YUMA. Made for TV movie: ABC, 02 March 1971. Clint Walker, Barry Sullivan, Kathryn Hays, Edgar Buchanan, Morgan Woodward, Peter Mark Richman, Bruce Glover, Miguel Alejandro. Producer: Aaron Spelling. Director: Ted Post.

   The ending of this movie, to begin wrong end to, shows Marshal Dave Harmon (Clint Walker), widowed hotel owner Julie Williams (Kathryn Hays), and Andreas, the young Mexican boy befriended by the marshal (Miguel Alejandro), all frolicking together down at the local swimming hole.

   This incongruous bit of byplay illustrates more than anything else in this well done made-for-TV movie that it was also the pilot for a series that was never picked up. No movie meant for theaters would end in such a fashion!

   The beginning is much, much better, showing as it does Marshal Harmon’s first entrance into to the frontier town of Yuma, Arizona, as he makes his way on horseback through a crowded maze of cowpokes on horses, full-team wagons, one horse buggies, women in bonnets and petticoats and arms full of purchases – the busiest western street I can remember seeing in a long long time.

   Only to be met by a stagecoach emptied of its passengers, and driven and overturned by two drunken cowboys. Confronted by the town’s new marshal, one of the two brother shoots and dies, the other is brought to the town’s run-down jail, unused since the previous officer of the law was sent skedaddling.

   Turns out (you knew?) that a third brother is the owner of a huge herd of cattle being brought to town. It also turns out that he is not likely to take too kindly to his one brother’s death.

   Things get worse, however. The second brother is secretly released during the night while the marshal is asleep, then shot in the back as he tries to make his escape.

   There is much more, which I won’t go into, but the action is very nearly non-stop, and it’s also a pretty good mystery to boot. Clint Walker’s character is as tall as the man playing him, and he has some back story that would have been gone into, if there had been more to the series than this busted pilot.

   Kathryn Hays, later a longtime star of As the World Turns (for nearly 40 years), has little to do but look pretty, but once she realizes that the new marshal is the real thing, taciturn but tough and not a man to back down, ever, she is also as supportive as she can be.

   Let me tell you how much I enjoyed watching this. The print on the DVD I have is just enough out of focus that I would have turned it off within the first two minutes if I hadn’t been caught up in the story as much as I was.

TIM CHAMPLIN – The Tombstone Conspiracy.

Five Star, hardcover; First Edition, Sept 1999. Leisure, paperback; August 2002.

   Imagine, if you would, a western novel taking place in Tombstone, Arizona, in which the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Clantons are all characters — and the O. K. Corral is never mentioned.

   Picture instead a tale straight from The Wild, Wild West TV show. A gang of thieves is running rampant over the territory, responsible for a series of stage robberies netting them a small fortune in silver and gold, not to mention the ambush of an army wagon train carrying a huge load of rifles and ammunition.

   Two men, one an army agent, the other working for Wells Fargo, team up undercover to solve the mystery. What is the significance of the small wooden disks with the unusual emblem all of the captured outlaws carry? Is the more-than-attractive woman who comes between the two lawmen up to no good? And who is the never-seen leader of the bandits?

   This would also have been the basis for a several months’ worth of great Saturday trips to the movies, serial fashion, complete with a cliffhanger ending every week. A nice brew of traditional western fare, that is to say, juiced up a notch or two.

RAMROD. United Artists, 1947. Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, Don DeFore, Donald Crisp, Preston Foster, Arleen Whelan. Charles Ruggles, Lloyd Bridges. Screenplay: Jack Moffitt, Graham Baker & Cecile Kramer, based on the novel by Luke Short. Director: Andre de Toth.

LUKE SHORT – Ramrod. Macmillan, hardcover, 1943. Paperback reprints include: Popular Library 114, 1946; Popular Library 792, 1953; Bantam, 1977; Dell, 1992.

   Ramrod (UA, 1947) was the second noir Western, following RKO’s Pursued into release by two months, and it’s an all-around faster-moving thing, filled with shoot-outs, bar-fights, stampedes and chases, yet still dark and moody enough to rank solidly in the noir class.

   In conjunction with watching this, I took a look at the 1943 novel on which it’s based. Luke Short (real name Frederick Glidden) deals out his tale with a punchy prose style and generally fast pace, though he sometimes gets bogged down in details he ought to just ride around.

   What pulls the book out of the ordinary though, is his feel for character and how it shapes the plot. Ramrod starts up with a face-off between two ranchers motivated/manipulated by a woman who wants to get out of the fate her father has planned for her.

   When the face-off falls through, she falls back on the help of a disgraced cowboy trying to redeem himself — the eponymous Ramrod of the outfit — leading to Range War and the shoot-outs, bar-fights, stampedes, chases, et al.

   Three writers adapted this into a movie that stays remarkably close to the book, even down to details and dialogue, but it took a director like Andre de Toth to turn it into something really special. De Toth shows a feel for character equal to Short’s, but he evokes it visually; as the cowboy seeking redemption, Joel McCrea seems to be always climbing something (stairs, hillsides, porches…) as the perfect visual metaphor for his quest.

   Veronica Lake’ s cowgirl-fatale is photographed in sharp-focus, emphasizing her hard-edged drive, while the lesser characters — Preston Foster’s ruthless rancher, Charlie Ruggles’ well-meaning father and especially Don DeFore as McCrae’ s shifty partner — all come across surprisingly real. De Toth also has a flair for brutality suited to noir and a feel for pace perfect for the Western, a combination you just can’t beat.

YANKEE PASHA. Universal International, 1954) Jeff Chandler, Rhonda Fleming, Mamie Van Doren, Lee J. Cobb, Bart Roberts (Rex Reason), Hal March, Tudor Owen, Benny Rubin, Harry Lauter. Based on the novel by Edison Marshall. Directed by Joseph Pevney.

   Arabian Nights nonsense of a fairly high order based on Edison Marshall’s bestselling swashbuckling historical novel of the Barbary Coast and the adventures of an American frontiersman there.

   Jeff Chandler, everybody’s favorite Jewish Apache, stars as Jason Starbuck, a frontiersman and trapper who wants to see the world and gets the chance when he falls for beautiful city girl Rhonda Fleming who is kidnapped by Barbary Pirates and sold into slavery as the property of the cruel head of the Sultan of Morocco’s Janissaries, Aga Omar (Bart Roberts).

   Starbuck infiltrates the Sultan’s (Lee J. Cobb) army teaching his infantry frontier style shooting and quickly runs afoul of the cruel Aga who the Sultan fears and distrusts. He wins Fleming in a bet but is captured trying to escape with her, only to be rescued by Hassan (Hal March), the leader of the Sultan’s infantry who befriended him.

   Chandler is stalwart, Fleming striking (and in at least one of the most revealing outfits of her long film career — body stocking or no), and Mamie Van Doren (below) supplies the comic relief as the slave girl presented to Starbuck and complicating his life and the plot.

   That said, this is the kind of movie where a gaggle of Miss Universe contestants appear as slave girls offered by a drooling slave dealer.

   All in all, a pale shadow of Marshall’s full blooded novel, but good fun and diverting with Chandler buckling a swash and Roberts meeting his well deserved end on the razor sharp hooks meant for those who violate the harem.

   Cobb seems to have a little fun as the Sultan and you may even manage to forget March as the glad-handing playboy and huckster from television if you are old enough to remember him in the first place.

   Marshall was better served by films like Son of Fury, Treasure of the Condor (both based on Benjamin Blake), and The Vikings, but Pevney is an old hand and skillful if yeoman direction gorgeous color, and bright costumes on beautiful women all add to the fun.

   Yankee Pasha is an entertaining entry in a once familiar genre from an era when names like Baghdad, Morocco, and Arabia only brought thoughts of exotic adventure and wild vistas, and the only Marines involved were storming the shores of Tripoli to protect American ships from paying tribute to pirate kings — come to think of it, not all that different from today after all, only the spirit of fun and romance has been replaced with politics, oil, and all too real terrors and atrocities.

Editorial Comment:   Yankee Pasha does not appear to be available on commerical DVD, but there are many collector-to-collector copies to be found on eBay, ioffer.com and the other usual sources. It was shown on AMC at some time in the past; a short clip of a terrific tussle between Mamie Van Doren and Rhonda Fleming can be found here on YouTube.

CRAIG RICE – Trial by Fury. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1941. Paperback reprints include: Pocket 237, 1st printing, October 1943. Dell D187, Great Mystery Library #2, 1957. International Polygonics, 1991.

   Now married (drunkenly ever after?), Jake and Helen Justus are off on a trip to Wisconsin lake country. Stopping in a rural county courthouse to get a fishing license, they soon encounter murder, naturally enough.

   Jake, hailing as he does from the land of Chicago (gangsters!) is immediately suspected of the crime by the local hick sheriff. Soon he is in jail and the family friend, John J. Malone, that brilliant, sodden defense attorney, is called to the rescue by Helene.

   Malone eventually explains all, after several more killings, an explosion and the formation of a lynch mob, but only with the help of Hercules, a Bloodhound-Great Dane mix and one of the author’s most inspired creations.

   Praised by Anthony Boucher as possibly Rice’s best book, Trial by Fury is quite good. It features some of the standard (and for me shopworn) Rice devices — the idea that drunkenness is inherently hilarious, and that it’s fascinating to read about Helene’s many wardrobe changes — but the portrayal of small-town, pre-WW2 America is original and really enjoyable. (No doubt much of this is drawn from Rice’s own youth?)

   The interaction of her urbanite series characters with the locals is tremendously amusing as well. Perhaps the solution of the mystery doesn’t quite live up to all the involution that preceded it, but all in all, I would say this is one of the finest American detective novels of the Golden Age period (roughly) that I have read.

Previously reviewed on this blog:

      8 Faces at 3 (by Curt Evans)
      Trial By Fury (by David Vineyard)
      People vs. Withers & Malone by Craig Rice & Stuart Palmer (by Bill Pronzini and George Kelley)

“The Jack is High.” An episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre (Season 2, Episode 6). First air date: 19 November 1964. Edd Byrnes, Pat O’Brien, Henry Jones, Larry Storch, Harry Bellaver, William Bramley, Michael Macready, William Boyett. Writer: William Wood. Director: Ralph Senensky.

    “What we have here,” says Inspector Dan Zarilla (Pat O’Brien), “is an alliance of losers wanting to get into the Win column.” He’s referring to a band of misfits who have successfully pulled off an armored car robbery in Nevada, netting $3 million.

    The heist was masterminded by a man who prefers to be called The Professor (Henry Jones), with the help of a dishonorably-discharged ex-Marine (Edd Byrnes), a not-so-funny standup comic (Larry Storch), a technician (Harry Bellaver), and the only professional criminal in the bunch (William Bramley).

    The Professor has purchased a gasoline tanker truck to use in the getaway; it will act as something of a Trojan Horse as they make their way west towards Los Angeles. To complete the illusion, The Professor has had the technician weld a false bottom in the tank, leaving enough space for 2,000 gallons up top to act as ballast and to fool the cops in case they’re stopped.

    But this “alliance of losers” simply can’t get along, especially the ex-Marine and the professional criminal; plus, the technician has a heart problem he’s told no one else about; some of the welds inside the tank are not exactly tight; not to mention the dogged pursuit by Inspector Zarilla; so that ultimately The Professor’s beautifully-planned caper begins to unravel ….

    I saw this one just the other evening for the first time in nearly half a century — and in color. I didn’t remember all the story developments, but I had never forgotten the final scene after all this time, a finale that’s even more effective here than it was in black and white.

    The hollowed-out tanker truck is a direct lift from James Cagney’s White Heat (1949). At one point, during a roadblock stop, Storch, in order to divert a highway patrolman’s attention, launches into several fairly bad imitations of Hollywood stars, including Cagney — which may have beeen intended as a double inside joke because of White Heat and the fact that Pat O’Brien was often teamed with Cagney in Warner Brothers ’30s gangster films.

    In this one, however, O’Brien comes across less as a high-octane minion of the law and more like Inspector Maigret, laid-back but persistent.

    Edd Burns will always be remembered as Kookie in the 77 Sunset Strip TV series (1958-63). Pat O’Brien had a huge career, including Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Having Wonderful Crime (1945, as Michael J. Malone), Crack-Up (1946), Riffraff (1947), the failed pilot for The Adventures of Nick Carter (1972), and many others, including Ragtime (1981, with Cagney).

    Henry Jones was all over films and TV: 3:10 to Yuma (1957), Vertigo (1958, as the coroner), five appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and a continuing role on Mrs. Columbo (1979-80). You might remember Larry Storch as Corporal Agarn in F Troop (1965-67).

HATTER’S CASTLE. Paramount 1942/1948; Robert Newton, James Mason, Deborah Kerr, Emlyn Williams, Henry Oscar, Enid Stamp-Taylor, Beatrice Varley, Anthony Bateman, June Holden, George Merritt, Laurence Hanray. Screenplay by Paul Merzbach, Rudolph Bernaur and Rodney Ackland, based on the novel by A. J. Cronin. Director: Lance Comfort. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

   This Paramount production was made with frozen funds in England in 1941 but was only released in this country in 1948, when both Mason and Kerr had become box-office names.

   They’re fine in supporting roles, but the real star is Robert Newton, probably best known to American audiences for his role as Long John Silver in Disney’s Treasure Island. He plays a successful haberdasher, whose claim to royal lineage has made him a civic force to be reckoned with in the small Scottish where the drama plays out.

   Newton is a brooding tyrant, running his household with an iron fist and terrorizing his wife and son, with only his daughter (Kerr) showing some signs of independence. The hiring of an assistant (the lover, unknown to him, of his mistress, and superbly played by Emlyn Williams) will prove to be the fault in his carefully constructed world that will be his undoing.

   The arc of the movie is a long downward spiral in an unrelentingly grim drama that’s dominated by Newton’s powerful performance.

SHE. Hammer Films, UK, 1965. MGM, US, 1965. Ursula Andress, Peter Cushing, Bernard Cribbins, John Richardson, Rosenda Monteros. Screenplay: David T. Chantler, based on the novel by H. Rider Haggard. Director: Robert Day.

   I missed seeing this movie when it first came out — I don’t remember why, or what I was doing at the time that was more important. I had seen Dr. No, and, well, I imagine that if I said that I’d have liked to have seen more, I think you’d know what I mean.

   One of my more immediate acquisitions from Amazon-UK arrived last week, a huge box set of Hammer Films, and She was among them. It ws, in fact, the one at the top of a stack of some 20 odd DVDs, and it was the first to be plunked into my new multi-region player.

   I probably should have seen the movie in 1965, or whenever it played in the US. I might have enjoyed it more back then, in the heyday of my youth.

   My opinion now? Disappointing, in a word. I found it to be not Very Good, alas, and while definitely not Bad, far from what I had for so long anticipated.

   I have been told that Hammer spent more on the budget for this film than any other at that point in time. That may be, but the story is dismal and the spectacle is, for the most part, hardly any better, and in only a couple of instances (one being the grand entrance into the Lost City) does it come even close to overwhelming.

   I’ve never read Haggard’s novel (and I don’t want to embarrass myself by saying that I’ve never read anything by Haggard, so I won’t), so I can’t compare book with film, but for me, if you were to tell me that they made up the script as they went along, I’d believe you.

   John Richardson, the handsome and rather hunky primary star (but among the least well-known of the ones I listed above, I’m sure, and the chap on the right, below) plays Leo Vincey, recently demobbed in the Middle East after the Great War (WWI), who in appearance is the re-incarnation of the man She (who must be obeyed) Kallikrates, whom she killed ages before in a fit of jealous rage.

   Now that’s she’s immortal (and by the way, you’re right, Ursula Andress does indeed play She, a role she was born to play), she wants him back, and after several trials and tests that he passes, will not accept No as an answer. Things turn out badly from here.

   Ursula Andress (whose dialogue was dubbed for her) is beautiful, majestic, and exotic, but now as I’ve grown older, I realize that she was never meant for anyone as plebeian as I. Truth be told, I have much more in common with the slave girl Ustane (Rosenda Monteros) who in turn is completely smitten by Leo. Ninety percent of her dialogue consists of her fervently saying, “My Leo.” If only she knew me back then. Leo would have been long forgotten.

   Ah, the stuff dreams are made of!

ROBERT KAPLOW – Me and Orson Welles.

MacAdam-Cage; hardcover; First edition, 2003. Trade paperback: Penguin, June 2005.

   Only 35 pages into this lyrical and magical one-week interlude in 17-year-old Richard Samuel’s life, even he recognizes the fact that he’s “the luckiest bastard on the face of the earth.”

   Recruited by chance to be an actor in Orson Welles’ stage production of Julius Caesar, Richard, still a high school student in suburban New Jersey, must sneak out of classes and lie to his mother to become a part of history: opening night for The Mercury Theatre: New York City, November 11, 1937.

   On the stage with Orson Welles, John Houseman, Joseph Cotten, and George Coulouris, and madly in love with Sonja Jones, Orson Welles’ personal assistant, what flame could burn brighter than young Richard’s, if only for a week?

   The show itself is Orson Welles’ pet project. Whenever there’s a need for it, he’s creative on the spot. As we watch him slide the pieces of the play into position, this convincing portrayal of actor-producer-director Orson Welles, towering over everyone in a three-mile radius, is a gem to behold. The man, then only 22 years old himself, was a genius, and Robert Kaplow does the near impossible: he brings him back to life.

   His was a flawed genius, we know that now. It was a conclusion that became more and more obvious as his career went on. Kaplow suggests that it was clear from the beginning. Orson Welles was a gigantic talent, but only that. From page 181: Human virtues, virtually none: “generosity, decency, loyalty — whatever — all missing.”

   Richard’s life intersects that of Mr. Welles only briefly, and perhaps luckily so. This beguiling coming-of-age tale is also one of the funniest and most warm-hearted stories I’ve read in a long while. This one’s a keeper. Don’t miss it.

[UPDATE] 02-09-10.   I missed the movie that was made of this book. We just couldn’t get there. Inertia, in all honesty, and cold weather. It played here in the Hartford area for about ten days, which is about eight days longer than I expected it to. It hardly seems like the kind of picture people will flock to, no matter how well made it is. (It’s gotten 7.4 stars out of ten on IMDB.)

    It stars Zac Efron as Richard, Claire Danes as Sonja, and Christian McKay as Orson Welles. I’ve signed up to be notified by Amazon when the DVD is released. No doubt I’ll be the first on my block to have it, but I’m certainly looking forward to it.

CARA BLACK – Murder in the Marais. Soho Crime; trade paperback, October 2000. Hardcover edition: Soho Press, 1998.

   The publication date for the hardcover edition of this book is generally accepted to be 1998, but I’m a little puzzled about it. In the paperback edition I have, the copyright date is given as 1999. And the book was an Anthony (and Macavity) nominee for Best First Mystery in 2000, so … I’m confused.

   A small question of little importance, perhaps. What does matter is that since the success of this, her first book, Cara Black (who is not the young tennis player from Zimbabwe, whose name also comes up if you try Googling her) has written several more in the series, to whit:

       2. Murder in Belleville. Soho Press, 2000; trade paperback: April 2002.
       3. Murder in the Sentier. Soho Press, 2002; trade paperback: April 2003.
       4. Murder in the Bastille. Soho Press, 2003; trade paperback: April 2004.
       5. Murder in Clichy. Soho Press, 2005; trade paperback: March 2006.
       6. Murder in Montmartre. Soho Press, March 2006.

   These are all cases of murder and intrigue in one form or another for Parisian private eye Aimée Leduc, a specialist in computer penetration, and her partner, René Friant, a “handsome dwarf with green eyes and a goatee.” Either the author or her character has struck quite a chord with her readers, as witness the almost yearly addition to the saga, and all in multiple printings. The books themselves are handsomely made as well, solid and somehow daring you not to pick them up.

   In Marais, the first of the six above, Aimée is hired by an aged French Nazi-hunter to take a digitalized photo (converted from computer code) to an elderly woman still living in the Jewish section of Paris. Aimée arrives too late, finding Lili Stein murdered soon before her arrival; and her employer, Soli Hecht, is hospitalized soon thereafter in what is called a horrrific pedestrian accident. (We know better.)

   In France and apparently Paris in particular, life has gone on since World War II, but the days of Nazi control are never far from the memory of many of its inhabitants, both victims and collaborators. It is one sad story such as this in which Aimée finds herself up to her neck.

   Aimée herself reminded me of Emma Peel and a not-so-voluptuous Honey West, mixed in with a dash of Sydney Bristow (of TV’s Alias) with her penchant for disguise and undercover work, slinking across Parisian rooftops in high-heeled pumps. And a form-fitting tight black skirt. (I can picture that.)

   Her partner René does not have much of a role in this one, content to opening password-locked computer accounts with an ease and nonchalance that makes it seem all too easy, with his one big scene consisting of being hung by his suspenders by one of the villains on a peg on the wall. It would seem churlish to suggest that passwords are not discovered as easily as they are in this book, but perhaps the author was just trying to keep the pace of the book moving, which is constant, fierce and filled with action upon demand.

   A large portion of Aimeé’s background is described in broad outlines, but some of her past is only hinted at. The part that is hidden may be part of what it is that has had readers coming back for more. That, and of course, the independent and free spirit that is Aimée herself, living as she wants, and being attracted to and sleeping with whomever she wants.

   Life in Paris is always an attraction to people in the United States, and whether her depiction is authentic or not, Cara Black makes the city come to life, the non-touristy part, made even more real by the inclusion of more than occasional phrases in French, in my mind just the right dosage. (Some of the reviewers of this book online have taken issue with the authenticity, which I noted but did not care to know about. If it was an illusion, I did not want the illusion broken. So I am pointing this out but stepping back, and with double grains of salt, I shall allow you to be the judge.)

   I am disappointed in myself for having to tell you some of my other impressions. The book is not meant for speed-reading. The prose, while not clumsy, is often as disjointed as the plot, jumping here and there and including good scenes when a good scene is called for, whether it is sometimes that particular scene or sometimes not.

   Here is one example of the author’s carelessness in the details. On page 217, the dying Soli Hecht’s last words are related as having been “Don’t … let … him …,” then “Lo … ” On page 251, the man’s last utterance, as Aimée is puzzling over the case to that point, she remembers as “Ka … za.”

   Faulty details like this are deadly in a detective story, even if both versions could have been true. To my knowledge the point was never addressed, just another indication that in today’s world of detective fiction, atmosphere and eye-catching characters can often carry the day, even if the puzzle of the plot is present but is shunted aside as if it almost really doesn’t matter.

   But here’s what is really funny, not in the sense of “ha-ha” funny, unless the joke is on me, but funny in the sense of “I can’t explain it either.” I enjoyed the book, and if you were to ask me if I am going to read another of Aimée’s adventures, the answer would definitely be yes.

           The Aimée Leduc series, continued —

   Perhaps I should not make promises in print that I have not kept, or at least not yet. There have been four more books in the series since I wrote this review, either published or forthcoming. I’d be remiss if I didn’t include them here.

        7. Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis (2007)

        8. Murder in the Rue de Paradis (2008)
        9. Murder in the Latin Quarter (2009)
       10. Murder in the Palais Royal (2010)

   But while I’ve purchased most if not all of these, I have not read another, and that is really remiss of me. I shall endeavor to do something about it.