#10. OSCAR VAN DUYVEN & PIERRE LEMASSE, by Robert Brennan.

   Oscar van Duyven & Pierre Lemasse appeared in a short series of ten stories by Robert Brennan that were published in Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction between 1926 and 1927. The series involves the adventures of a pair of men who wander the French countryside looking for matters of interest. They usually find mysteries to solve.

   Oscar van Duyven is an American millionaire from New York, owner of an electric fan corporation. Pierre Lemasse is from Paris, France, and is the companion to the millionaire. Lemasse is younger than van Duyven and is the more mystery oriented person. He has a knack of finding clues and matters of interest in the various cases the two are involved in.

   Van Duyven usually goes along with what Lemasse wants, although Lemasse is described as his assistant and is the driver of van Duyven’s automobile.

   In the first story in the series, “The Maltese Cross,” the pair are on the French coast doing nothing in particular when a mystery arises. From an island just off the coast a man escapes from the prison on it, and from a French coast town opposite a wife disappeared the same day. Lemasse finds all sorts of interesting facts and clues about the events, and ties the two disappearances together. Still, a somewhat disappointing debut.

   The second story in the series, “Pierre Rides the Storm,” is a direct sequel of the first story and continues the story of the escaped convict, Bruneau. He is caught in the severe storm that hit the French coast, and van Duyven and Lemasse endeavour to rescue him from the stranded ship in which he tried to make his escape.

   The third story, “A Murderer’s Refuge,” continues the story of Bruneau the escaped convict. This time van Duyven and Lemasse are in Spain, and have brought Bruneau with them in order to ask the local church for sanctuary for him.

   The two men then go to Avignon in France to investigate the crime Bruneau supposedly committed. While there Lemasse quickly solves the case and clears Bruneau. A bit of an anti-climax with the solution literally falling into their laps.

   The fourth story, “The Changeling,” is a new story and self contained without any continuations. The two “investigators” are appealed to for help in locating a missing child. The child not only is missing, but a different child was substituted in his place. Lemasse tracks down the missing child and restores him to his mother.

   The following story is “Blind Lanneau,” which concerns the murder of a blind peddler. The two investigators are still in France. This story is anticlimactic, because Lemasse discovers the murderer early in the story, and a lot of space is taken up by the murderer telling his own story (which includes what happened years before).

   The next story, “The Crooked Star” is a sequel to the previous one. This one involves the two investigators looking for a hidden treasure using a cipher the murderer from the previous story had given them before he died.

   Blind Lanneau, who was mentioned and discussed in the previous story but not seen, shows up in this story to compete with them for the treasure. Some deductions and deciphering of the cipher sheet is performed by the two as the story progresses.

   â€œThe Highwayman” comes next, and is a sequel to the previous one. Having lost the treasure when their boat sank, the two investigators suddenly find themselves the target of a criminal who wants the treasure and thinks they have access to it. Suddenly Blind Lanneau pops up who also wants the treasure and is searching for it.

   â€œThe Little Angels” refers to a French street gang who are extremely vicious. When a newspaper editor named Maurice Duverne writes an editorial against the gang and is immediately attacked, there is public outrage against the gang. The police move in to the district and clean out the gangsters. However, Lemasse is not convinced the gang committed the attack, and induces van Duyven to help him investigate.

   â€œThe Fugitive Footman” is probably the best story in the series. The two investigators come across a man in distress. They agree to help him, learning that the man is Bernard, a footman at the Deauville mansion. Deauville has just been murdered, and the footman is running away because he is accused of the crime.

   The two investigators go to the Deauville mansion, where they find an inspector named Croissart in charge of the case. Croissart is an old friend of theirs, and relates the facts of the case. Lemasse sees more than meets the eye, and deduces the real murderer and the motive.

   â€œTwo Chests of Gold” is a direct sequel to the previous story, and involves the chests that were a part of that story. Now there is a search on for the missing chests, also involving a Scotland Yard man who asks van Duyven and Lemasse for their assistance.

   This is an average series, with some good stories, but mostly average. There is no element of humor in the stories. The series is of interest to those interested in simple detective stories.

   The problem I have with this series is that Lemasse makes all of his deductions and discoveries and clues seem overly simple. There is very little complexity to the series. The closest it comes is the cipher in “The Crooked Star.”

      The Oscar van Duyven & Pierre Lemasse series, by Robert Brennan:

The Maltese Cross     July 31, 1926
Pierre Rides the Storm     August 7, 1926
A Murderer’s Refuge     August 14, 1926
The Changeling     August 21, 1926
Blind Lanneau     September 4, 1926
The Crooked Star     September 11, 1926
The Highwayman     September 18, 1926
The Little Angels     December 18, 1926
The Fugitive Footman     January 1, 1927
Two Chests of Gold     January 15, 1927

    Previously in this series:

1. SHAMUS MAGUIRE, by Stanley Day.
2. HAPPY McGONIGLE, by Paul Allenby.
3. ARTY BEELE, by Ruth & Alexander Wilson.
4. COLIN HAIG, by H. Bedford-Jones.
5. SECRET AGENT GEORGE DEVRITE, by Tom Curry.
6. BATTLE McKIM, by Edward Parrish Ware.
7. TUG NORTON by Edward Parrish Ware.
8. CANDID JONES by Richard Sale.
9. THE PATENT LEATHER KID, by Erle Stanley Gardner.

DAMES AHOY. Universal, 1930. Glenn Tryon, Helen Wright, Otis Harlan, Eddie Gribbon, Gertrude Astor. Director: William James Craft. Shown at Cinecon 39, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2003.

   An early version of a situation so memorably later treated by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green in On the Town (the effervescent stage musical, somewhat diminished in the MGM film).

   Tryon, Harlan and Gribbon are three sailors on weekend shore leave. Tryon and Gribbon promise to help Harlan find the conniving blonde who has swindled Harlan out of half his monthly pay as his wife and go to a dance hall where Harlan had met her.

   The problem is that he can only remember a distinctive tattoo and the boys spend much of the film trying to get into position to sneak a peek at the tattoo. During the search, Tryon is maneuvered into a short engagement and quick marriage in a dance contest, but he finds true love, Harlan locates his duplicitous blonde, and all three sailors seem headed toward domestic bliss at the end.

   A pleasant, low-keyed comedy.

Editorial Comments:   Helen Wright’s movie career was a short one. According to one online source, she was an operatically trained singer with blue eyes and auburn hair. She made only one other film, Spurs, a western starring Hoot Gibson that was also released in 1930.

   And in case you were wondering, the tattoo (or birthmark; sources vary) was on her knee.

COLIN COTTERILL – Disco for the Departed. Quercus, UK, hardcover, 2006. Soho Crime, US, softcover, August 2007.

Genre:   Licensed Investigator/Paranormal. Leading character:  Dr. Siri Paiboun; 3rd in series. Setting:   Laos, 1977.

First Sentence:   Dr. Siri lay beneath the grimy mesh of the mosquito net watching the lizard’s third attempt.

   Dr. Siri and his associate, Nurse Dturi, have been sent to a “guest house” at revolutionary headquarters in the mountains of Huaphan province to attend a seminar intended to provide them with an “enlightened” understanding of the Marxist-Leninist system.

   What they did not expect was for an arm to be discovered rising out of a concrete path. The arm was attached to the body of a man who’d been encased in the concrete while still alive.

   Siri also did not expect, at 73, to find himself dancing to disco music only he could hear, nor for the Russian to whom Siri and Dturi reported back in Vientiane to ship their mortuary assistant, Geung off to Xieng Ngeim without their knowing.

   It is always a pleasure to be back with Dr. Siri and friends. They truly are some of my favorite characters and it was particularly nice to learn more of mortuary assistant Geung’s background.

   Cotterill works in an interesting point through Siri’s friend, Dr. Santiago who believes in shamans and the spirit world, that some form of shamanism is common to most cultures of the world outside those of European origin. Points such as that remind us the world is one filled with diverse philosophies and beliefs beyond our own; one of the gifts of reading.

   Cotterill’s writing is filled with wonderful dialogue and humor, yet he also makes me think. The supernatural element [Siri’s gift for conversing with the dead] is not present only for the sake of fantasy; Coterill uses it to serious purpose — to make a point such as the impact of war on its innocent victims; those who just happen to live in the wrong place. He also makes us aware that bigotry exists in every country.

   The story is one of relationships and loyalty. The mystery is an intriguing blend of the mystical and the plain, old ferreting-out of information. The book is an absolutely wonderful read.

BLACK MEMORY. Ambassador Bushey, UK, 1947. Michael Atkinson, Michael Medwin, Frank Hawkins, Winifred Melville, Jane Arden, Moyra O’Connell, Sydney James, Arthur Brander. Story, screenplay, assistant director: John Gilling. Director: Oswald Mitchell.

   I’ll go out on a short limb here and say that most of the names in the cast are as unknown to you as they were to me, unless you live in the UK. For several, it was one of their earliest appearances on film.

   It’s a very minor film, a crime drama, but on the other hand, what was the movie industry like in the UK in 1947? You will have to tell me, I’m sorry to say, but maybe making films this soon after the war was low on the list of the country’s priorities.

   The beginning is rather confusing. This is one of the movies in which the explanations come only as the film goes along, and good luck with that if you live in the US and British accents are sometimes decipherable and sometimes you don’t fare so well. A bigger problem, though, is that the copy I have of this rare film is not the best; the picture is somewhat faded and the sound had to be cranked up to ten.

   But given the luxury of watching the first 20 minutes or so of this film again, I took advantage of the chance I had, and I’m fairly certain I can tell you something about the story line.

   During a local disturbance of some sort (drunken louts egged on, perhaps) a man is killed, and another man who is actually innocent is arrested for the crime, tried, found guilty and hung. This takes up all of five minutes or so of running time.

   The son of the man found guilty, perhaps ten or twelve years old, is faced with a dying mother and a gang of local boys his own age who pick on him before they follow him off to a sort of orphanage/reform school, from which he quickly decamps through a open window. Another five minutes has passed.

   Ten years later, story time: The boy (now a young man) returns, takes a room with the family of his mother’s best friend. Of the two adopted daughters, one takes a shine to Danny (that’s his name), but the other, running with a tough crowd, takes up with Danny’s former tormenter, Johnnie Fletcher (Michael Medwin).

   To complicate matters, Johnnie has plans to rob the sewing factory where the two girls work. Assisting him – willingly or not – is one of the men on or near the scene where the murder took place ten years earlier.

   This was billed as a “noir” film when my copy was sold to me on DVD, and if the production values could only have been higher, it may have been a very effective vehicle in showing what life was like in postwar England for the lower classes.

   Unfortunately, it’s only in bits and pieces and occasional places that the plot rises above the purely pedestrian. If I were Leonard Maltin, the best I could give this movie would be 1½ stars out of five and I still think I’d be just a little bit generous if I did. Nonetheless, its historical significance is high, so I was glad to have had the opportunity to have seen it, and you may too.

1. INQUIRY: From Bill Pronzini: Just for the heck of it, here’s a quiz question for you and M*F readers: Can you name at least one mystery novel narrated by a chauffeur, or in which a chauffeur is the investigating detective? I can supply the title and author of one and am wondering if there are others.

2. A New OTR Website. It might not be correct to call the CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER “Old Time Radio,” but given that the program ran for eight years beginning in 1974, it means that it’s been nearly 30 years since its last broadcast. There is a website that not only lists all 1399 episodes, but it also includes cross-listings for all of the performers and writers. And not only that, you can download or listen to each and every one. How many months would that take, if you did it non-stop? Pull out your calculators! Check it out at http://www.cbsrmt.com/

3. Pulp fiction writer Charles Boeckman is 91 and no longer writing, but his jazz band is still going strong. Check out a photo gallery of his latest gig here.

4. Headline in a local paper: Police were called to a day care center where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.

UPDATE. 01-06-12. My description of Charles Boeckman as a pulp fiction writer was challenged on a Yahoo group where I also posted the link to the photo gallery above. I was advised that Boeckman was a writer of hard-boiled fiction but not published in pulp magazines.

   I shouldn’t have been so short and brief in my post there, nor in the one above. I should (and could) have supplied more of a résumé for Boeckman, and I’m sorry I didn’t.

   It was Walker Martin who came to my rescue on that Yahoo list, and I hope he doesn’t mind my repeating some of the credentials for Boeckman I should have provided:

    “Charles Boeckman under the name Charles A. Beckman started writing for the Popular Publication line of pulps in the late 1940’s and continued until the pulps bit the dust. Such titles as Fifteen Western Tales and Detective Tales carried much of his short fiction. He also made the switch to the digests. I recently noticed his name in Manhunt.”

   Boeckman is one of the very few authors who wrote for the pulps still living — a survivor — and he should be recognized as such. I’m wondering whether he might be a suitable guest for one of the two annual pulp conventions sometime soon. Playing in a jazz band at the age of 91 seems to suggest that his health may be good enough to attend.

   As a novice widower I find myself thinking of three other mystery writers who lost wives to Mister Death. The first name that springs to mind in this connection is Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), who was so devastated by the death of his wife Cissie that he tried to shoot himself in his bathroom.

   Being blind drunk at the time, he missed his target. “She was the music heard faintly at the edge of sound…” he said of Cissie. “She was the light of my life, my whole ambition. Anything else I did was just the fire for her to warm her hands at.”

   Next comes Harry Stephen Keeler (1890-1967), whom I never met but have been associated with for most of my life. He married the former Hazel Goodwin in 1919 and they were together until she died of cancer in May 1960.

   During the months of her final illness and after her death he was unable to write fiction, but he continued sending out his off-the-wall “Walter Keyhole” newsletters to just about everyone whose address he had.

   He called them polychromatic or multitinctorial cartularies since each page was printed on paper of a different color. We who have lived into the computer age recognize them as the functional equivalent of a blog. It cost him as much as $50 to have each installment prepared by a professional typing service and mailed out en masse.

   I have originals or photocopies of 188 of these, which a few years ago I organized and offered to a panting public as The Keeler Keyhole Companion (2005). Among the hundreds of topics he touched on was his life as a lonely widower in his early seventies, “a guy who lives on canned Campbell’s soups and canned Sultana pork and beans.”

   Here’s his account of the “long lonely Thanksgiving holiday” in 1962. “We [he often uses the royal we in these cartularies] had our choice of having 3 soft-boiled eggs (only thing we can cook) as a dinner, then seeing the Three Stooges conk each other over the heads [at the local movie house], or of having 3 soft-boiled eggs as a dinner and re-reading Keyser’s Mathematical Philosophy. You guess!”

   I now feel closer to that genuine mad genius than ever before. He was only a year or two older at his wife’s death than I at Patty’s. He sold the old house they had lived in for decades and moved into an apartment hotel, while I’ve recently bought a condo and put my own Toad Hall on the market. I’m no better at cheffery than Harry was but have the advantage of living in the age of that fantastic contraption known as the microwave.

   The third author in whose moccasins I now walk became a widower not once but twice. Fred Dannay (1905-1982), better known as Ellery Queen, married the former Mary Beck in 1926. She died of cancer on July 4, 1945, leaving Fred with two small children to raise.

   In 1947 he married the former Hilda Wiesenthal, who was ten or eleven years younger than he and was the daughter of a cousin of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. She died in 1972, also of cancer.

   By that time I had come to know Fred well and he had become the closest thing to a grandfather I had ever known. I went through this awful period of his life with him. There’s a photograph of him taken at this time which shows the empty devastated face of a man waiting for the dark to claim him.

   Just as Keeler had married again a few years after Hazel’s death, so did Fred a few years after Hilda’s. I got to know Thelma Keeler well and am convinced that she saved her husband’s life. I also have no doubt that Fred’s third marriage, to the former Rose Koppel, saved his. Will I luck out in my final years as they did?

   I apologize for devoting so much of this column to death but I really don’t have much choice at the moment. Less than a week before Christmas I learned that I’d lost one of my closest mystery-loving friends.

   Bob Briney was something of a universal genius. Physically he evoked Orson Welles or Nero Wolfe but was soft-spoken and totally without their irascibility and moved with a certain gingerliness as if he were afraid he’d crush something if his movements were more forceful.

   He was born near Benton Harbor, Michigan in December 1933 and spent most of his academic career in Massachusetts, at Salem State University. He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics and recovered from the ordeals of his dissertation and orals, so he told me, by reading most of the novels of John Dickson Carr in less than a month.

   Like the clever men of Oxford in The Wind in the Willows, he “knew all that was to be knowed”—about mystery fiction, fantasy, s-f, horror, Westerns, just about every form of popular fiction you can name, plus ballet and opera and movies and classical music and so much more.

   His ability to keep prodigious masses of data in perfectly organized form would have shamed many a computer. He wrote prolifically and with dry wit about books and authors, assiduously collected works in the genres he loved — every room in his large house including the bathroom was a library first and foremost — and corresponded with Sax Rohmer, P.G. Wodehouse, John Creasey and countless other authors.

   It was pure pleasure to read his commentary or listen to his conversation. We started corresponding in the late Sixties, thanks mainly to Al Hubin and The Armchair Detective, and met for the first time in 1970 when I took a bus from New Jersey to a science fiction convention in Manhattan that he was attending.

   Beginning in 1980 he followed in Keeler’s footsteps by putting out the pre-computer equivalent of a blog, which he called Contact Is Not a Verb (a famous line from one of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels) and kept going until September 2006, a grand total of 149 issues, of a copy of every one of which I am a proud possessor.

   Bob developed diabetes and in the fall of 1990, when I was a visiting professor in New Jersey, had to have some of his toes amputated. Unable to climb the stairs of his own house, he was sleeping in a hospital bed installed on the ground floor. I traveled to Salem by Amtrak and spent a long weekend playing housekeeper: schlepping cartons around so he could access the classical music he loved, taking his clothes to the laundry, even cooking us a few meals (for whose quality I will not vouch).

   Until a few years ago we would rendezvous every summer at the Pulpcon in Dayton, Ohio. Then unaccountably this shy but gregarious man dropped out of sight. Almost no one heard a word from him or knew anything about his health.

   Finally, just a few days before Christmas, I learned he’d been found dead in his house late in November. He had no immediate family. As of this writing I don’t know the cause, or what will happen to the vast library he had accumulated over the decades. All I know is that he was one of the most brilliant and memorable people in my life.

Bouchercon, Philadelphia, 1989. Me (Steve Lewis), Art Scott, Bob Briney, George Kelley, and Mike Nevins. Photo taken by Ellen Nehr.

Bouchercon, New York, 1983. Ellen Nehr and Bob Briney.

Bouchercon, Chicago, 1984. Marv Lachman, Bob Briney, Ellen Nehr and Steve Stilwell.

   Many thanks to Art Scott for providing the photos above.

TECH DAVIS – Terror at Compass Lake. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1935.

   Occasionally when I am on the fringes of a group of diehard mystery fans — which is about as close as they’ll let me get — the name Tech Davis is mentioned. Then when I am spotted, the subject is immediately changed.

   Why this happens I do not know. Oh, I know why I’m allowed only on the fringes; it’s their not wanting me to hear about Davis that baffles me. While Davis is not a good author; he isn’t an exceptionally bad one.

   His prose doesn’t elevate, indeed may be said to enervate. His detective, Aubrey Nash, is so bland that I wish he’d been given the one or two idiosyncrasies that I usually deplore in other fictional detectives whose creators can’t seem to make come alive. But he does plot well.

   In this novel, the first of three by Davis, Aubrey Nash is asked to come to the wilds of upstate New York to investigate the apparent suicide of a chauffeur — it must be suicide since everyone has a perfect alibi — and the later stabbing death of his employer in a locked room. Nash isn’t interested until he receives a telegram telling him the crime is insoluble and he shouldn’t waste his time with it.

   Recommended for locked-room fanciers, and other problem solvers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mystery fiction by TECH DAVIS, pen name of Edgar Davis (1890-1974). Series character: Aubrey Nash in all.

      Terror at Compass Lake. Doubleday, 1935.
      Full Fare for a Corpse. Doubleday, 1937.

      Murder on Alternate Tuesdays. Doubleday, 1938.

Editorial Comment:   Just in case anyone is tempted by Bill’s last line into putting together a complete set of all three Tech Davis mysteries, there are five copies of his books currently listed on ABE. Four of them are of Compass Lake, available at $75 and up, and there’s one of Full Fare, the latter having an asking price of a fairly solid $250.

   And not a single copy of Alternate Tuesdays.

UPDATE. 01-08-12.   Thanks to Bill Pronzini, I can now show you cover images for all three Tech Davis mysteries, in jacket.

REX HARDINGE – The Case of the Frightened Girl. Sexton Blake Library #247. Paperback original. [Amalgamated Press, UK, 3rd series, September 1951.]

   The basic premise of this short novel, 64 pages of small type in a double-column format, was promising – in fact, more than promising, if “impossible crimes” are meat if not potatoes in your regular diet of detective fiction reading.

   The girl in the title is Moira Leonard, a girl with a fabulous singing voice, but with a overbearing Svengali of a manager and singing instructor. After her public vocal debut, she cracks under the strain she’s been under and flees the music hall. Max Rosen follows her, argues with her, and ends up dead, stabbed in the back, with plenty of witnesses to say there she was the only one near their final (and fatal) confrontation.

   But when the body is examined there is no murder weapon to be found. The girl must have done it and taken the knife with her. Sexton Blake does not believe she did the deed, however, nor does his young assistant Tinker, especially the latter, even though she has disappeared, and into literal thin air.

   This takes us through the first eight or nine pages. We also learn that Ron Pearce, a would-be lover of Moira – they grew up together in the same orphanage – would have also had a motive, but the absence of the weapon clears him.

   So as I say, a promising premise, but once we learn that Pearce is the one responsible for kidnapping Moira, there is little more I need to tell you about the story.

   Rather than a detective story – until the end when the “how” is revealed – this is a thriller novel, and not a very good one. There is too much padding, too much recapitulation of the plot, and too much chase and too little suspense to give me little reason to recommend this to you, unless you’re curious about knowing what a Sexton Blake novel was like in the early 1950s. Or at least what this one was like, as I was.

   And oh, as for the “impossible crime” aspect? Totally mundane and not very believable at that. [See Comment #1 for more!]

HAMLET. Columbia, 1969. Nicol Williamson (Hamlet), Judy Parfitt (Gertrude), Anthony Hopkins (Claudius), Marianne Faithfull (Ophelia), Mark Dignam, Michael Pennington, Gordon Jackson, Ben Aris, Clive Graham. Based on the play by William Shakespeare. Director: Tony Richardson.

   I also recently saw Nicol Williamson’s 1969 film of Hamlet, directed by Tony Richardson, made on the heels of Zeffirelli’s surprise Romeo & Juliet hit. Didn’t care much for it, but I was prejudiced two-score years ago by the film’s banal ad campaign, which billed it as “The story of Hamlet’s immortal love for Ophelia!”

   Now Hamlet is about a lot of things, but it ain’t about Hamlet’s love for Ophelia, and this slant on the film, intentional or not, put me off on it right from the outset, no doubt clouding my judgement somewhat.

   Williamson plays Hamlet as a bookish Grad Student, Weak rather than Vulnerable and Pedantic instead of Poetic. It’s a valid interpretation, but not much fun to watch for two hours.

   Likewise Judy Parfitt’s portrayal of Queen Gertrude as Lady MacBeth. Marianne Faithfull is okay as Ophelia, but an incredibly young Anthony Hopkins, looking like a kid in a false beard, is woefully out of his depth as the King.

   This is very much a late-60s film, with the kids in revolt against corrupt and complacent authority figures, which again is a valid interpretation, but robs the play of some of the depth and complexity it gets when characters like Polonious, Claudius and Gertrude are developed as rounded characters.

   Finally, there are no sets to speak of (this looks to have been shot in the back of UCLA’s Theatre Department Building) and Richardson tries hard to hide this by concentrating on close-ups and restricting physical movement, which works but stifles the action.

“Punchy Cowpunchers” (1950). A Three Stooges short. Running time: 17 minutes. Shemp Howard, Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Jock O’Mahoney (Elmer), Christine McIntyre (Nell), Kenneth MacDonald (Dillon), Dick Wessel (Mullins), Vernon Dent (Colonel), Emil Sitka (Daley), George Chesebro (Jeff, uncredited). Written and directed by Edward Bernds.

   The Three Stooges are definitely not for all tastes, so if you don’t like slapstick comedy just skip this review.

    “Punchy Cowpunchers” spoofs just about every cliche hitherto found in Western films: the outlaw gang looting the town; the stalwart, jut-jawed, guitar-playing, “aw shucks!” hero; the virginal love interest for the hero; and the U.S. Cavalry ready to ride in on a moment’s notice and save the day.

   Only the outlaws (“The Killer Dillons”) aren’t too bright — and neither is our hero (Elmer), a total klutz who can’t stay on his horse, constantly collides with objects and people (“I hurt mah knee agin”), forgets to load his guns (and when he does remember can’t shoot straight), and, let’s face it, doesn’t play his “geetar” very well.

   As for his “gal” (“Nell honey”), she’s far from being the “poor, defenseless woman” she claims to be. When one gang member after another tries to kidnap her (for nefarious purposes, no doubt), she decks them all and then each time demurely passes out — but not until she’s found something soft to land on.

   And forget the cavalry — they just got paid, and as the colonel says, “Well, you know, boys will be boys.”

    “Punchy Cowpunchers” takes the best of Stooges slapstick and distills it into less than twenty minutes of fast-paced nonsense. The only other short feature I really liked from these guys was “Dutiful But Dumb” (1941), a political satire featuring Curly’s epic battle with his supper, a bowl of chowder inhabited by a very rude clam (a masterpiece of timing and film editing).

   The klutzy “hero” was played by Jock Mahoney (1919-89), a former stunt man double for Errol Flynn, Gregory Peck, and John Wayne. Mahoney went on to appear many times in films and TV, including 77 episodes of The Range Rider (1951-53), 34 episodes as Yancy Derringer (1958-59), and several appearances in Tarzan films, sometimes as the villain and sometimes as the vine swinger himself. For a more intellectual Mahoney, see the sci-fi snoozer The Land Unknown (1957).

    “Nell honey” was played by Christine McIntyre (1911-84), who possessed an operatic-level singing voice (not employed in “Punchy Cowpunchers”). She spent most of her film career working in short features, many of them with The Three Stooges. She even appeared several times in Mahoney’s Western series, The Range Rider.

   Kenneth MacDonald (1901-72) frequently showed up in Stooges shorts as a bad guy. He went on to play the judge 32 times in the Perry Mason series, starting with the second show and finishing up with the very last episode.

   Mention should also be made of George Chesebro (1888-1959), whose film career started in 1915. Chesebro often appeared as a henchman (usually the third one through the door) or a cop. The IMDb credits him with over 400 titles.

   You can watch “Punchy Cowpunchers“ in two segments on YouTube: Part 1 here and Part 2 here.