LAURIE R. KING – The Moor. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1998; Bantam, paperback, 1999.
In her fourth Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novel, King brings the couple to the scene of one of Holmes’ most celebrated cases, Baskerville Hall. An American adventurer has bought the Baskerville property but, surprisingly, is on the verge of selling it and moving on.
Russell and Holmes, who are visiting Sabine Baring-Gould, an old friend of Holmes, find the situation at Baskerville Hall somewhat troubling, but their principal concern is to find the killer responsible for two murders and track down the source of reported sightings of a ghostly carriage accompanied by the legendary Hound.
Much of the novel deals with Russell’s growing affection for the Moor, and the portrayal of the region and its inhabitants is the principal strength of the novel. The resolution of the various plot lines is accomplished in a few action-packed pages, which I suspect I will not long remember. The wanderings of Russell about the often desolate but still beautiful Moor really have more drama than the Baskerville goings-on and make me want to revisit Conan Doyle’s novel to see if his descriptions of the Moor are as evocative and powerful as King’s.
I found this to be the most engrossing Russell adventure since The Beekeeper’s Assistant, with the portrayal of the noted author and antiquarian Baring-Gould more telling than the rather bland characterization of Holmes.
DANTE. NBC, Monday 9:30-10pm, October 13, 1960 through April 10, 1961; 26 episodes. Four Star Productions. Created by Blake Edwards. Produced by Michael Meshekoff. Associate Producer: Harold Jack Bloom. Cast: Howard Duff as Willie Dante, Alan Mowbray as Stewart Styles, Tom D’Andrea as Biff. Recurring Cast: James Nolan as Inspector Loper.
The character Willie Dante began as a recurring character on the anthology TV series FOUR STAR PLAYHOUSE (CBS). Dick Powell played the gambler Dante who owned the restaurant Dante’s Inferno with a hidden backroom for illegal gambling. With the help of his friend, ex-safe cracker and bartender Monte (Herb Vigran), and (in some episodes) a former British millionaire with a gambling habit and now waiter Jackson (Alan Mowbray), Dante would help someone and be rewarded with the cops, usually lead by Lt. Waldo (Regis Toomey), closing down the gambling backroom at the end of the episode.
I found Powell’s version disappointing, the writing stale, and the acting not strong enough for me to like any of the bad boy characters. Most if not all can be seen on youtube or available on cheap DVDs. Here is an episode with an unexpected cameo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbhKM6Kydhc
Four years after Powell’s last Dante, Four Star and NBC decided to air a weekly series featuring Howard Duff as William Dante. Currently various episodes are available from the collector’s market and youtube. While this is the second episode to air, it appears to be the pilot:
(Part One)
(Part Two)
Things were different. Willie Dante moved to San Francisco with hopes of a new start running a new Dante’s Inferno. This time there would be no backroom for gambling. Dante lived in the office that overlooked the inside of the popular nightclub. He had decided to go straight and was dragging two of his best friends with him.
Dante’s sidekicks, former thief and now reluctant bartender Biff, and Dante’s Inferno’s Maitre d’ and ex-conman Stewart Styles helped run the club while Dante was out dealing with that week’s threat to the club or him, and they were there for backup whenever Willie needed help.
Every week Willie would find himself caught in the middle of two or more opposing forces, usually the cops and bad guys. No one believed Willie was going straight, both the good guys and bad guys suspected him to be up to something.
When a fortuneteller tells a woman her husband will be killed by Willie Dante, Dante finds himself caught in the middle of a mess he didn’t create. For the cops it is a simple case, if anything happens to the husband or Dante they will arrest the survivor.
Women played an important role in Willie Dante’s life. It was the un-PC time of 1960 and women usually played one of two basic roles, the rich beautiful woman eager to be seduced by willing but business first Willie or ex-girlfriends turned femme fatale. There was an occasional variation such as a mobster’s girlfriend willing to do anything for Dante except reveal the name of her boyfriend who was after Willie. There was even one episode when a suspected bad girl turned into an undercover cop.
In the episode below, the role of the girlfriend of the week lacked the patience and forgiveness of most, and the female author of a best selling book about a gangster the public believes is Willie Dante gives Willie more problems than any femme fatale ever could.
Created by Blake Edwards, it is no surprise DANTE had a similar look and style of PETER GUNN and MR LUCKY. The dialog was clever and the banter quick and witty. The stories plots were creative and hold up well. In one episode, bank robbers frame Dante by breaking into the Dante’s Inferno safe and switching the stolen money for Dante’s legally gained cash. Plot devices often had a surprise twist such as a blackmailer using homing pigeons.
In the episode below, an enemy from the past wants Dante dead. Before he retires to the Orient he leaves Willie a $50,000 trust to begin the upcoming Monday. But should Willie not be alive on Monday the beneficiary of the trust would be a hitman desperate for money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbA0BUffifc
The main writer was Harold Jack Bloom (HEC RAMSEY). He and the other writers succeed where the writers (including Blake Edwards) of Powell’s version failed. The writing was fresh, clever, and the humor rose above the old vaudeville jokes about coffee that burdened the FOUR STAR PLAYHOUSE episodes.
But it was Howard Duff who made Willie Dante the lovable rogue. Duff was perfect as Dante. Much as he did in radio’s ADVENTURES OF SAM SPADE, Duff was believable in all aspects of the character, his humor, the romance, and the hardboiled style.
The guest cast featured such talent as Joanna Barnes, Dick Foran, Ruta Lee, Joan Marshall, Charles McGraw, Pat Medina, Edward Platt, Marion Ross, William Schallert, Joan Tabor, Nita Talbot, and (to the left) Lori Nelson.
The series never had a chance as NBC placed it opposite of CBS’s ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW and ABC’s ADVENTURES IN PARADISE. The first episode got a 13.5 rating versus ANDY GRIFFITH 26.6 and ADVENTURES IN PARADISE 21.3. The NBC program before DANTE was BOB HOPE that for that first week had a 31.9 rating. Losing over half the audience of the show before it and finishing last in its time period made it obvious the odds were against DANTE from the beginning.
DANTE with Howard Duff was a superior half hour mystery that remains entertaining today. It is a shame more people didn’t watch it when it first aired and there is not an official DVD available for viewers to discover it today.
Western writer Doyle Trent has been covered before on this blog, the occasion being the announcement of a checklist I was working on for him. The announcement is here. The illustrated checklist is here. As a result of his seeing one or the other, I was contacted by an old friend of Trent, who offered to write up some of his memories of him, and I gladly took him up on it. “No by-line or attribution necessary,” he said. I just wanted to share this anonymously.”
In 1962, Doyle Trent walked into the Tucson Police Department, a newly-hired reporter for the Arizona Daily Star, the town’s morning paper.
Then in his late 30’s, he was older than the typical “cub†reporter, as some old newspapermen labeled such creatures. He stood about 6-feet, of medium build, with sandy, close-cropped (but thinning) hair. His face was smooth and permanently tanned. From mid-forehead to his hairline was a band of white skin, the permanent trademark of a face long in the sun, partially shielded by a hat.
In contrast to reporters’ “newsroom-grunge†collection of barely-ironed shirts, rumpled slacks and scuffed shoes, Doyle’s taste ran to tailored Western pants, leather belt with a simple silver buckle, a complementing colored shirt (tie-less) with snap-type pocket flaps and shined cowboy boots. But no cowboy hat. And he ambled, rather than walked.
Initially working the “day cops beatâ€, Doyle was a quiet presence in that noisy, smelly environment. He shared the large, wooden “press desk†with the afternoon paper’s cops reporter, consigned to the corner of a large, windowless room which housed police dispatchers. From that vantage point, they observed the endless parade of cops and prisoners.
Soft-spoken and polite, even with the ever-prickly cops of all ranks, Doyle was a good writer who favored two-fingered typing on one of two battered Underwood typewriters at the press desk. He was thorough, always asking the reporter’s basic “Five-W’s†but always managing to get just a bit more. In one highway accident, an 18-wheeler tractor-trailer had overturned, killing the driver. The truck carried several tons of steel; it was in Doyle’s lead sentence. His rival missed that little detail and had to deal with an unhappy city editor who explained the relevance of a law of physics involving mass and momentum.
Doyle didn’t talk a lot; personal details were sparse. He never said where he was from, offering only that he had been a cowboy and had served in the Army. Knowing a cowboy’s career was limited, he said he used the G.I. Bill to earn a college journalism degree. He spoke with a slow, soft drawl and, at times, with difficulty. A lifetime of little or no dental care caused him pain, not that he ever really complained. It just added to his taciturn demeanor.
— These recollections came from another reporter who worked “cops†with Doyle a half-century ago. Decades later, that former reporter stumbled by chance on Doyle’s literary career and he observed that, “Given the list of book titles to his credit, it was obvious that his background as a working cowboy, his journalism experience and a vivid imagination combined to make him a successful Western novelist. In a world of cowboy-writer wannabes, Doyle Trent is the real McCoy.â€
HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION. Made for TV. Universal/NBC-TV; telecast 07 Jan 1967. Robert Wagner, Jill St. John, Peter Lawford, Lola Albright, Walter Pidgeon, Michael Ansara. Teleplay: Gene R. Kearney; director: William Hale.
How I Spent My Summer Vacation is a splashy, colorful and cheerfully cheesy made-for-TV exercise in adolescent paranoia that landed right on the cusp of my teenage years. As such, it will always keep a place in my heart, if not on any 10 Best list.
Assuming that you weren’t a high school prom queen or captain of the football team, perhaps you can relate to the feeling. I know I could. Which is where Vacation takes its cue and proceeds to run the table with it. Faced with Lawford/Albright’s constant belittling — and flummoxed by the ease with which they do it — Wagner decides on a puerile revenge; he begins gathering evidence of what he thinks are Lawford’s criminal activities.
What follows borders on a teenage dream, as our hero skulks nimbly about, snapping a photo here, jotting down a detail there, keeping one step ahead of his quarry and jotting it all down in a notebook labeled “How I Spent my Summer Vacation.†Even better, as the fantasy proceeds to its climax, writer Gene Kearney (whose talents seem confined to the small screen for his whole career) keeps spinning it further and further out, in true dream-fashion as we get shifting realities, dark plots, mysterious fortress hide-outs and the whole thing related in flashback to a super-villain (Walter Pidgeon) who seems unsettlingly fatherly — the perfect touch for a tale of adolescent angst —leading to a conclusion that… well to say any more would spoil it.
Don’t take this Vacation expecting artistry, but if you have any feeling for that turbulent rebel mood of the 60s you may find this one a lot of fun.
Editorial Comment: This film has been reviewed once before on this blog, the earlier occasion by David L. Vineyard. (Follow the link.)
GERALDINE BONNER – The Castlecourt Diamond Case. Funk & Wagnalls, hardcover, 1906. (“Published, December, 1905.â€) First appeared in Ainslee’s Magazine, November 1905. Currently available in several different Print On Demand editions. Online edition: https://archive.org/details/castlecourtdiamond00bonnrich
This is the second version of this review, In the first, employing suitable modesty, I credited myself with the discovery of Geraldine Bonner, an entertaining but (or so I thought) entirely forgotten writer. Having stated that Bonner is unknown, I then belatedly checked my facts … and I found that five years ago Kathi Maio praised another book by Bonner, The Black Eagle Mystery (1916), in Murderess Ink.
Such are the perils of research.
Ms. Maio says that Black Eagle is “a charming mystery” — a phrase that also describes Castlecourt Diamond. The story of the theft of the Marchioness of Castlecourt’s diamonds is told in six “statements.” The first, by the Marchioness’ maid, describes the theft, introduces the main characters, and mentions the two detectives, one official, one private.
The second section is narrated by “Lilly Bingham, known in England as Laura Brice, in the United States as Frances Latimer, to the police of both countries as Laura the Lady.” It’s not much of a surprise that Laura stole the diamonds, though whether she was acting for someone else is not yet clear.
On the whole, however, the mystery is primarily a vehicle for Bonner to produce a comedy of manners, and the interest in the second part is Laura’s successful attempt to plant the diamonds on an unsuspecting American couple, Cassius and Daisy Kennedy. The Kennedys have been courting London society (they already know “a bishop and two lords”) and thus can’t throw out Laura and her henchman when, pretending an invitation, they arrive for dinner.
Two parts of the story are statements by the Kennedys, detailing their schemes to rid themselves of the diamonds and culminating in the theft of the jewels by a seeming sneak-thief. John Burns Gilsey, a private detective engaged by Lord Castlecourt, narrates a section that explains his deductions pointing to the Marchioness as the instigator of the plot, but the book concludes with a statement by the Marchioness showing that Gilsey was only partly correct.
The Castlecourt Diamond Case is indeed charming, and it is made even more so by its brevity — with large type and margins it contains less than 30,000 words, a far cry from many Victorian and Edwardian detective novels, as anyone who has labored through, say, Lawrence Lynch’s novels with their 550 godawful pages will testify.
I can’t claim to be the discoverer of Geraldine Bonner, but I’m happy to join Kathi Maio in recommending her works.
— Reprinted from The Poisoned Pen, Vol. 6, No. 2, Winter 1984/85.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin]
GERALDINE BONNER (1870-1930). Born in Staten Island, N.Y.
The Castlecourt Diamond Case (n.) Funk 1906.
The Girl at Central (n.) Appleton 1915 [Molly Morganthau (Babbits)]
The Black Eagle Mystery (n.) Appleton 1916 [Molly Morganthau (Babbits).]
Miss Maitland, Private Secretary (n.) Appleton 1919 [Molly Morganthau (Babbits)]
The Leading Lady (n.) Bobbs 1926.
-Taken at the Flood (n.) Bobbs 1927.
HERBERT COREY – Crime at Cobb’s House. D. Appleton-Century, hardcover, 1934
For reasons best known to himself, the wealthy Charley Cobb hires Thomas Milne, lawyer and private detective. At Cobb’s estate in the horse country of Virginia a double murder takes place, perhaps in retaliation for an earlier unsolved double murder.
Tedium, at least for the reader, prevails here, and then it’s off to Washington, D.C., for additional boredom in a different setting.
A selection in Appleton-Century’s “Tired Business Man’s Library,” Corey’s novel is fitting. Soporific sums it up.
— From The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 13, No. 1, Winter 1991.
Editorial Comment: This is the author’s only entry in Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV.
H. R. F. KEATING – The Perfect Murder. Collins, UK, hardcover, 1964. Dutton, US, hardcover, 1965. Film: Merchant Ivory Productions, 1988 (Naseeruddin Shah as Inspector Ghote; Keating makes a cameo appearance about eight minutes into the movie). Softcover reprint: Academy Chicago, US, 1983.
This is the first in H. R. F. Keating’s series featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay Police Force. The Perfect Murder received the Mystery Writers of America’s Special Edgar Award and the Crime Writer’s Association’s Golden Dagger.
How interesting that The Perfect Murder refers to an attack on Mr. Perfect. But, will he survive, or succumb to his injuries? Inspector Ghote not only must try to solve this crime with little help from Lala Verde (Perfect’s employer — who talks annoyingly in rhymes) but must also try to solve a theft.
The mysterious disappearance of one rupee from the desk of a Very Important Person, the Minister of Police Affairs and the Arts, is equally crucial where Ghote’s boss is concerned. Struggling amidst bureaucratic red tape and incompetence, and a wife who is less than understanding about his working overtime, Ghote nevertheless forges ahead with both investigations.
A definitely different and amusing murder mystery.
— Reprinted from The Poisoned Pen, Vol. 6, No. 2, Winter 1984/85.
JOHN WELCOME – Run for Cover. Faber, UK, hardcover, 1958. Knopf, US, hardcover, 1959. Harper Perennial, paperback reprint, 1983.
I have nothing but praise for the Perennial Library series: their selections are high quality fiction attractively packaged and priced. John Welcome’s Run for Cover is fun reading: light as cotton candy. Former intelligence agent Richard Graham is drawn into a tangled plot when the manuscript he is reviewing is stolen.
The haunting aspect: the manuscript was written by a man Graham knew was dead, Rupert Rawle. But the dead man has come alive and Graham is back on the trail of the man be once idolized, only to have Raw}e leave him for dead during a WWII commando mission. The writing is slick, cultured, and professional. The plotting is fast-paced, wild, and unpredictable. Perfect for vacation reading.
JOHN WELCOME – Stop at Nothing. Faber, UK, hardcover, 1959. Knopf, US, hardcover, 1960. Harper Perennial, paperback reprint, 1983.
Stop at Nothing is John Welcome’s best book. Simon Herald, former racing car star, faces 40 and a bitter divorce when he falls in love with a younger woman whose brother is hunted by vicious men in order to gain the secret of a formula that makes horses run faster.
Forget about the corny plot; Welcome fires away from page one and doesn’t let up on the action until a couple hundred pages later. Hairbreadth escape follows hairbreadth escape as Herald faces overwhelming odds, brutal beatings, a psychopathic killer, and an obsessed millionaire. What more could you ask for? This is seat-of-your-pants escapism at its best.
JOHN WELCOME – Go for Broke. Faber, UK, hardcover, 1972. Walker, US, hardcover, 1972. Harper Perennial, paperback reprint, 1983.
Go for Broke is one of John Welcome’s lesser works, but it still provides more excitement than most thrillers. Eric Vaughan, wealthy financier, accuses Richard Graham of.cheating at cards. Graham is mystified by the false charges, but finds himself drawn into a web of international intrigue where the seeds of treachery and double-cross in the past haunt the present.
Graham finds himself a social outcast, discharged from his part-time espionage position, and forced to sell his meager land holdings to pay for his legal defense. But he falls in love with a mysterious American woman and finds an unexpected clue to the frame he’s been put in.
The flaw in Go for Broke is the boring courtroom proceedings that take up too much of the book; once outside the stuffy legal chambers, the pages fly by. The conclusion will surprise no one, but it’s curiously satisfying.
— Reprinted from The Poisoned Pen, Vol. 6, No. 2, Winter 1984/85.
Editorial Note: A criminous bibliography for John Welcome can be found here on LibraryThing, along with a brief biography, which concludes: “He [John Needham Huggard Brennan] took up writing, under the pen name of John Welcome, to relieve the tedium of the country solicitor’s life.”
CALLING BULLDOG DRUMMOND. MGM, UK, 1951. Walter Pidgeon (Major Hugh ‘Bulldog’ Drummond), Margaret Leighton, Robert Beatty, David Tomlinson, Peggy Evans, Charles Victor. Based on a story by Gerard Fairlie. Director: Victor Saville.
Back in the late 60s, when I decided I wanted to live a life of adventure, I was quite taken with a gaudy Universal James-Bond-Rip-Off called Deadlier Than the Male, with Richard Johnson as Bulldog Drummond and Nigel Greene as bis arch-foe Peterson. Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina were in it too, as scenery.
I liked the gaudy color, kinky violence, and general comic-book look of the thing. Don’t try to catch it on television, though, because it was castrated for Network Release and to my knowledge has never been restored. (Yeah, like someone would take the time to put all the sex and violence back in to this.)
Anyway, I tried the Drummond books and didn’t care much for the character in them at all, as he seemed something of a blow-hard bigot. Always liked the Drummond movies, though, including a B series from Paramount with John Howard, John Barrymore and lots of colorful baddies. And of course there was the great Colman film of ’29 which I viewed a wile back.
So I was sort of looking forward to Calling B. D. and was disappointed. The plot features a gang of crooks who operate in Military Style, prompting Scotland Yard to call Colonel Drummond out of retirement because of his military experience.
I don’t know about you, but I have a little trouble swallowing the notion that England in the 50s suffered from a shortage of men with Military experience, and the Surprise Bad Guy is unfortunately portrayed by an actor who later became mildly famous, so his off-screen voice tips us off immediately.
Add to this that Pidgeon seems to have taken his Dull Pills just prior to filming, and you have a very quiet movie indeed.
NICK CARTER, MASTER DETECTIVE. MGM, 1939. Walter Pidgeon (Nick Carter), Rita Johnson, Henry Hull, Stanley Ridges, Doctor Frankton, Donald Meek (Bartholomew), Milburn Stone. Director: Jacques Tourneur.
PHANTOM RAIDERS. MGM, 1940. Walter Pidgeon (Nick Carter), Donald Meek (Bartholomew), Joseph Schildkraut, Florence Rice, Nat Pendleton, John Carroll. Director: Jacques Tourneur.
SKY MURDER. MGM, 1940. Walter Pidgeon (Nick Carter), Donald Meek (Bartholomew), Kaaren Verne, Edward Ashley, Joyce Compton, Tom Conway. Director: George B. Seitz.
Pidgeon came off much better in a series of “B’s” from MGM in the late ’30s centered around a character called Nick Carter, though for all the care they took to recreate the old Dime Novels, they might as well have called him The Saint or Bulldog Drumond or V.I. Warshawski. Nick Carter Master Detective, Phantom Raiders and Sky Murder are all quite fun and you should see them if you ever get a chance.
With that sonorous voice of his, Pidgeon always sounded like Gregory Peck’s older brother, but these films play against his tendency to stodginess and come out very light and fluffy. The first two were stylishly directed by Jacques Tourneur, but the best thing in them is the Comedy Relief played by Donald Meek.
The comical sidekick was as much a fixture of the B-Mystery series as he was in the B western, but Meek and the writers here lift the concept to dizzying heights. His Bartholomew is not the standard dim-witted clod of most B-Mysteries: he’s a dangerous madman, given to melodramatic fantasies and theatrical outbursts of classic,dimensions.
He looks like the kind of guy who might bite you on the leg for no good reason at all, and given the chance to play something besides a timid fuddy-duddy, Meek indulges himself with a flair for wild-eyed comedy I’d never suspected in him. He is that rarity, a Comic Relief you actually look forward to seeing, and be adds immeasurably to the films. Catch these if you can.
Editorial Comment: Mike Grost has some interesting things to say about the two Nick Carter films directed by Jacques Tourneur. Check out his website here.
THE BROTHERS BRANNAGAN. Syndicated; 1960-1961. 39 episodes @ 30m each. A Brad-Jacey Production in association with CBS Films. Cast: Steve Dunne as Mike Brannagan and Mark Roberts as Bob Brannagan. Recurring Cast: Barney Phillips as Lt. Avery. Created by Wilbur Stark and Jerry Layton. Theme by Alexander Courage; filmed on location in Phoenix Arizona.
Neither Steve Dunne nor Mark Roberts had the acting talent to impress Stanislavski, but they were likable as the leads, as were their characters. Bob and Mike Brannagan were brothers and best friends. Both, like real PIs as opposed to the fictional ones, worked within the law. In “Wheel of Fortune†they refused to break into a place for the client because it was against the law, and as they told the client, they were PIs not burglars.
Bob was the practical one. He handled the money and was most likely to solve the case through deduction. He enjoyed his time with women, but he was not the womanizer his brother Mike was.
There was a harmless quality to Mike’s pursuit of women, even when he pulled out his little black book filled with pick-up lines. Mike lent a more creative side to the solving of the mystery.
Despite the low budget, lack of time and other limitations that came with TV-Film syndication, the writing and direction were the series strength. The thirty-minute story lacked time for much character or mystery depth, but the stories fast pace still had time for fist fights, shootouts, chases, light humor and nice (if today predictable) twists.
Few of the writers, directors and actors may be remembered today but they knew how to produce television shows that were enjoyable to watch. Writers such as Harold Jack Bloom (HEC RAMSEY) kept the stories interesting and entertaining. Directors such as Eddie Davis (BOSTON BLACKIE) may have shot fast but still had time to frame shots with near perfect use of film composition to add visual depth to the action and story.
The series made good use of the soundtrack. With much of the action happening inside the home base for the brothers, the dining room of the Mountain Shadows Resort (a real place), the background music often featured a piano playing jazz. Alexander Courage (STAR TREK) composed the opening theme music.
The series chief gimmick was the episode’s opening where, as the theme played, we would watch the Brannagans walk away from the camera, their backs to us, until they hear a voice shouting “Hey Brannagan.†They would turn and Bob would ask “Which one?†The picture would cut to someone who usually needed help. The brothers would walk back directly at the camera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceJpT0jxfdA
EPISODE INDEX: There was no on screen credit featuring episode title. Titles and episode number used here come from IMDb.com. The same IMDb.com that has Bob Brannagan listed as Bill in many of its episodes credits.
“A Very Special Woman.†Episode 1. Written by Harold Jack Bloom Directed by Paul Landres. Produced by Wilbur Stark and Jerry Layton. GUEST CAST: Dorothy Green, Leo Gordon, and Keith Richards. *** The local fence learns the hard way never dump the femme fatale, not when there are other men around.
OPENING- HEY BRANNAGAN! : A beautiful woman with a broken high heel shoe needs help.
“Wheel of Fortune.†Episode 24. Teleplay by John Dana. Story by Malcolm Stuart Boylan. Directed by Eddie Davis. Produced by Wilbur Stark and Jerry Layton. GUEST CAST: Lynn Cartwright, Ed Hashim and K.T. Stevens. *** A rich short-tempered Mexican with his wife arrives in Phoenix claiming a local art dealer has stolen a family treasure. The art dealer claims she does not have it and wants the money he cheated her out of in an art deal.
OPENING- HEY BRANNAGAN! : A sign saying “Support Your Community Chest $1 a Chance with a kiss†and a beautiful woman asking them if they care to try their luck.
“Mistaken Identity.†Episode 28. Teleplay by Sam Ross, from a Story by William Link and Richard Levinson. Directed by Anton Leader. Produced by William Stark and Jerry Layton. GUEST CAST: Joann Manley, Lewis Charles and Bailey Harper. *** The boys are entertaining a pretty vacationing teacher when she is kidnapped.
OPENING- HEY BRANNAGAN! : Two pretty girls waving at the brothers. Mike notes there’s one for each of them.
“Terror In the Afternoon.†Episode 30. Written by Al C. Ward. Directed by Jean Yarbrough. Produced by Wilbur Stark. GUEST CAST: James Flavin, Robert Harland, and Gloria Talbott. *** After two construction accidents costs the lives of a woman’s brother then fiance, she hires the brothers to check out the dam. The twist has her rich overprotective father building the dam and her wanting to see it destroyed.
OPENING HEY BRANNAGAN! : A dog is trapped in a lake.
From “Broadcasting†(8/29/60): “Producer Wilbur Stark has announced a new policy in giving film editors on his tv (sic) series credit as ‘creative film editor’ plus part ownership of the properties. First to receive this benefit is John Woodcock, editor of THE BROTHERS BRANNAGAN, which makes its debut this fall in syndication for CBS TV-Films. Mr. Stark said he hopes the move will lure the best film editors to his company. He said film editors are perhaps even more important than directors.â€
Blasphemy! While the director is not the major power in series TV as he or she is in theatrical films, Hollywood would never claim the film editor was more important (even if they can be) than a director. In the four episodes above, “Terror in Afternoon†was the only one where John M. Woodcock had the on screen credit of Creative Film Editor. Oddly enough it was the only one of four with Wilbur Stark getting sole producing credit. In the other three episodes John M. Woodcock received the on screen credit of Editorial Supervisor.
There are a dozen episodes available in the collector’s market including two websites, Thomas Film Classics, Robert’s Hard To Find Videos, and the other usual suspects.
Thrilling Detective: (We will forgive the hard working nearly perfect Kevin Burton Smith for his misspelling the brothers’ name. I know my auto-correct agreed with him.)
Devoted to mystery and detective fiction — the books, the films, the authors, and those who read, watch, collect and make annotated lists of them. All uncredited posts are by me, Steve Lewis.
