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.

PEARL OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC. RKO Radio Pictures, 1955. Virginia Mayo, Dennis Morgan, David Farrar, Murvyn Vye, Lance Fuller, Basil Ruysdael, Lisa Montell. Director: Allan Dwan.

   An old-fashioned South Seas melodrama straight from the pulp magazines, but by the time this movie was made, the pulps were gone — and they did it better.

   Lured to a South Seas island as a possible source of valuable black pearls, two men and a woman plan to steal them from the natives, who have been been cut off from the rest of the world for several decades. They do speak English and use nets to catch fish instead spears, thanks to the presence of the aged Tuan Michael (Basil Ruysdael) who has guided their lives and interpreted their god’s wishes for them through all that time.

   The girl is Virginia Mayo. Dennis Morgan is her former lover and she is currently romancing his partner, played by David Farrar. The latter, a chap called Bully Hague, is an out-and-out thug, while Morgan is more of an honest crook. It is fun to see Virginia Mayo dressed up like a prim Bible-carrying missionary as part of their plan, and while this is no musical, she also manages to sing a song or two along the way.

   The problem is, the three adventurers really have no plan to speak of. They are either making it up as they go along, or they are too incompetent to stick to it, especially the fellow named Bully, who gets nastier and nastier as the movie plods along. This was sort of fun to watch, but there’s really no meat to go with the bones.

THE GUN THAT WON THE WEST. Columbia Pictures, 1955. Dennis Morgan, Paula Raymond, Richard Denning, Chris O’Brien, Robert Bice. Director: William Castle.

   The gun may have won the West, but the movie quickly lost my interest.

   I won’t go so far as to say that the William Castle’s The Gun That Won The West is the worst Western I’ve ever seen, but it’s probably the most lackluster and altogether uninspiring. The characters are poorly drawn, there’s a fair amount of what appears to be stock footage of marauding Sioux on horseback, the fight scenes are poorly choreographed, and the ending is … well, let’s just say the ending leaves you wondering what the point of it all was.

   Here’s the thing. It didn’t need to be this way. Sure, Castle is known more for his later horror/schlock films, but he was certainly capable of competently directing a slightly quirky B-Western such as Conquest of Cochise that I reviewed here. As for Dennis Morgan, he’s not the best actor ever cast in Westerns, but he was more than competent in the surprisingly enjoyable Cheyenne, which I reviewed here.

   But in this tired affair, the real star of the film was the shiny and new Springfield rifle that allowed the film’s protagonist and his allies to defeat the Sioux. Trust me when say that unless you are a William Castle completest, there’s no reason to go out of your way to watch this forgettable matinee Western.

JILL McGOWN – The Murders of Mrs. Austin and Mrs. Beale. Lloyd and Hill #4. Macmillan, UK, hardcover, 1991. St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1991. Fawcett, US, paperback, 1993.

   In my opinion, Jill McGown is one of the best current British mystery writers. I wouldn’t attempt to convince you she’s “better” than James or Rendell, but I enjoy her stories more, because I like her characters more as people.

   Things finally seem to be going well for star-crossed lovers Chief Inspector Lloyd and newly-promoted (and soon to be divorced) Inspector Judy Hill. The story of their long-standing and often tortured affair has been an integral part of the series. Hill has been transferred to a nearby jurisdiction, and her first case is linked to one of Lloyd’s: the same night murder of women in separate locations. One woman is the wife of a director of a local company, the other the wife of a criminal figure but nevertheless a co-director of the same company.

   Everyone knows everyone else, everyone has a different agenda, and no one is interested in telling the police the truth. Lloyd and Hill must work together (and in an unfamiliar professional relationship) to answer the key questions. One murderer, or two? Connected, or separate?

   As usual, McGown tells the story from multiple viewpoints, and very effectively. The device allows all the players to be sharply drawn, and accomplishes it without bogging down the story. Her prose is effective, straightforward, and relatively unembellished. The plot is filled with both clues and red herrings, and I, at least, failed to see the end coming.

   If you missed the first three books in the series — A Perfect Match, Murder at the Old Vicarage, and Gone To Her Death — hunt them up. They’re all good.

Bibliographic Note:   There were 13 books in the Lloyd & Hill series, the last being Unlucky for Some (2004)

BRANDY FOR THE PARSON. Associated British-Pathé, UK, 1952. James Donald, Kenneth More, Jean Lodge, Charles Hawtry, Frederick Piper, Michael Trubshaw, Reginald Beckwith, Alfie Bass, Arthur Wotner . Screenplay by Walter Meade and John Dighton, based on the short story by Geoffrey Household. Directed by John Eldridge.

   If you only know Geoffrey Household from his classic novels of chase and pursuit like Rogue Male, Watcher in the Shadows, and A Rough Shoot, you may be surprised to find this droll comedy is based on one of his better known short stories. Then again if you have read his picaresque adventure stories like Fellow Traveler and The Life and Times of Bernardo Brown you may be better prepared for the film based on his tale.

   Bill Harper (James Donald) works a rather dull job in London, all bowler hats and umbrellas, but he and his fiancée Petronella Brand (Jean Lodge) are off for a week of sailing to escape all that. After a crowded train and a pouring rain they finally are off, sailing out the channel, Petronella at the helm, Bill guiding her — and staring off into space when they crash right into a motor launch when Petronella doesn’t know port from starboard.

   Tony Rackham (Kenneth More) is the fellow piloting the launch, a likable enough chap who has a bit of a problem, he has to get to France to pick up a package for delivery.

   And charming fellow that he is he doesn’t bother to mention he is delivering smuggled brandy.

   The British have always had a unique view of smuggling and avoiding excise taxes dating back to the exploits of Dr. Syn, the Scarecrow, not to mention the people smuggled out of France by the Scarlet Pimpernel. It has always had the aspect of a game, and in the Post-War period when England was suffering shortages and paying high taxes on imported alcohol, the public was clearly on the side of the smugglers, as witness films such as Whiskey Galore (based on the novel by Compton Mackenzie), Green Grow the Rushes, and Law and Disorder. Like the poaching in John Buchan’s John Macnab, it was all good sport.

   After a series of misadventures Bill and Petronella get rid of Tony and his barrels of brandy, only to find a Customs Inspector (Frederick Piper) nosing around, so in a panic they go back and with the help of a group of cub scouts move the brandy just as Tony shows up with his reluctant friend George Grump (bespectacled comic actor Charles Hawtry) in a laundry truck to take the stuff to London.

   The four meet up, determined to get the stuff to London so Bill and Petronella can be rid of it and Tony, but the Customs Inspector is close behind and they have no way to move the barrels. A passing circus provides a partial answer, but they are still fifty miles short of their goal and need transport, and by now the roads are all watched, which is how Tony comes to buy circus ponies and decides to transport the brandy cross country along the Appian Way, the old Roman road.

   And soon enough, Tony is off to London to arrange to pick the brandy up at a rendezvous while Bill, Petronella, and George are roughing it across country pursued by Customs.

   Brandy for the Parson is a quiet comedy, most of the laughs are gentle, and being based on a story by Geoffrey Household there is a real feeling for being pursued across rough country. Everything works out, but only just, and Tony gets to deliver the last line assuring us that some crime does pay, or at least for him.

   A veteran cast of newer stars like Donald, More, Lodge, and Hawtry, along with old-timers and veteran British character actors enliven the tale with charm and style. Unlike too many American comedies of the era, this one is satisfied to tell the story in straightforward manner with no forced slapstick or silly business. The humor arises from the characters and their plight and is never forced or phony. Everyone here is attractive and smart save poor Hawtry who discovers along the way he is not a true teetotaler

   Donald shows that he should have been used more often in comedy, while Lodge is both attractive and bright. More always exuded charm with that smile and this is no exception.

   Michael Trubshaw has a good bit as a well-to-do farmer who wants to form a syndicate to buy the smuggled brandy so it isn’t wasted on the wine shop in London where it will be sold to snobs, and Arthur Wotner of Sherlock Holmes fame, has a small but key role as Major Goodleigh who saves our heroes from themselves.

   Brandy for the Parson is handsome to look at and an intelligent and funny tale in the mode of Geoffrey Household’s better known works. The story appears in Tales of Adventurers (Joseph, 1952) among the collections of Household’s short stories. Both it and the film are well worth looking up.

LARRY KARP – Scamming the Birdman. Write Way, hardcover, 2000. Worldwide Mystery, paperback, 2001.

   A close friend gave me this mystery that features Dr. Thomas Purdue, a medical doctor and collector of music boxes, and in this and the earlier The Music Box Murders, an amateur sleuth. He warned (advised?) me that it’s lighter than a Peter Lovesey novel but about the same “weight” as a Lovejoy, probably in recognition of the fact that I sometimes seem to prefer crime fiction with more gravitas than humor.

   In spite of that, I decided that something light was just what I needed after The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril (reviewed here ) and wasted little time in digging in. The therapy worked, I am completely recovered from my previous blue funk. Karp’s novel is a fiendishly clever scam in which Purdue and some definitely shady associates repay a larcenous and probably murderous collector who has made off with the collection of a good friend of Purdue’s. Karp even reserves a little surprise after the scam has been carried off successfully, and I ended smiling and hoping that I can locate The Music Box Murders to recapture the pleasure I experienced with this novel.

   Karp is a collector and a restorer of antique music boxes, a former physician. The novel, in addition to being the entertaining record of an intricate and absorbing scam, is filled with details of antique music boxes that will appeal to any variety of collector, vividly communicating the wondrous marvels of what can clearly be an expensive passion.

Bibliographic Note:   A third and final Dr. Purdue mystery is The Midnight Special (2001).