at random between ads for Country Music and Diet Pills, and the black-and-white phantoms, transfixed for a moment on a flickering screen that is often the sole illumination in a sleeping house, are apt to go anywhere, do anything: murder, make love, or burst into song. Pictures of people long dead strut and fret their fearful ninety minutes or so at the whims of writers and directors who are mostly dust now.
These are the Ghosts of Old Movies, roaming the night, and the restless, channel-changing viewer who stumbles across them, be he insomniac, inebriate or both, may witness tales that he will relate at peril of disbelief.
As the screen kindles into life, we see a jungle village, somewhere in Africa. A crowd of dark-skinned natives and a mustached Cowboy (?) are genuflecting in front of the Chief’s hut.
Inside the hut, a white man in a leopard-skin and top hat (??) is ministering to the Chief’s son. They are alone. The white man gives the black man a shot from a hip flask that knocks him stiff as a board, whereupon whitey blacks his face with soot, dons the son’s clothing, and passes as him, walking through the kneeling natives to where a mule is tethered on the outskirts of the village.
En route, the soot mysteriously vanishes from his face. He mounts the mule anyway and gallops off with the natives and the Cowboy, who have tumbled to him, in hot pursuit. The white man/witchdoctor rides past some potted palms, is thrown from his mount, and suddenly gasps in horror.
The scene shifts suddenly to a completely different-looking jungle where a lion is walking off in an entirely irrelevant direction. Cut back to the white witch doctor, who can apparently see the lion (wherever it is) and is frightened by it. He climbs a tree, the lion makes a few half-hearted jumps at some other tree, and wanders off.
Then a gorilla swings through the branches, lands next to our hero and starts making amorous eyes at him. The white man leaps from the tree and lands among the natives who have gathered beneath it. The mustached Cowboy has apparently wandered off unnoticed. Cut to commercial.
When we get back, the natives have escorted the captive honky back to their jungle village. Suddenly a group of Mounties (???) rides up. The head Mountie halts his men, turns to the captive and demands, “Where’s Gene Autry?”
I turn up the sound, wondering if I could have heard correctly and how the hell did Mounties ever get into Africa anyway. But the scene shifts to a trading post elsewhere in the jungle, where none other than Gene Autry himself is trying to convince a winsome heroine that he did not kill her father. Suddenly the mustached Cowboy enters and gets the drop on Gene, who is quickly escorted to a heavily-guarded hut and locked up with an old man whose function in the story seems somewhat indeterminate.
We now cut back and forth between the mustached Heavy, who is trying to get the heroine to sign something, and Autry in Durance Vile. Gene quickly subdues his native guards (by getting them to reach through the barred windows for beads and trinkets, then tying their hands together) and runs from the hut, which turns out not to have been locked after all.
Then a bunch of other stuff happens and before long Autry and his stuntman have freed the white slaves from the diamond mine (????) and the Heavy, seeing that the jig is clearly up, leaps into a covered wagon with the heroine and rides off, vigorously pursued by Autry’s stuntman.
The ensuing chase, however, is set not in Africa, but among the oversize boulders and dusty trails of Gower Gulch, California, a landscape familiar and overly-familiar to every viewer of B-Westerns. The Heavy wrecks the wagon, the stuntman rescues the girl, and the Mounties, who have apparently been following at a respectful distance, ride up with Smiley Burnette (for it was he, it turns out, who was the white witch doctor in leopard-skin and topper) having somehow learned of Autry’s innocence en route to this appointment in Samara.
The scene shifts again to the deck of a westbound boat. Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette and some miscellaneous Cowboys are serenading the heroine. The Mounties are gone, but the Native Chief and his children are aboard, dressed in western garb and singing Harlem tunes.
As “The End” settles across the screen, we fade out, and — seconds ahead of an appeal for Lee’s Press-on Nails — the title of this Jungle Epic dances across the screen. It is Round-Up Time in Texas (Texas?????)
Somehow it seems to fit.
I love this film and all films like it. There is an unconscious audacity operating in films as cheap as this one. I mean, when you watch a good movie, or even most bad ones, you generally have some inkling of what is going to happen next. Or at least you know it won’t be something totally off the wall. But there are moments in some books and movies that defy rationalization. They simply exist. And they restore to me that sense of childlike wonder that should always be present in one’s critical faculties. As long as there are films like this to be discovered I shall never grow old.
ROUND-UP TIME IN TEXAS. Republic Pictures, 1937. Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette, Maxine Doyle, The Cabin Kids, Champion. Director: Joseph Kane.
MAXINE O’CALLAGHAN – Hit and Run. Delilah West #3. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1989; paperback, January 1991. Brash Books, trade paperback, February 2015.
The count above of Delilah West’s does not include the short story “A Change of Clients,” which appeared in the November 1974 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, The date is worth pointing out because what it means that as a modern day female PI, Delilah West came along several years before all of the more famous ones, who showed up later: Sharon McCone (1977), Kinsey Millhone (1982), or V. I. Warshawsky (also 1982).
In spite of the lack of fame for Mrs. West, the good news is, according to the Thrilling Detective website, “in July 1999, at the Eyecon, held in St. Louis, the Private Eye Writers of America righted that wrong, and very deservedly bestowed The Eye, its Lifetime Achievement Award.”
Hit and Run was published in paperback by St. Martin’s as part of their “Mean Streets” line of books they were promoting at the time, but I think that’s only because Delilah was a private detective in general, not because she traveled down streets any meaner than any of those the mostly sunny town of Santa Ana in southern California.
The case begins with her living in her office, business being so bad, and being nearly run down by a young half-Hispanic kid who leaves another man dead in street before speeding off. Thanks to Delilah’s ID of the car he was driving, he is soon arrested for the man’s death.
Surprisingly enough, hiring Delilah to prove the boy’s innocence is his mother. Demurring greatly, she agrees to investigate and soon begins to suspect that the mean was already dead before he was left in the street to become the responsibility of the next car that drove over him.
The book is pleasant read for PI fans, and maybe even cozy fans who like just a little more grit in the mysteries they read, but that’s all there is, just a little more grit. The ending is more of the thriller variety than it is a gather-the-suspects-around-the-room sort of detective novel, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
All in all, a fairly ordinary case for Delilah, and except perhaps for the killer’s identity, not a particularly memorable one. It nonetheless proved to be a most satisfactory way to spend a couple of hours while flying cross country a week or so ago.
The Delilah West series —
Novels:
Death Is Forever (1981)
Run From the Nightmare (1982)
Hit and Run (1989)
Set-Up (1991)
Trade-Off (1996)
Down For the Count (1997) .
Collections:
A Change of Clients and Death Is Forever (1999)
== Short story “A Change of Clients” [+} novel above.
Bad News and Trouble: The Delilah West Stories (2014)
== Possibly including the following short stories:
“A Change of Clients”
“Bad News”
“Deal with the Devil”
“Diamonds Are For Never”
“Somewhere South of Melrose”
“Going to the Dogs”
“Belling the Cat”
THE UNSEEN. Paramount Pictures, 1944. Joel McCrea, Gail Russell, Herbert Marshall. Screenplay by Hagar Wilde and Raymond Chandler, based on the novel by Ethel Lina White. Directed by Lewis Allen.
The sum total of this film adds up to much more than the film itself does.
To begin with, it is the follow-up to director Lewis Allen’s major surprise hit, the classic ghost story, The Uninvited (reviewed here ), even down to casting perpetual lost waif Gail Russell as the heroine, here a governess in one of those mysterious households dear to the Gothic formula ever since Jane Eyre.
Then there is the screenplay co-written by none other than Raymond Chandler and based on a novel by Ethel Lina White, who among others wrote the novels which Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes and Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase were based on.
Then too, there is a cast lead by Joel McCrea and Herbert Marshall, along with such steadfast character actors such as Norman Lloyd and Tom Tully. Even the children playing McCrea’s daughter and wayward son are good actors.
The plot is that an old dark abandoned mansion sits next to McCrea’s in the city. McCrea once worked for the late owner, known as the Commodore. Deserted now, McCrea’s children insist they see mysterious lights in the house but no one believes them.
As the film opens, the children spy an old woman walking by the house one night. She sees lights and a figure in the house, and is chased down by the figure. The next day headlines reveal an old woman was killed in an alley nearby. Meanwhile McCrea’s son finds the old lady’s gold watch outside the old house and conceals it so the police don’t know the connection.
Governess Gail Russell arrives to the cold McCrea household where he questions her qualifications and motives and tells her his children are impossible. McCrea is bitter over his wife’s death and the suspicion that hangs over him because of it, as his close friend, doctor Herbert Marshall explains.
Add to the mix the conniving ex-governess who has an almost hypnotic hold on the boy and the Commodore’s nosy widow (or is she), plus a few red herrings, and you should have the makings of at least a competent little Gothic outing.
Alas, not so. The Unseen is flat, unconvincing, indifferently acted and directed, and the screenplay has little to say that will hold much interest. The motive for all the goings on is absurd, and the finale unconvincing as the sudden romance between McCrea and Russell.
It is currently available on YouTube in six parts in a rather poor print. Unless you are a completest or a Masochist, I suggest you leave it there.
FELIX FRANCIS – Dick Francis’s Gamble. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, July 2011. Berkley, premium paperback, August 2012.
I may have the count wrong, but what I’ve come up with is 39 Dick Francis novels, plus one short story collection, followed by four collaborations with younger son Felix, then this one by Felix on his own. This and the later books have done well enough that there are seven under his belt now, as of this year. (It is generally understood that most if not all of the original Dick Francis books were collaborations with his wife Mary.)
The reason Felix’s books keep coming out — and selling — is a simple one. He has the formula down pat, a formula that has the story’s main protagonist get into a jam, often not of his own making, but fighting back, often requiring considerable physical effort and frightful pain, before coming out on top.
And in all of them, whether Dick Francis, a former jockey himself, or son Felix, there is a connection to the world of British horse racing. InGamble the story is told by Nick “Foxy” Foxton, also a former jockey — one who had to retire at an early age because of a fall in his final race, breaking his neck.
Having to find a new career for himself, Foxton becomes a member of a mid-level investment firm, where he is doing well enough that one day he may make partner. Until page one of this book, that is, which begins, “I was standing right next to Herb Kovak when he was murdered.”
This is at a race track, but Herb had nothing to do with racing, He is, or rather was, another junior member of Foxton’s investment firm. The killer shoots Herb three times at close range before making a clean getaway. When it turns out that Herb seemed to have had no friends and had named Foxton the heir and executor to his estate, he discovers that the former had a secret life involving 94,000 pounds of unexplained credit card bills.
This is only part of Foxton’s new set of problems. The other involves what may be a phoney investment deal in Bulgaria involving millions of euros. Either this or Herb’s shady dealings soon has a gunman on Foxton’s trail too.
A lesser problem, but still extremely worrisome, is that his live-in girl friend suddenly seems to have a secret she is hiding from him. Another lover, he thinks. All this according to formula, and while son Felix isn’t the greatest wordsmith in the world, he knows how to ratchet up the suspense, each and every chapter to the next.
If one might wish for something in the telling of this tale, one might wish for a protagonist with sharper wits. [WARNING: PLOT ALERT!] When a gym calls asking Foxton to come clean out Herb’s locker, and Foxton knows exactly where the key is, wouldn’t you think … well, come on. No, he doesn’t. One very good excuse is that you don’t want a book as readable as this one is to end all that soon, do you?
ANDREW KLAVAN – Corruption. William Morrow, hardcover, 1994. St. Martin’s Press, paperback, 1995.
Klavan wrote under the name of Keith Peterson an excellent four-book set about the cynical reporter John Wells. This is the first “Klavan” I’ve read.
Sally Dawes is a small town journalist. Cyrus Dolittle is a powerful Sheriff. They are bitter enemies of long standing. When a body is discovered in the Hudson River, they are once again drawn into open conflict.
Dawes, convinced with the fervor of a true believer of the Sheriff’s innate corruption, seeks to uncover the true story. Dolittle, engaged in a political battle that is the culmination of his career, seeks to control this situation as he has all others. Few around them escape being drawn into their destructive orbits, and fewer escape unscathed. Some are destroyed, and some merely die.
The books Klavan wrote as Keith Peterson were darker than the norm and offered few pat answers. Klavan has not written an easy book here, either. The characters are not stock, though a couple of them are very broadly drawn. The situations are not cut-and-dried, black-and-white, or even always good against evil, though there are examples of each. It’s a book wholly about character, and we learn about theirs as the players do. One judgment I’m comfortable in making is that you’ll remember them for a while.
It’s not a feel good book, and I don’t know whether you’ll “like” it or not, Hell, I don’t even know if I did. It’s worth reading, though.
— Reprinted from Ah Sweet Mysteries #13, June 1994.
LOVE ME TONIGHT. Paramount Pictures, 1932. Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Charlie Ruggles, Charles Butterworth, Myrna Loy, C. Aubrey Smith, Elizabeth Patterson. Music by Rodgers & Hart. Director: Rouben Mamoulian.
As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the best romantic comedy musicals of all time. The plot is simple. A tailor in Paris (Maurice Chevalier) goes to a castle in the country to be paid for some work he’s done, gets mistaken for a baron, and falls in love with a princess (Jeanette MacDonald).
Love Me Tonight was one of the first musicals in which the songs are an integral part of the story, in fact moving the plot itself along on more than one occasion. A fact worthy of note, but the cinematography? Perhaps even more astounding. Under Mamoulian’s direction, the camera never stops moving, zooming in and out at will, and using split screens as well as fast and slow motion to both great dramatic and comedic effect. It is difficult to believe that this movie was made in 1932.
Two long scenes need pointing out in particular: The opening of the movie takes place on a quiet Parisian street at dawn. Then a worker comes out with a hammer to work on the pavement, then a woman comes out of her house to sweep the sidewalk, two other women open their windows to flap rugs against the railings, two shoemakers begin hammering nails into boots in a syncopated counterpoint harmony, and soon there’s a entire cacophony of sounds (and music) showing off life in a big city.
Later on, the song “Isn’t It Romantic?” begins by being sung by Maurice Chevalier in his tailor’s shop, is picked by a man taking a cab to the train station; on the train a band of soldiers overhear it, and continue to sing it while marching through a forest, where a gypsy hears it and takes it back to his camp, from which the sound is heard by the princess in a balcony of her palace. Wonderful!
Other songs you may have heard of are “Mimi,” “Love Me Tonight” and “The Son of a Gun Is Nothing But a Tailor.” Of the players, both Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald were made to play their respective roles, while Charlie Ruggles, Charles Butterworth, and C. Aubrey Smith, all resident members of the nobility, are in fine comedic form. There is but one regret in this film. One can only wish that Myrna Loy were on the screen more. Unfortunately several of her pre-Code scenes were deemed too risque when the movie was re-released in the late 1940s, and the shorter version from that date is the only one that still exists.
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.
