CANON CITY. Eagle-Lion Films, 1948. Scott Brady, Jeff Corey, Whit Bissell, Stanley Clements, Charles Russell, DeForest Kelley, Ralph Byrd, Mabel Paige, (Warden) Roy Best as himself. Narrator: Reed Hadley. Cinematography: John Alton. Screenwriter-Director: Crane Wilbur.

   Film noir aficionados looking for a movie that has previously escaped their attention should look no further than Canon City, a surprisingly effective crime film put out by Eagle-Lion Films. Written and directed by Crane Wilbur, who also penned both the story and script for He Walked By Night, also from 1948 and reviewed here, Canon City notably features stark black and white cinematography by John Alton, who is perhaps best known today for his ongoing collaborations with director Anthony Mann.

   Traversing genres, the semi-documentary film named after the Colorado city where the action takes place is simultaneously a work of social realism in the 1930s Warner Brothers mold, a prison break movie, and a home invasion thriller.

   Scott Brady, in his first leading role, portrays Jim Sherbondy, a doomed protagonist if there ever were one. As teenager who got mixed up with a bad crowd and whose subsequent criminal path led him to a lengthy sentence of incarceration for murdering a cop, Sherbondy is now doing his best to reform himself within the confines of the prison walls. But trouble seems to follow him wherever he goes. Other convicts planning a prison break exploit his good reputation with the guards and snooker him into becoming a key player in a prison break.

   Leading the pack of thieves and murderers is Carl Schwartzmiller. Jeff Corey takes this role and lends it an infectious energy. We know his character is a miscreant, yet in Corey’s more than capable hands, he fascinates us with his sardonic wit and fatalistic worldview as much as repels us. Look for the diabolically tense scene wherein Schwartzmiller takes an elderly couple hostage in their home. The camera follows the old woman, carrying both a hammer and an orange, as she slowly creeps up on the criminal ringleader, hoping to smash his skull. Schwartzmiller turns around and notices her presence, asking what she has with her. She offers him an orange. He gladly accepts and begins to peel it.

   A trifling scene perhaps. But one that only reinforces my belief that Corey remains one of the great character actors of that era.

GORDON E. WARNKE “Whispering Monk.” The Whispering Monk #1. Short story. Published in All Detective Magazine, June 1934. Never reprinted.

   This is the first appearance of The Whispering Monk as a hero pulp character, and the last. In fact it is the only [crime fiction] story that the author, Gordon E. Warnke, ever had published, and the only way you’re going to be able to read it is by finding a copy of the right issue of All Detective Magazine, which is as usual with these old magazines, is not going to be an easy job to do. (See also comment #3.)

   The Whispering Monk, a terrifying nemesis to hoodlums and gangsters alike, is in reality Dick Steele, a former police detective whose father, also a detective, was murdered by a criminal gang that Steele believes is operating with police protection. He takes on the guise of the hooded Whispering Monk to bring the gang down by means of his own vigilante justice.

   As it turns out, however, by means of clever disguising techniques, for most of the story he takes on the identity of Johnny the Dip, a barfly who is able to overhear the conversations of gang members in bars as he sprawls drunkenly at nearby tables.

   Only one person, William Dugan, a captain of detectives, knows about Steele’s alter egos, and is the only man he trusts with that information. The story is short — it’s only nine pages long — so to do what he has to do with so little room to work, Steele’s only resource is to get the gang members fighting against each other.

   You may be surprised to hear me say that the story is not badly written — there’s simply just not enough of it — and the setup shows some imagination, at least. This overlooks the unfortunate fact, however, that The Whispering Monk appears in person in only a few paragraphs on the last page. More of him in action, instead as Johnny the Dip, would seem to be a reasonable request, and why that particular moniker, anyway?

LUCRETIA GRINDLE – So Little to Die For. Inspector Ross #2. Pocket, paperback original, 1994.

   Lucretia Grindle has spent much of her time in England, but now lives in Massachusetts. I thought her first pbo, The Killing of Ellis Martin, was a good traditional British mystery. I don’t remember it getting much attention, though.

   Inspector Ross of the Kent CID is having a bit of a holiday in Scotland, but we know how that goes, don’t we? He meets a British group in a restaurant and chats with them, and the next day four of the six are dead, brutally murdered by shotgun blasts on their small cottage.

   A local shepherd is quickly arrested, but for various reasons Ross does not believe him guilty. He speaks to the investigating officer but does not convince him, and might have let the matter lie despite his doubts — until he’s handed evidence that some of the parties involved have lied to the police. Now he’s got the bit in his teeth, and over the fences we go in pursuit of an unknown fox.

   I still think Grindle is worth reading. Her prose is smooth, and she does a nice job of characterizing the widower Ross and his Welsh Sergeant, Owen Davies. Her focus is a bit more on her detective than is the case with the more traditional authors like Burley and Clark, but that’s clearly the tradition in which she works.

   While this isn’t really a village mystery, it has that feel, and her first was. There isn’t a great deal of depth either intended or achieved in her books, but she does furnish a pleasant read.

Bibliographic Update:   While there were only the two books in Lucretia Grindle’s Inspector Ross series, she continued on as a writer, adding four more mystery novels to her resume, beginning in 2003. For more information about her, you might start by checking out her Wikipedia page here.

WINGS OF DANGER. Hammer Films, UK, 1952. Lippert Pictures, US, 1952 as Dead on Course. Zachary Scott, Robert Beatty, Naomi Chance, Kay Kendall, Colin Tapley, Arthur Lane, Harold Lang, Diane Cilento. Screenwriter: John Gilling, based on the novel Dead on Course by Mansell Black (Elleston Trevor aka Trevor Dudley Smith}. [Note: The movie credits also give Packham Webb as a co-author of the book.] Director: Terence Fisher.

   Zachary Scott, in my opinion, made a better villain in the movies he made than he did a hero. He had a beautiful speaking voice, but he seemed to have a perpetual semi-scowl on his face, the thought being that he had some sort of subtle dislike of what he was doing or who he was dealing with.

   But in Wings of Danger he is the hero, and if it doesn’t work out well, which I don’t think it does, I’d be the first to admit that it wasn’t all his fault. The story doesn’t allow his character much range at all, and you really have to wonder what he might have been able to do with a better script.

   He plays a post-WWII cargo pilot who’s been successfully hiding the blackout spells he’s been having from the firm he’s working for, and when he tries to stop a buddy (Robert Beatty) from taking off into stormy weather, the buddy threatens to tell all and flies off anyway. And his plane is never heard from again.

   Well, the wreckage is, but there’s no body to be found. The police are interested — smuggling is suspected — and Scott’s character (a fellow named Van Ness) is implicated. Van Ness’s other motive for snooping around is keep everything a secret from his friend’s sister and father, who idolize him.

   You might be thinking of The Third Man right about here, and rightly so. There is a lot more to the plot than I’m going to go into, but rather than adding to the story, it makes it all the more muddled. As an example of film noir, the story’s adequate. The photography, within the limitations of a low budget, is even more so.

From Wikipedia:

    “The Honeycombs were an English beat/pop group, founded in 1963 in North London, best known for their chart-topping 1964 hit, the million selling ‘Have I the Right?’ The band featured Honey Lantree on drums, one of the few female drummers in bands at that time.”

    Ms. Lantree died on December 23 at her home in Great Bardfield, Essex, England. She was 75.

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Face Lifter. Kayo Macray #1 (?). “Complete novel.” All Detective Magazine, June 1934. Collected in Silent Death (Pulpville Press, trade paperback, March 2013).

   I have discovered no evidence that personal body trainer Kayo Macray ever appeared in any other story but this one. This is so even though there is a hint of a case of services rendered to someone in need, one with a happy ending, that occurred before this one. When he’s asked by a current client who’s worried about what kind of jam her daughter’s gotten herself into, he gladly agrees to do what he can to help.

   This is a situation that could easily be the beginning of a Perry Mason novel. The daughter, when he meets her, tells Kayo that she’s being blackmailed, and of course it is nothing she could tell her mother about. Kayo goes into immediate action. But unlike the Perry Mason, the rest of the story is nothing but action.

   Well, no, I’ll take that back. [Plot Alert!] As he discovers by accident, after obtaining the indiscreet material the girl needed him to retrieve, Kayo learns that she was an imposter. This is kind of a neat twist, but Kayo recovers quickly and saves the day. Lots of fisticuffs, gunplay, and a frantic car chase follow.

   The title of the story comes from the fact that in the process of rescuing the damsel in distress, Kayo is very good with his fists, and messes up the face of one of the hoodlums he tracks down in very fine fashion.

   Overall, this is a mediocre story in a third rate pulp magazine, but you can always tell Gardner’s prose style from anyone else’s, no matter how early in his career he may have been writing. And just between you and me, calling “The Face Lifter” a “complete novel” is stretching the truth quite a bit. In the standard pulp magazine format, it’s only 23 pages long.

LEE LEIGHTON (WAYNE D. OVERHOLSER) – Law Man. Ballentine, hardcover (H51) & paperback (#51), 1953. Ballantine U1040, paperback 1964. Axe, paperback, 1977. Ace/Charter, paperback, 1985. Jove, paperback, 1988. Winner of the first Western Writer’s Assocation Spur Award for Best Novel.

STAR IN THE DUST. Universal, 1956. John Agar, Mamie Van Doren, Richard Boone, Colleen Gray, Leif Erickson, Randy Stuart, Paul Fix, Harry Morgan, Kermit Maynard and Clint Eastwood. Screenplay by Oscar Brodney, from the novel by Lee Leighton. Produced by the redoubtable Albert Zugsmith. Directed by Charles Haas.

   A taut film from a slack novel.

   Leighton/Overholser’s book deals with twenty-four hours in the life of middle-aged Marshal Bill Worden: the last day in the life of convicted killer Ed Lake, scheduled to hang next morning. It also deals with a wide cast of characters, including:

   Worden’s daughter Ellen, who is engaged to marry

   George Ballard, who owns the biggest ranch in the valley and the local bank — and is therefore ipso facto a bad guy.

   Nan Hogan, Ballard’s ex-mistress, now married to

   Lew Hogan, a stubborn rancher who feels duty-bound to keep Lake from hanging

   Rigdon, a fire-and-brimstone preacher who feels duty-bound to hang Lake himself

   Mike MacNamara, Worden’s Deputy

   Orval Jones, janitor and would-be deputy

   Jeannie Mason, a fallen woman because of Ed Lake

plus assorted farmers, ranchers, cowhands, townsfolk and attendants to the court.

   Leighton does a skillful job of setting all these folks at odds with each other: the ranchers out to save Lake, Ballard anxious to see that Lake doesn’t incriminate him, farmers egged on to lynching by Rigdon, Lake with his own plans for the future – and thankfully Leighton takes care to remind the reader who everyone is from time to time. He also works things to a convincing resolution, one that seems to grow from the characters themselves.

   The problem is that Leighton tends to tell us how they feel—repeatedly and at length — when he should just show us — and when things should be getting tense, they just get wordy. Worthy concept, weak execution.

   Oscar Brodney’s script for Star in the Dust tightens things up considerably. For one thing, it starts at dawn on the day Lake (here named “Sam Hall”) is scheduled to die at sunset. And since this is a film, the internal monologues of the book get replaced by a few lines of dialogue.

   That’s not all that gets replaced. Preacher Rigdon of the book is here a power-mad schoolteacher (I think I had him for English 101 in College) and middle-aged Marshal Bill Worden is now youngish Bill Jordan (John Agar) engaged to marry Ballard’s sister (Mamie Van Doren.)

   Best of all, nasty Ed Lake in the book is now Sam Hall, played with savage sensitivity by Richard Boone, a year before Have Gun, Will Travel and in those days a character actor to be reckoned with. I suspect Brodney knew he was writing for Boone, and wrote the part to fit him. His Sam Hall is educated, self-aware, and dangerous to know, a character at once sympathetic and frightening.

   With Boone as the lynch pin, Star in the Dust could have stopped right there, but producer Albert Zugsmith fills the movie with fine actors in choice parts. Leif Erickson radiates bluff duplicity as the scheming bad guy, slimy Robert Osterloh projects petty tyranny as the schoolmaster, while Paul Fix and James Gleason do a fine double-act as Agar’s deputy and the wanna-be janitor.

   Star in the DustEven better, Colleen Gray and Randy Stuart play off each other perfectly as the women who loved well but unwisely. Stuart in particular carries a moving rueful aspect as Erickson’s cast-off mistress, now married to Henry Morgan, as the loyal-but-not-bright Lew Hogan (Years later, Stuart also played Morgan’s wife in the 1960s Dragnet teleseries.)

   Best of all, Star in the Dust moves in a way the novel never did, filling eighty minutes with action under the fast-paced direction of Charles Haas.

   And by the way, in his one scene, a skinny young contract player named Clint Eastwood is what is usually and charitably termed adequate.

A good blues tune with a noir story, taken from their album Sing Your Own Song:

The band has a nice website to learn about them and listen to more of their stuff.

http://www.bluelargoblues.com/bio.asp

DELANO AMES – She Shall Have Murder. Jane & Dagobert Brown #1. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1948. Rinehart & Co., US, hardcover, 1949. Dell #493, US, paperback, 1951. Perennial Library, US, paperback, 1983. Rue Morgue Press, trade paperback, 2008. Manor Minor Press, US, annotated trade paperback, November 2014. Film: Concanen, UK, 1950 (with Rosamund John as Jane Hamish and Derrick De Marney as Dagobert Brown).

   Jane and Dagobert are not yet married in this, their first case of actual murder. Their relationship is complicated, and it takes a while to sort things out. They are (apparently) lovers, and I am sure Jane calls him her fiancé, but the fact is that Dagobert is already married but is (apparently) going through divorce proceedings.

   This is the first of the series I’ve read, but I am fairly sure that some point along the line — there were twelve books in all — they did get married. Jane is the sensible one with a steady job as a secretary in a law office), and it is a little perplexing at times what she sees in him. His is notoriously unemployed and flits from one interest to another like a moth on a holiday.

   The big conceit in She Shall Have Murder, and an amusing one, is that Jane should write a mystery novel whose characters are her bosses and fellow employees at work. But when one of the firm’s oldest clients dies, fiction becomes truth, and Dagobert has a new interest: that of amateur detective work.

   The telling of the tale that follows is bright and witty, and with Jane narrating the story, she gives Dagobert a few well-deserved jabs. Dead is an old and uncomfortably paranoid old lady whose visits to the law office are sadly barely tolerated by the staff. When she is found dead, everyone but Dagobert is convinced it was suicide, but as it always happens in detective novels, it turns out that he is correct. It was not.

   This was written back in the post-WWII when the British had to insert shillings into a gas meter box to obtain heat, and since a good deal of the plot depends on this, it makes the story rather dated, especially for US readers. Of the many characters, I also found only the main protagonists, Jane and Dagobert, particularly interesting, and of the others, rather than the least likely, it was the least interesting who was the killer.

KENNETH MILLAR – The Dark Tunnel. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1944. Lion #46, paperback, 1950. Gregg Press, hardcover, 1980. Also published as I Die Slowly. Lion Library LL52, paperback, 1955.

   Ross Macdonald penned his first novel, The Dark Tunnel, in 1944 under his birth name Kenneth Millar. A detective story where the protagonist is a professor rather than a private investigator, the book is best categorized as a work of mystery fiction with strong elements borrowed from the type of thrillers that inspired many a Hitchcock film. Although by no means a flawless work, Millar’s debut novel demonstrates the author’s fluidity with language, particularly the hardboiled vernacular that has become the trademark patois of those writers who have followed in the tradition of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

   Published during the Second World War – and soon before Millar entered service in the U.S. Navy – The Dark Tunnel refers to a physical place detailed in one of the more action oriented portions of the novel. It likewise serves as an apt metaphor for Germany’s descent into Nazism. After all, Germany was not some backwater, uncivilized country; it was a country with a rich cultural and literary tradition that nonetheless chose a dark path.

   The novel follows the path of Dr. Robert Branch, a literature professor at an unnamed Midwest university set in the fictional town of Arbana (a clear stand-in for Ann Arbor, Michigan). After Branch’s colleague, Alec Judd, informs him of a Nazi spy ring operating in Michigan, Branch is plunged into a nightmarish world of murder and subterfuge wherein he both witnesses one murder and is falsely accused of another. Millar’s academic background – he went on to receive a doctorate in literature after the Second World War – influences his prose, lending the work a frenetic Kafkaesque quality that is more refined than some of his lesser known contemporaries.

   Then there’s the girl. A beautiful redheaded German actress named Ruth Esch with whom Branch had a whirlwind romance when he was in Munich in 1937, well before the United States was at war but after the Nazi jackboots had taken power. When Ruth Esch reappears in Arbana, years after being interned in a concentration camp, Branch’s past and present collide in a maelstrom of brutal political violence.

   Critics may bristle someone at Millar’s treatment of the dual subjects of homosexuality and transvestitism, both of which play pivotal roles in the unraveling of the mystery and which (Plot Alert) are linked, at least implicitly, with Nazi decadence. These topics, while not overtly exploited for sensational purposes, do lend the work a pulpy, sordid feel that likely shocked some readers when the book first appeared on bookshelves. Some may feel the emphasis on the villains’ sexuality to be a distraction from what is otherwise an impressive tale of an ordinary American man thrust into a world he doesn’t fully comprehend.

   More distracting for me, however, was the suspension of disbelief constantly required to accept that a professor of literature would speak in such a hardboiled manner, let alone mouth off to authority figures such as the police and the feds. Robert Branch comes across as a working class PI masquerading as a professor, a product more of the school of hard knocks than of the mandarin university system.

   Millar was clearly finding his voice at this point in his career. Academia was the world he knew. So it made perfect sense for him to create a character set in the milieu he best understood. But it’s clear that inside Robert Branch, there was a cynical Lew Archer waiting to get out and make his presence to the world known.