THE NIGHT OF JANUARY 16th. Paramount Pictures, 1941. Robert Preston, Ellen Drew, Nils Asther, Clarence Kolb, Willard Robertson, Cecil Kellaway. Screenplay by Delmer Daves, Robert Pirosh and Eve Green, based on the play by Ayn Rand. Directed by William Clemens.

   Luckily for everyone involved, the people who made this film saw it was impossible to make a film out of Ayn Rand’s famous gimmick trial play where the audience became the jury and determined the outcome by their verdict. So, stripped of the play’s gimmick and of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy of selfishness, what was left was a fairly decent mystery to wrap a bright comedy mystery around.

   Stir up a good fast-paced script by a team of top talent like soon-to-be director Delmer Daves, Robert Pirosh, and Eve Green, with capable direction by William Clemens and attractive leads in Robert Preston and Ellen Drew, plus a good cast including Nils Asther and Cecil Kellaway, and the result was a bright little B film that played much better than many A efforts, almost as refreshing as the orange Daquiri that plays a role in the film’s finale.

   Drew is Kit Lane, private secretary to Bjorn Faulkner (Nis Asther), who has his board of directors hot on his neck because of a $20 million dollar corporate shortfall. She’s worried about her boss, even flying back from her vacation, and that night, the January 16th of the title (prompting the famous “Where were you on the night of January 16th?” gag of a thousand stale jokes), she rushes to Faulkner’s penthouse only to see him thrown from his balcony to his death by a shadowy figure, having had his head bashed in first by a metal trophy of Atlas Shrugged beneath the globe (explaining where that book title came from).

   Steve Van Ruyle is the newest member of the board, the nephew, fresh out of the Navy, of a late member who isn’t happy the $3 million he just inherited is part of the $20 million missing from the company funds. He convinces the chairman of the board, Tilton (Clarence Kolb), to let him bail Lane out when she is arrested by Inspector Donegan (Willard Robertson) as a suspect in Faulkner’s death expecting she will lead him to the money.

   Of course the two fall in love, complicating things that get even worse when Kit is charged and put on trial. (Justice moved fast in those days, apparently.) Steve hopes to spring her so he can find the money and because he is attracted to her, and does. With a diary Faulkner left behind in code and the murder weapon, studded with jewels that represent new locations the company has interests, they stumble onto the mysterious Anton Haraba, whose name is an anagram of South American locations they hope will lead to the $20 million and the killer.

   Eluding the police with the help and hindrance of a very drunk Cecil Kellaway, in a nice bit, the two charter a plane to Havana to find Haraba, and find more trouble than they expected with police and a killer after them.

   Preston and Drew keep the proceedings moving at a nice pace with bits and pieces from the play thrown in the trial scenes and the plot largely skimmed from the play (some characters, including the one played on Broadway by Walter Pidgeon, are written out completely). Quite a bit is left out, but frankly it doesn’t really matter, because I have read and seen the play and this film is much more entertaining and much less heavy-handed and melodramatic, and having audiences vote for the ending of the film was the kind of thing better suited to William Castle hucksterism than a good B comedy mystery.

   The play was done at least three times on television here and in England, live a few times, and if you want to see it, your best bet would be if you can find an Kinescope of one of them, the last in 1960 for ITV Theater. Unless you just want to see a famous play or you are a Randian completist, though, I suggest this is by far the most entertaining version of the play possible, an old fashioned swift-paced comedy mystery, nicely acted and timed.

BRETT HALLIDAY – Michael Shayne’s Long Chance. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1944. Reprinted in paperback many times, including Dell #325, mapback edition. 1949; Dell #866, 1956; Dell D416, 1961, McGinnis cover. (All three shown.)

   When the death of Mike Shayne’s wife Phyllis has him packing up shop in Miami, and ready to call it quits with his career as a private detective, his old buddy, reporter Tim Rourke, with a nose for news and an eye for a friend in trouble, starts him back on the right track with a job that takes him back to the old stomping grounds he was once run out of, New Orleans.

   And there, besides a nice girl or two to help chase away the blues, he finds himself hip-deep in a case of murder, complicated by police corruption and the dope-peddling racket in a city where life can be loose and easy and more.

   Shayne leads more with his head than he should, but he survives a long night of beatings, doped drinks and a rigged picture frame to pull off a decent bit of surprise trickery to nab the killer. The early Shayne novels were not far removed from the the glory pages of Black Mask magazine, and this tale, no exception, goes down as smoothly as a bottle of Monet cognac.

Rating:   B

SILENT RUNNING. Universal Pictures, 1972. Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint. Drones: Mark Persons, Steven Brown, Cheryl Sparks, Larry Whisenhunt. Screenplay: Deric Washburn, Mike Cimino and Steve Bochco. Director: Douglas Trumbull.

   Silent Running is both a simplistic and spectacular view of a semi-utopian future in which the Earth is a “paradise” with a uniform temperature and only manufactured food to eat; there are no trees or animals left on the planet, only the ones temporary stored on gigantic spaceships left in orbit around Jupiter Saturn, manned only by a minimal number of bored and uncaring crew members.

   Except for Freeman Lowell, played by Bruce Dern, for a large part of the film the only character on the screen at any one time. Often wearing a robe and in semi-Messianic fashion, Lowell may be the only person alive who really cares about nature. When the order comes down from above to not only jettison but blow up the entire project, he rebels and takes it upon himself to save his own personal forest biosphere .

   Other than two surviving droids for companionship, Lowell is the only person on the screen for most of the movie. When systems begin to fail, he manages to jury rig partial fixes, but no more. It is here that the movie seems to drift a bit, with no destination for the film in sight. But wait! The ending is one well worth waiting for.

   This is definitely a movie with a message and striking visual effects, but basically a simple one that may have been premature in 1972. I suspect that the greatest success this movie may have had has been on SF films taking place in space that have followed.

M. R. D. MEEK – Touch and Go. Lennox Kemp #10. Charles Scribner’s Sons, US, hardcover, 1993. Worldwide Mystery, US, paperback, 1994. First published in the UK: Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1992.

   I gave a previous Kemp adventure a very lukewarm review not too long ago, and now I wonder if maybe I wasn’t just in a bad mood. This one is quite good.

   Kemp is an English solicitor, once disbarred and working as a private agent, now reinstated and successful. His past comes back to complicate his present when his ex-wife, for whom he had committed the acts that led to his disgrace, dies in America and mentions him in her wills.

   Yes, wills, because there seems to be two of them, though the original of the second has vanished, along with the jewels Kemp had been willed in the first. The kicker is that the second leaves a quite considerable everything to Kemp, at the expense of some very unsavory types from Las Vegas.

   It all gets quite complicated, and dangerous as well when it appears that the second may hold up. On top of everything else the only secretary Kemp has ever had is pregnant, and he must replace her.

   I found this an engaging story from beginning to end. For reasons I can’t put the proverbial finger on, Kemp was a much more appealing character to me than he has been in the past, and I found the other characters well done also.

   Meek’s prose was low key and understated as usual, and fitted the story well. It is not, by the way, a murder mystery in any sense, but don’t let that put you off. All told, a very enjoyable book, marred only by an ending in which I couldn’t quite believe.

      The Lennox Kemp series —

1. With Flowers That Fell (1983)
2. The Sitting Ducks (1984)
3. Hang the Consequences (1984)
4. The Split Second (1985)
5. In Remembrance of Rose (1986)
6. Worm of Doubt (1987)
7. A Mouthful of Sand (1988)
8. A Loose Connection (1989)
9. This Blessed Plot (1990)
10. Touch and Go (1992)
11. Postscript to Murder (1996)
12. A House to Die for (1999)
13. If You Go Down to the Woods (2001)
14. The Vanishing Point (2002)
15. Kemp’s Last Case (2004)

This American rock singer-songwriter has made no name for herself in this country, but her music has been well received in both Europe and Canada. “Sittin’ in the Dark” is a song from her 1979 self-titled debut LP:

UNION STATION. Paramount Pictures, 1950. William Holden, Nancy Olson, Barry Fitzgerald, Lyle Bettger, Jan Sterling. Based on the Edgar-winning novel Nightmare in Manhattan by Thomas Walsh. Director: Rudolph Maté.

   Maybe I’m missing something because, as far as I can tell, a lot of my fellow film critics seem to really think that Union Station has a lot going for it. Apart from an exquisitely choreographed gritty chase scene at the end, this lackluster 1950 crime film plods along with uninspiring characters and stale dialogue. There’s some good on location photography and if you like train stations, Union Station does have a lot to offer. But overall the film really just pales in comparison to the myriad other crime films and films noir released in the same era.

   Directed by Rudolph Maté, the movie features William Holden as William Calhoun, a train station police lieutenant. After a passenger named Joyce Willecombe (Nancy Olsen) sees two men with guns in the same car as her, she reports it to Calhoun. Turns out that Joyce has stumbled upon a kidnapping plot in which her boss’s blind daughter has been snatched and is being held for ransom.

   The plot then follows Lt. Calhoun as he and his men, all under the watchful eye of Inspector Donnelly (Barry Fitzgerald), seek to identify and root out the kidnappers. They’re more than willing to play rough and go so far as to threaten one of the criminals with death should he refuse to cooperate. This, unlike the romance between Calhoun and Joyce, gives the police procedural realistic feel to it.

   Overall, what Union Station feels like is a movie with an identity crisis. Is it supposed to be a character study of Lt. Calhoun, a police procedural, or merely a set piece about a train station where the crime story is merely secondary? Although some of my fellow critics seem to regard the movie as a stellar film noir, I must confess that I viewed it as a rather clumsy crime film more akin to late 1930s crime themed B-films than the stellar works of Richard Fleischer and Anthony Mann.

–

TREVOR BERNARD – Brightlight. Manor 15278, paperback original, 1977.

   Nathan Brightlight is a Hollywood private eye, working out of a corner of mystery fiction I usually turn cartwheels over. The wife of a fading movie star now consigned to a weekly television series has disappeared, and Brightlight is hired to find her, which of course involves considerable digging into the past.

   Bernard is definitely not a word stylist of any shape or form. The commentary is terse but unimaginative, and it dies the lonesome death of a lame obligation. A third or fourth generation imitation, and yet it involved me enough to read it in under two hours. Perhaps not completely hopeless?

Rating:   C minus.

Bibliographic Note:   Nothing is known about the author, Trevor Bernard, whose only entry in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV this novel is.

ANNE NASH – Cabbages and Crime. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1945. No paperback edition.

   After the Easter rush, Nell Winters and Doris (Dodo) Trent decide they deserve a vacation from their flower shop. Death Valley, bereft of gardenias and violets, strikes their fancy. Unfortunately, as they begin their trip, they stop off to see Dodo’s cousin, who operates a dog kennel.

   Because of a birth and measles, Nell and Dodo have to take charge of the kennel, with the help of Sif, a German shepherd. Not an easy task, particularly for Dodo, who is just a tad overweight. Even Nell says: “Did I ever complain about flowers? Those silent expressions of Nature. The worst they ever do is to up and die when your need is the sorest. But they do it without one yip.”

   While Nell and Dodo don’t get to Death Valley, death comes to them, in the form of a corpse in a cabbage sack. Don’t read this one for the mystery aspect, which is disappointing. Read it for the travails of Nell and Dodo as they try to cope with their furry charges.

      The Nell Winter and Dodo Trent series —

Said with Flowers. Doubleday, 1943.
Death by Design. Doubleday, 1944.
Cabbages and Crime. Doubleday, 1945.

FYI:   J. F. Norris has a long and interesting review of Said with Flowers on his blog from earlier this year. (Follow the link.)

DAPHNE du MAURIER – The Scapegoat. Victor Gollancz, UK, 1957. Doubleday, US, hardcover, 1957. Pocket Cardinal C-276, paperback, 1958. Later reprint editions are plentiful.

THE SCAPEGOAT MGM, 1959. Alec Guinness, Alec Guinness, Nicole Maurey, Pamela Brown, Annabel Bartlett. Bette Davis. Screenplay by du Maurier, Robert Hamer and Gore Vidal. Directed by Robert Hamer.

   This sees Daphne du Maurier running smack into Graham Greene Territory by way of The Prince and the Pauper.

   John Barratt is a burnt-out British professor looking for some meaning in an empty life who runs into his exact double, a French aristocrat who has made a hash of his life and is getting bored and irritated — so he runs off with the Barratt’s identity, leaving Barratt to walk into a rich and messy life, where everyone — his wife, mother, daughter, sister, etc. — believes him to be the count, and he finds himself wandering through the tangled debris of their relationships and trying to sort things out.

   du Maurier handles it with a very convincing realism and a feel for the personalities involved. Barratt doesn’t make everything right; he blunders, does a little good, hurts some feelings, and is just possibly on his way to straightening things out when the real count shows up, as we knew he would, at the most dramatically opportune moment.

   At which point things got so suspenseful that I found myself sitting up past my bedtime to finish it, which is very rare for me. And I have to say that du Maurier’s ending, while hardly satisfactory, left me pondering the meaning of it all and wondering if there were any.

   The movie was disappointing, particularly considering the fine cast: Alec Guinness, is fine as the lead: first befuddled, then bemused and finally resolute. In a small but showy part, Alec Guinness plays the scheming aristocrat with subdued venom. Pamela Brown is dealt a rather shallow role but Annabel Bartlettt, plays the daughter with a sprightly intelligence and precocious beauty that look incredibly promising — all the more pity this was her only film. As for Bette Davis, her few scenes as the family matriarch seem to cry out, “I am a Guest Star!” throwing things badly off-balance

   In fact, the movie jettisons most of the intricacies of the book and settles for a pat murder-scheme story as a poor substitute for du Maurier’s complex tale. There is an engaging wrinkle toward the end, but this too gets pitched away. What’s left is well done but sadly ordinary.

RICHARD BLAINE – The Silver Setup. Pageant Books, paperback original; 1st printing, August 1988.

   The Silver Setup is first of two recorded adventures of hardboiled L. A. PI Mike Garrett, the second being The Tainted Jade (1989). Both were published by Pageant Books, a firm whose two-year existence coincided exactly with that of Garrett, 1988-89. These two years also span the career of the pseudonymous Richard Blaine, at least under that name.

   The year is 1948. One briefly wonders why the LA background for Garrett is so greatly emphasized. This first case finds him working in a small industrial town somewhere outside Philadelphia, and the second book reportedly finds him in Texas. But it doesn’t matter too much. His tough guy veneer and constant wise guy repartee is the same everywhere. It’s only that they seem to rub the cops in Lancaster the wrong way more than usual when the bodies start to mount up.

   He’s hired this time around to find a missing husband, the wife being an old friend of a pal back in LA. It’s an easy case. He finds the man dead in a motel of ill repute within a day of looking, laid out dead on a bed with a gun in his hand.

   Suicide? Garrett doesn’t think so, and of course complications quickly arise. Tough cops and tougher hoodlums run the town, and Garrett runs afoul of both, and his body soon shows it.

   Blaine is channeling Chandler in his storytelling, no doubt about it. Some sample lines: “She sat there now squeezing a small shiny black clutch purse in her lap, squeezing it the way you go after the last bit of toothpaste in an old, wrinkled tube.” (p.77)

   And from p.127:

   The solution is more complicated than it needs to be, but along the way there are quite a few twists in the tale, some of them obvious, a couple of them doozies. What this is is a throwback to the days when hardboiled private eye tales were expected to be fair play detective novels too. This one obliges on that account as well, in spades.