HAMLET AT ELSINORE. TV movie, BBC, 15 November 1964. Christopher Plummer, Robert Shaw, Alec Clunes, Michael Caine, June Tobin, Jo Maxwell Muller, Dyson Lovell. Based on the play by William Shakespeare. Director: Philip Saville.

   My annual Hamlet-fest last month had its moments, including the 1964 Hamlet at Elsinore with Christopher Plummer backed up by Robert Shaw as a shrewd, virile Claudius, Michael Caine [a year before The Ipcress File] a sardonic Horatio, and Donald Sutherland essaying a Norwegian accent as Fortinbras!

   Quite well done, with some understandable echoes of John Barrymore in Plummer’s performance: he dresses like Barrymore, adopts some Barrymore elocutions, and there are moments in his mad scenes that recall Oscar Jaffe in The 20th Century.

   There’s also a wonderful twist on the Nunnery Scene: Ophelia is not aware her dad and Claudius are spying on her and Hamlet till the scene ends. And when Polonius tells her they heard everything, Robert Shaw flashes her a smile so nasty he should have won a prize for it.

   I also read Henry Treece’s 1966 The Green Man, a retelling of the Danish legends that formed the basis of Hamlet. It recasts the part as Conan the Barbarian, and has its virtues, including vividly-evoked time and place, but overall I was disappointed.

   And you?

TRIAL & RETRIBUTION IV. ITV, UK. October 4 & 5, 2000. 2 x 2 hours, less adverts. David Hayman, Kate Buffery, James McCready, Steven Hartley, Richard McCabe, Dorian Lough, Zoe Lucker. Teleplay: Lynda La Plante. Director: Michael Whyte.

   This fourth series brings back Detective Superintendent Mike Walker (hardly a likeable cop) and Detective Inspector Kate North, still living together after meeting on the original T&R.

   North is included in a team that is investigating an eight year-old murder where the convicted killer, James McCready, is alleging miscarriage of justice with the help of a barrister MP and a television reporter. It all hinges on police skulduggery in the original team led by, yes you’ve guessed it, Walker. North states her relationship but, rather improbably (to state the obvious) is told to carry on anyway.

   Quite watchable but it’s cliched (very). For example Walker, suspended but continuing to investigate, finds evidence in Glasgow that McCready has committed a murder there 12 years earlier. Next day, the day the appeal opens, he is travelling back to London so he phones North, at home and pregnant, and tells her to rush to the court of appeal to say that this vital evidence is on the way.

   Why could he not ring direct, why could he not ring his police station, why indeed didn’t he ring the night before when he found the evidence? And anyway it doesn’t take a legal genius to work out that the evidence of an earlier crime would have absolutely NO effect on the appeal against conviction in a later one.

   Still it creates the excuse for the pregnant North to rush, trip on the mat and collapse. Two more dramatic situations are set up — will the evidence get there in time and will the baby survive?

   There were lots more situations like this to groan over, but if you want to pass an undemanding (just under) four hours this should do it. It’s just a shame that after the superb original Trial And Retribution (1997), it’s been steadily downhill.

   Lynda La Plante (writer, producer, etc.) has become a churner out of trifles. Incidentally the novelisation of this story has been produced with La Plante’s name prominently on cover, spins, title page and copyright page. The cover also though reveals “Novelized by Robin Blake.” Note, too, it’s “Novelized”, not “Novelised.” What are things coming to?

Editorial Comments:   There have now been 10 seasons of Trial & Retribution, the most recent having been aired in 2008. There are no plans to continue. Seasons one through four are available in the US as one DVD box. (See below.) I believe all of the others have also been released in this country.

  THE HOT HEIRESS. First National, 1931. Ben Lyon, Ona Munson, Walter Pidgeon, Tom Dugan, Holmes Herbert, Inez Courtney, Thelma Todd. Music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart; cinematographer: Sol Polito. Director: Clarence G. Badger. Shown at Cinecon 39, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2003.

   An excerpt from this musical was included in a laser disk box set of early sound films. Lyon, as riveter “Hap Harrigan”, works and sings until a hot rivet flies through the window of sleeping socialist Ona Munson (“Juliette Hunter”), who, after an initial uncomfortable moment, likes what she sees through the window and invites Hal the Riveter to come in through the window for lunch.

   It was good to see the rest of the film, which traces the difficult courtship of Lyon and Munson, an apparently ill-fated romantic pair, although the difference is in class and not in warring families and the movie does have a happy ending.

   Walter Pidgeon is Munson’s proper suitor, Thelma Todd, a most attractively photographed (she doesn’t do much acting) society friend of Munson’s, and Tom Dugan and Inez Courtney friends of Hal’s who double date with the ill-matched couple: The most extended sequence is a weekend party at the estate of Juliette’s wealthy parents where Juliette’s family and friends do their damdest to break up the couple.

   Only three of the Rodgers-Harts songs were used, but the sprightly direction and accomplished performances made this an entertaining attraction.

Editorial Comment:   The photo just above is that of Thelma Todd, reportedly taken in connection with (or from) The Hot Heiress. For a glimpse of Ona Munson and Ben Lyon singing “You’re The Cats, You’re The Berries” from this film, check out this YouTube clip online here.

JAN ADKINS – Cookie. Harper & Row, hardcover, 1988. No paperback edition.

   Jan Adkins’ Cookie is set in Washington, where Cookie Culler, a 40ish compulsive sort, runs the ranch she inherited from her father. She’s well-liked in the local town, where she’s bedded most of the eligible males, and this comes in handy when brother Benjy comes home.

   It seems his troubled life has taken a turn for the worse. While flying a load of dope across the Mexican border for a syndicate of Eastern dentists, he crashed the plane and destroyed the dentists’ investment. They are not happy, and want at least a piece of Benjy’s hide.

   Cookie will help her brother, of course, but he’s not telling everything and the affair turns explosively deadly, with the ranch under siege. This is an utterly compelling narrative which defies being put down; even the detailed eroticism is integral to the story.

Bio-Bibliographic Data:   Contrary to expectations, perhaps, Jan Adkins is male, and possibly even more surprising (given the last line of Al’s review) is that most of his fiction was written for Young Adults. His only only venture into Crime Fiction was Deadline for Final Art (Walker, 1990), a spy novel featuring Russians and a Star Wars project.

   For more information on the author, including his many works of non-fiction and an impressive list of various awards he’s received, check out his website here.

   Finally, Michael Gilbert is getting the recognition he deserves. In 1987 he received a Grand Master Award from MWA, in 1988 publishers seem to be falling all over themselves to reprint him, and that is good news for American mystery readers.

   Incidentally, Gilbert, who only recently retired as an attorney, did virtually all his writing while commuting by train to London. Yet he had a very active practice and even was Raymond Chandler’s solicitor, writing his will. I am in awe of Gilbert since my own railroad-commuting days were much less productive, limited to reading the newspaper in the morning and napping, despite my best efforts to stay awake, in the evening.

   Penguin has reprinted Smallbone Deceased for $3.95, and there is no better possible introduction to Gilbert than this very early (1950) work. It contains many of the elements of the classic puzzle: the bizarre crime (a body is found in a large deed box at a law office), a diagram of the office, and clever chapter headings which fit in with the legal background of this mystery.

   Gilbert’s sophisticated writing and expert character development make this book very “modern” for its time, since it was written when most puzzle writers used large chunks of cardboard with which they created the people in their books.

   Gilbert is one of the finest short-story writers around, and Carroll and Graf has reprinted his wonderful collection of Calder and Behrens spy stories, Game Without Rules (1967), $3.95. This edition contains the original British titles, though many stories appeared in EQMM under different titles.

   By whatever name, most of the stories In this collection are a perfect antidote for readers who are tired of the cynicism and lack of action in John Le Carre. Gilbert’s adept plotting and wit make each story a joy to read and convince me the short story is the proper length for espionage fiction. Especially recommended are “The Cat Cracker,” “Trembling’s Tours,” and “Hellige Nacht,” three of the very best spy short stories ever.

   Carroll and Graf has also reprinted, for $3.95, Overdrive (1967), a novel which received considerable critical acclaim, though I found the protagonist, Oliver Nugent, too ruthless to permit me to identify with him.

   Allen J. Hubin’s highly favorable review of this book in a Minneapolis newspaper was brought to the attention of the editor of the New York Times Book Review and led to, from 1968 to 1971, his being the first (and far and away the best) replacement for Anthony Boucher.

   From Perennial Library comes The Country-House Burglar (1955), $4.95, and The Crack in the Teacup (1966), $3.95, two village mysteries which stress the charm of the British countryside but crackle with surprise and clever plotting. A bonus is the subtle way Gilbert works choral singing and cricket, respectively, into the stories.

● Smallbone Deceased. Hodder & Stoughton, UK. hardcover. 1950. Harper & Brothers, US, hardcover, 1950.

● Game Without Rules. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1968. Harper & Row, US, hardcover, 1967.

● Overdrive. Harper & Row, US, hardcover, 1968. First published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton as The Dust and the Heat, hardcover, 1967.

● The Country-House Burglar. Harper & Brothers, US, hardcover, 1955. First published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton as Sky High, hardcover, 1955.

● The Crack in the Teacup. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1966. Harper & Row, US, hardcover, 1966.

ROSEMARY KUTAK – I Am the Cat. Farrar Straus & Co., hardcover, 1948. Unicorn Mystery Book Club. hardcover, 4-in-1 edition, May 1948. Mercury Mysteries #130, digest-sized paperback, no date [1949]. Collier Books, paperback, 1964, 1966, with an introduction by Anthony Boucher.

   The Collier Books reprint is one in its series of Mystery Classics presumably chosen by Anthony Boucher. Momentarily stifling my bias against know-it-all psychiatrists, I concur with Boucher’s selection.

   Taking a break from treating veterans with war-induced traumas, psychiatrist Marc Castleman is spending his leave with his “Aunt” Emily and her houseguests, a fairly motley crew. One of the male guests apparently gets into Castleman’s medical bag and takes an overdose of morphia. When that falls to kill him, he brushes his teeth with a tooth powder made mostly of cyanide, which does the trick.

   Was he really trying to kill himself? His sister, as neurotic as he seems to have been, has doubts. The day of the inquest she is found at the foot of the stairs, with a broken neck.

   Was her death an accident, or is someone, involved with those two and other houseguests in a tontine, trying to increase his or her income? Will it get down to two, or maybe to one, if the murderer is cunning enough?

   Keen readers will spot the murderer the moment Castleman does, although all it is not what it seems.

BIO-BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DATA:   Dr. Marc Castleman appeared in one earlier mystery novel, Darkness of Slumber (Lippincott, 1944). For more on that book plus some biographical data about the author, whose only two crime novels these are, check out this earlier post on the blog.

THE SCARLET HOUR. Paramount Pictures, 1956. Carol Ohmart, Tom Tryon, Jody Lawrance, James Gregory, Elaine Stritch, E.G. Marshall, Edward Binns, Scott Marlowe, Billy Gray, David Lewis, Nat “King” Cole. Director: Michael Curtiz.

   Sometimes you have to sift through a lot of Fool’s Gold as you make your way through a stack of would-be Film Noir movies on DVD before you find a true nugget, the Real Thing, and this movie is it.

   Apparently it’s all but unknown. Right now there’s been only one person who’s left a comment about it on IMDB (and his opinion is the same as mine – “a small gem”), and no links to external reviews (until this one shows up there).

   The basic plot line sounds like The Postman Always Rings Twice, but (a) there are a lot of variations possible on that particular theme, and this film has them, and (b) as much as I’d like to say otherwise, it’s almost but not quite in that league.

   Carol Ohmart, for example, as the femme fatale, whom Tom Tryon’s character has fallen in love with, has nowhere near the screen presence of Lana Turner, even on the latter’s worse days and Miss Ohmart’s best.

   In The Scarlet Hour the latter’s role is a little too tough and hardbitten if you were to compare her to Miss Turner in Postman, but to her credit, she does manage to get the impossibly handsome Mr. Tryon to fall in love with her.

   Even if she already has a husband. Tom Tryon works for the man (James Gregory), a real estate kind of guy; Tryon’s his top salesman. And neither Ohmart and Tryon have murder on their mind; all they need is the money to run away together.

   Enter a gang of crooks they overhear casing a house. A third of a million dollars; worth of jewels sounds good to them, and hijacking the burglars’ loot after they’ve cracked the safe sounds easy and all but foolproof.

   We know better. Plans like this seldom work out as planned. The husband gets suspicious, for one thing, and suspicious husbands always put rocks in the crankcase.

   We (the viewer) easily find ourselves anticipating a couple of the more immediate outcomes, but probably not the third (speaking for myself, that is).

   There is a fourth important player in the game, which I almost forgot to tell you about, and that is Mr. Tryon’s secretary (Jody Lawrance), who is – but more I will not tell.

   The ending of The Scarlet Hour is also nowhere near as memorable as that of Postman, but it’s nearly as good, and it certainly is as inevitable. Beside my recommendation as spelled out so far, you also get a bonus of Nat “King” Cole singing a song in a nightclub. I’m not sure the plot required a singer in a nightclub, but singers in nightclubs appear in lots of noir films, and this he’s the one in this one. (It was also David Lewis’s film debut, for whatever that particular fact may be worth to you.)

Herewith some items of interest, I hope, from here and there on the World Wide Web:

● Coachwhip Publications, a “micropublisher” new to me, has already made enough early detective fiction available to keep me reading (and broke) for some time to come. Included in their mystery offerings are: Futrelle’s The Thinking Machine | A. J. Raffles, Gentleman Thief | Hamilton Cleek | Old Man in the Corner | Uncle Abner Mysteries | Thornley Colton, Blind Detective | Max Carrados | Thorpe Hazell Mysteries | The Legal Exploits of Randolph Mason | Addison Kent Mysteries | Complete Adventures of Romney Pringle | Flaxman Low | Luther Trant, Psychological Detective | Average Jones | and many many more.

● Bill Lengeman has added a monthly podcast to his Traditional Mysteries blog. The first one is a Round Table discussion between several bloggers taking on the subject:
“How Much Sherlock is Too Much?”

● Curt Evans and Patrick Ohl are having a multi-part discussion on the latter’s blog in which they discuss in detail the various characters in And Then There Were None, one of Agatha Christie’s best known novels. The most recent of these posts covers General Macarthur. (When I say in detail, I mean it.)

● As I’ve mentioned before, you can listen to every episode of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater online, a great way to spend part of your own evening, or any time of the day, for that matter. Even better, earlier this week Todd Mason provided links on his blog to a long list of other online archives of “Radio Drama from the 1960s to Now.” (Scroll down.) Some are familiar to me, others not.

ROMAN McDOUGALD – Lady Without Mercy. Simon & Schuster/Inner Sanctum Mystery, hardcover, 1948. No paperback edition.

   An obscure book by an obscure author. There are only five copies available on ABE, for example, but the most any one of them will set you back is $14, including postage, which means not only is the supply low, but so is the demand. Is it worth such a meager outlay? With some qualifications, I’d say yes.

   But first, let’s talk about the author. There are six books listed to his credit in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, all published between 1944 and 1950, with three of them having Philip Cabot as the leading character. I’ve not read any, but one source I found online called him a private detective, a fact that interests me, but it’s also one I can’t confirm.

   As for Lady Without Mercy, in many regards, it reads like a gothic romance, much like those that were all the rage in paperback through the 1960s and 70s, and truthfully I was all but ready to give up on it very early on, not knowing where the story was going and not having much of a reason to care.

   I didn’t make a special note of a particular passage to show you to demonstrate this, so here’s one I’ve just now chosen at random. The story is told largely from Linda Travers’ perspective, and she’s only just arrived at the home of Kirk Ormond, the man she loves. Unfortunately he’s married, to a woman whose long expected death from leukemia has not occurred in three years since it was diagnosed. From page 11:

   She is being taken up to a room which Rita, the ill woman, had chosen for her at the last minute. Alan is Dr. Wall, the husband of her half-sister, Isabel. Also in the house are Alan and Isabel’s 16-year-old twin daughters; Kirk’s sister; the housekeeper; and Alice Coulter, sort of a companion to Rita, and who has been encouraging her in an obsessive interest in the occult.

   Adding to the extremely atmospheric nature of the tale are some very strange facts. No one knows how Rita has managed to postpone death so long, and in so doing, has managed to keep Linda and Kirk apart. What’s more — and here’s where things begin to get interesting — after a recent attack of her illness that Alan did not believe Rita would survive, she managed to pull through, and at the exact moment when she began to recover, her favorite pet dog died.

   When Linda finds a bottle of poison in her room, after being wakened by an intruder during the night, she finds the idea of using it to rid herself of her rival irresistible. Each time she makes the attempt, however, Rita mysteriously survives, and even more ominously, another member of this extended household dies instead. Kirk, Linda’s lover, is of no help. He’s a mess, through and through, an utter weakling. What Linda sees in him, one can only wonder.

   As for Miss Coulter … well, perhaps I’ve said enough. You’ll have to read the book for yourself to learn more, and if you’re a fan of hard-boiled fiction, you probably quit reading this review long ago. Suffice it to say, though, this is one the more unique murder mysteries I’ve ever had the fortuitous opportunity to read, and I’m glad I did.

BOLD VENTURE. Syndicated; premiered March 26, 1951. Frederic W. Ziv Radio Production. Cast: Humphrey Bogart as Slate Shannon, Lauren Bacall as Sailor Duval, Jester Hairston as King Moses. Music: David Rose and his orchestra. Other credits (not given on air): Written by David Friedkin and Mort Fine. Directed by Henry Hayward.

   Some interesting production information about the series:

   The transcribed half-hour weekly was on over 400 stations by April 1951. It was first sold to local stations as a 52 weekly episodes package for $13 to $750 a week (depending on station size).

   Bogart and Bacall signed a five-year contract for the show, got royalties earning them $5000 a week in the first year. Writers Fine and Friedkin got $1000 per episode in first year.

   The first thirty-six episodes were done at once in early 1951 then Bogart and Bacall left on a European vacation. By the time the episodes aired Bogart was filming The African Queen. Reportedly there were 78 episodes done, but the number remains debated since most episodes had more than one title leading to some episodes getting counted twice. Today over fifty episodes survive. You can listen to many at Internet Archive here.

   Bold Venture was a mix of the relationship between Bogart’s Harry to Bacall’s Slim in To Have and Have Not, toss in Sam from Casablanca and add “adventure, mystery and intrigue” in the “mysterious” Caribbean islands.

   Slate Shannon was a former adventurer who had decided to settle in Havana Cuba and run a hotel called “Shannon’s Place.” He also rented out his services as Captain of his boat “The Bold Venture.”

   Sailor Duval was a young girl with a wild troubled past. When her father, an old friend of Slate, died he “willed” her to Slate to make sure she stayed safe.

   Shannon was helped at the hotel by long time friend King Moses, who, when the story needed it, would sing a calypso song (by David Rose) recapping the episode’s story.

   A popular source of stories was Slate’s “hobby” (as Sailor called it) of helping people, be it a neighbor who needed Slate to get his daughter away from a gangster or helping an old girlfriend who claimed she was going to be murdered by her stepmother.

   â€œShannon’s Place,” Slate’s hotel was a repeated cause to get Slate involved. Slate took it personally if anything happened at the hotel or to a guest, as when a beautiful female guest has her face ripped to shreds by killer gamecocks. In another episode Slate becomes a suspect when one of the hotel performers is killed. The script is available to read online here.

   The final cause to get Slate involved was his boat “Bold Venture.” Slate and his boat would often be hired by clients who would lie about the real purpose of his trip such as gun running revolutionaries or a college educated treasure hunter turn killer out to retrieve stolen gold.

   The stories were full of touches of crime fiction bordering on noir. Gunfire, fists, knifes, Slate getting beat up, Sailor in danger and countless dead bodies spiced up each week’s tale as our two heroes wisecracked and romanced through it all.

   Strange characters were common, such as two schoolteachers out for excitement and adventure and willing to kill for it.

   And what would this type of adventure mystery be without great dialog such as when Slate asks a man a question and the man replies toughly who’s asking, Sailor says “Him. I talk like this.”

   Then there was the final short scene (often called a “tag” or “epilog”) featuring Slate and Sailor and their relationship, usually ending with romance.

   While the writing and music were enough to make Bold Venture a radio show worth listening to, it was Bogart and Bacall that made Bold Venture special. Their chemistry together translated to radio as well as film and real life. Plus, Bogart and Bacall could do something not many movie stars could, they could act with just their voice.

   It would be the absence of Bogart and Bacall and that chemistry that would doom the Bold Venture TV series, but more about that next time.

      ADDITIONAL SOURCES:

Billboard magazine, 1/31/51

Broadcasting, 4/16/51

OTRR Wiki page.   (L. A. Times article by Walter Ames)