● REPEAT PERFORMANCE. Eagle-Lion Films, 1947. Louis Hayward, Joan Leslie, Virginia Field, Tom Conway, Richard Basehart, Natalie Schafer, Benay Venuta. Based on the novel by William O’Farrell. Director: Alfred L. Werker.

● WILLIAM O’FARRELL – Repeat Performance. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1942. Pennant P55, paperback, revised edition, May 1954; IPL, paperback, 1987. Films: See above, plus: Turn Back the Clock, TV movie, NBC, 1989, with Connie Sellecca & David Dukes (and Joan Leslie in a small role).

   So we came to the end of 2010 and I watched the old year out with two of my favorite New Year’s movies, Chimes at Midnight and Repeat Performance with Joan Leslie as stage actress Sheila Page, who rings in 1947 by killing husband Barney (Louis Hayward).

   Suitably distraught, she wanders out into the clamoring night, runs into some old friends (including Richard Basehart as a mad poet, poetically named William Williams) who commiserate with her on what a lousy year it’s been, then goes to see her producer (Tom Conway).

   But on her way up to Conway’s apartment, her clothes and hair change, the lights flicker, and suddenly it’s a year earlier, and Joan will get a chance to undo all the mistakes that led to infidelity, insanity and murder.

   Or will she? What follows is a neatly ironic tale of predestined ends, a bit over-the-top at times, but kept mostly teetering right at the edge of melodrama, thanks to adroit direction from Alfred Werker (a director with an odd career, who really should be better known) and low-key playing from all concerned, particularly Louis Hayward, who had a long and mostly undistinguished career, but now and again suggested something kind of interesting. His role here as Joan Leslie’s ill-starred spouse sports a lethal fecklessness that’s fun to watch.

   I also ferreted out the novel this was based on, Repeat Performance by William O’Farrell for comparison, and I’m glad I did, as the story seems to have been considerably re-jiggered for the movie.

   O’Farrell starts off with Barney Page, once a prominent stage actor, now a skid-row drunk, waking up in a flop house to find he has just murdered a one-time girlfriend, in a fit of alcoholic remorse following the suicide of his wife Sheila.

   Page is resigned to his fate, but on his way to turn himself in, he keeps running into old friends (including a gay poet affectionately nick-named William and Mary) who try to help him, and ends up fleeing from the cops, getting shot as he jumps onto a departing subway car and — and suddenly it’s a year ago, Barney is still a successful actor, married to Sheila, and he’s going to get to undo all the mistakes he made last year.

   O’Farrell can write. He can put across a bitchy theatrical milieu and a seedy flophouse with equal aplomb, evoke a desperate chase and a disparate seduction with commensurate suspense, and weave a tale of murder and melodrama (verging on Soap Opera at times, but teetering skillfully on the edge) with prose that keeps the pages turning very nicely.

   He also wraps things up with a fine sense of dramatic irony that had me closing the book with that satisfaction you get from finishing a well-crafted tale.

WAGON TRAIN – The John Wilbot Story. Season 1, Episode 37. 11 June 1958. Ward Bond, Robert Horton; with Dane Clark, Robert Vaughn, Audrey Dalton, Tyler McVey.

   With Flint McCullough unable to perform his regular scouting duties because of an injured arm, he and Major Adams switch roles. Adams goes out ahead on horseback, leaving McCullough in charge of the wagons. Little do either of them know that two factions among the settlers are still fighting the recently ended Civil War.

   To the details. Roy Pelham (Vaughn) is from the South, and he loves Harriet Field (Dalton), but her father (McVey) is a bull-headed abolitionist from Massachusetts, who refuses to allow her to have anything to do with him.

   Seeking comfort and a companion, Harriet finds a lonely man (Dane Clark) who is glad to recite poetry and Shakespeare to her — until, that is, her father begins to suspect that John Wilbot is really an alias for none other than John Wilkes Booth.

   Unsure if he is or not, the wagon train is about to split apart when, in the face of an imminent Indian attack, Wilbot reminds everyone of Lincoln’s famous quote, “A house divide against itself shall not stand.” Does he admit he is Booth? You will have to watch and find out for yourself, but his statement makes sure the train stays together.

   The hour (less commercials) goes very quickly, and even though it’s wrapped up in suitably enigmatic fashion, one is reminded that television at one time was written by adults, and that the performers were adults as well.

   Particularly impressive is Dane Clark’s melancholy portrayal of a man tormented by his memories and fully aware that he has no future.

VIOLET TWEEDALE – The Beautiful Mrs. Davenant. Frederick A. Stokes, US, hardcover, 1920. First published in the UK by Herbert Jenkins, hardcover, 1920. Currently available from many sources as a Print On Demand book.

   Why did the beautiful and mysterious widow Hilda Davenant choose to live outside Great Glentworth near a Thorpe, with whom she had done for all time but whose seal is indelibly imprinted on her life?

   Why did Geoffrey Thorpe, who was extravagant and indebted when poor and penurious when he achieved wealth, allow the lovely Lake House to deteriorate around him?

   Why when the presumed dead Mark Thorpe is mentioned does Geoffrey turn pale and cast “an affrighted glance” over his shoulder? Why is Geoffrey dominated by his housekeeper? Is there a ghost who wanders the halls of Lake House in the early a.m.?

   Surely some reader with more forbearance than I possess got farther into the book, subtitled” A Novel of Love and Mystery,” than I did.

   If so, I would be willing to chuckle at the answers as long as I don’t have to discover them for myself.

Biographical Notes:   Mrs. Tweedale has her own page on Wikipedia, which is where I’ll direct you if you wish more information about her. I’ll be concise here and excerpt only the following:

    Googling on the Internet will reveal much more about the author. In her day, she was quite a personality.

DECLAN BURKE – Absolute Cool Zero. Liberties Press, Ireland, trade paperback, July 2011; US, 28 November 2011. (Kindle edition available now.)

   Declan Burke continues to expand the limits of not only his own writing, but of the Irish crime fiction genre as well. His latest, Absolute Cool Zero, is the story of the clash between writer and his abandoned creation come back to life, a character who is willing to blow up a hospital to get published.

    “He just appears, as if wished for,” wrote the writer.

   Declan is trying to finish the book his publisher is impatiently waiting for when he is interrupted by a man he does not recognize, but who knows him. The man claims to be Karlsson, a fictional character from an earlier book written by Declan but never published. In that book, Karlsson was a hospital porter who killed old people who wanted to die.

   Now Karlsson is seeking another chance to be published and find closure. He has changed his appearance and his name. Now calling himself Billy, he wants Declan to rewrite the book, take Karlsson’s plans a step further, and blow up a hospital full of people.

   Declan humors Billy at first, as the two form the most basic of writer’s groups. critiquing the other’s suggestions. The mind games and disturbing discussions between Declan and Billy about love, family, violence, and survival slowly evolves into a surreal nightmarish struggle as both writer and character attempt to escape a past they fear could destroy them.

   Billy wants desperately to escape the muddled fate of Karlsson in the first book. He wants things to turn out differently between himself and Cassie, the female character he hopes to raise a family with, and who he, as Karlsson, may have killed in the first book (neither Declan or Billy know for sure).

   Now happily married with a baby daughter, Declan worries about what would happen to him without his family. They had saved him from that terrible time in his life when such monsters as remorseless killer Karlsson lived in his head.

   Each spends time away from the other. Declan with his loving family. Billy with Cassie and working as a hospital porter at what seems to be a very real hospital.

   Absolute Cool Zero is a fine example of comedic crime noir. As I was reading it, I was thinking of Donald Westlake and Parker.

   Absolute Cool Zero is also a fine example of Irish literary fiction. John Banville (Benjamin Black) describes Declan’s writing in AZC as “a cross between Flann O’Brien and Raymond Chandler” (on the AZC front cover).

   If you enjoy modern crime noir, especially with an Irish comedic touch, this is an author you need to read.

WHISPERING SMITH. Paramount Pictures, 1948. Alan Ladd, Robert Preston, Brenda Marshall, Donald Crisp, William Demarest, Fay Holden, Murvyn Vye, Frank Faylen, John Eldredge. Based on the novel by Frank H. Spearman. Director: Leslie Fenton.

   You can learn a lot by writing reviews, or at least I do. For example, I never knew there was a real “Whispering” Smith, and that he really was a railroad detective, among other occupations. You can read about some of his exploits online here at the Legends of America website.

   A writer named Frank Spearman was intrigued by the name and wrote an early western novel about a railroad detective named Whispering Smith in 1906, but his work of fiction and the his facts seemed to brush up against reality only on occasion.

   There also were three early silent films with Whispering Smith as the hero. Quoting from Kevin Burton Smith’s Thrilling Detective website:

   There was also a TV series on NBC that starred Audie Murphy in 1961, but it didn’t last long, only half a year. It is easily available on DVD.

   It was Alan Ladd, though, who played Whispering Smith in this movie made in 1948. While Ladd was notorious for being short, he also had the ability to command attention in a crowded room by speaking barely above a whisper. Or at least he did in the movies, and in this one in particular.

   He’s also a railroad detective in this film. His good buddy Murray Sinclair (boisterously played by Robert Preston, who does boisterous very well) is a rancher who works part time for the railroad to clear up train wrecks. When business is bad, he creates his own train wrecks. He has fallen on hard time, however, and in with bad friends.

   Murray has also married the girl that Smith had had a wish for, to Smith’s lasting regret, though he will never admit it, to anyone, and to Marian Sinclair’s regret as well (she being portrayed by beauteous Brenda Marshall). It’s this tacit love triangle that lies between these three old friends, as well as Murray’s taste for the good life, one that will (eventually) bring him to a bad end.

   I am not revealing anything I shouldn’t here, not if you’ve watched a few movies and a few of them happen to have been westerns. This was Alan Ladd’s first western, and the first movie he did in color. The stars are fine, the story’s passable, and you should have as much fun watching this one as I did.

CRAIG JOHNSON – Kindness Goes Unpunished. Viking, hardcover, March 2007. Penguin, softcover, February, 2008.

   This is the third Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire novel. He and his friend Henry Standing Bear are on a trip to Philadelphia. Henry is going because he has been invited to put on an exhibition of family Indian reservation photos at a museum, while Walt is going to visit his daughter Cady, who lives there.

   His daughter thinks she has met “the one” and wants to introduce him to her father. But Walt never gets to see her; he finds that she is hovering in a coma near death in the hospital after being attacked by an unknown male assailant outside the same museum that will host Henry’s photos.

   With the help of Henry, Walt sets out to find the person responsible. He discovers that the boyfriend is more than likely the guilty party; that he was a gambler and drug addict. But the boyfriend is thrown off a bridge to his death before Walt can question him, causing him to wonder if his daughter had discovered something about the boyfriend that would cause him to attack her.

   Walt continues to investigate trying to discover what is really behind the boyfriend’s death. Not as good as the first novel, but the Philadelphia locations feel very real and the writing keeps you turning pages.

Rating:   B.

       The Sheriff Walt Longmire Mysteries —

1. The Cold Dish (2004)

2. Death Without Company (2006)
3. Kindness Goes Unpunished (2007)
4. Another Man’s Moccasins (2008)
5. The Dark Horse (2009)

6. Junkyard Dogs (2010)
7. Hell Is Empty (2011)

   This is an annual event, held in November, and having missed the last couple, I managed to get into London last year [2010] for this one. First up was a illustrated talk by Rick Leary who was Computer Graphic Supervisor for the Guy Ritchie film Sherlock Holmes. He talked about how they recreated the banks of the Thames for the shots in the film.

   I was amazed by the amount of time and effort that they spent getting detail correct. The first thing he did was to get Victorian maps of the area from which to work. Panoramic digital photographs were taken from the high walkways on Tower Bridge and then existing Victorian building were found (some in Manchester) that were inserted to replace modem ones.

   As he said, most of the original buildings from that time that hadn’t been naturally replaced, were destroyed in the Blitz. A helicopter shoot was arranged, taking a great deal of time in these security conscious days, to film the Thames itself, but the day (in November) turned out to be so sunny that the footage couldn’t be used.

   In fact, he said, although they tried to use photographs of the Thames for the film, reflections in the surface meant that they couldn’t. He ended by showing excerpts from the film showing the final fight scenes on Tower Bridge, firstly with the green screen background as the actors grappled in the studio, and then with CGI imposed.

   It was an illuminating talk (in more ways than one) and I was very impressed by the amount of care that was spent in making the background detail authentic.

   Secondly came a 1949 thirty-minute television production of “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” with Alan Napier (later to become Alfred to Adam West’s Batman) as Sherlock Holmes. This was part of a series Your Show Time and was a fairly routine rendition which could be described, I suppose, as dated but enjoyable.

   Melville Cooper made a Watson straight from the Nigel Bruce School of Performing Arts. The series was sponsored by Lucky Strike which perhaps explains why host and narrator Arthur Shields should suddenly take a moment to exhale smoke directly at the camera.

   Another amusing moment was when, as Helen Stones started to tell her story, Holmes started to light the biggest curved pipe you could wish to see.

   The third item was “Four Beheadings and a Funeral”, a seven minute excerpt from “Treehouse of Horror XV”, a 2004 episode of The Simpsons. It was a Jack the Ripper style story (Jack the Rip-off?) with Eliza Simpson as the Holmes look-a-like, hindered by the Watsonian Dr Bartley. Other Simpsons regulars, including Marge as a flower girl, cropped up using deliberately exaggerated phoney cockney accents. An amusing sequence that I hadn’t seen before.

   Finally we had “Sting of Death”, a 1955 episode from The Elgin Hour, based on A Taste of Honey by H.F. Heard. The leading character here is Mr Mycroft (supposedly, though not exactly stated, Sherlock Holmes) played by Boris Karloff. He comes to the rescue of Mr Silchester (a self-contained, stuffy man superbly played by Robert Flemyng) when he is attacked by the bees of the local beekeeper Hargrove (Heregrove in the book).

   The book’s weakness (well one of them) is that there seems no rational explanation for Heregrove’s actions (assuming that his actions are scientifically possible, a large assumption) except that he is mad. The film follows the book fairly faithfully (except for the necessary shortening) and somehow the failings appeared less as they are more easily overlooked as the action moves on.

   Karloff was fine as the elderly retired Holmes and Hermione Gingold put in a sterling performance as the deliberately perky housekeeper. Another dated but enjoyable production, which linked with “Speckled Band above when, in his final scene, Karloff proceeded to light the second largest curved pipe of the evening.

   I know, now, having checked after writing the above, that “Speckled Band” and “Sting of Death” are available on a US DVD together with other, some less Sherlockian, material. I’m trying to resist but the temptation is there.

Editorial Comment:  The DVD set is easily found in the US at least, including from Amazon. Some of these films and TV programs are also available as videos on the Internet. A little Googling should turn them up without much difficulty.

COCKEYED CAVALIERS. RKO, 1934. Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Thelma Todd, Dorothy Lee, Noah Beery Sr., Robert Greig, Henry Sedley, Billy Gilbert, Franklin Pangborn, Alfred James, Jack Norton, Snub Pollard. Director: Mark Sandrich. Shown at Cinevent 40, Columbus OH, May 2008.

   Wheeler and Woolsey were a very popular comedy team in the 1930s, turning out some 19 comedies for RKO from 1929-1937, with the team’s career cut short by a serious illness that forced Woolsey’s retirement.

   Jim Goodrich was a great fan of the pair, but I’ve never been able to sit through all of one of their features. However, encouraged by the favorable write-up in the program-notes, I agreed to make another stab at appreciating their work.

   I am happy to report that Cockeyed Cavaliers, in which the boys, decked out in period garb but losing none of their contemporary edge, play con men who are taken to be the king’s physicians, dispatched to cure the ills of the Baron (Noah Beery), is a delightful musical, with director Mark Sandrich also responsible for several of the Astaire-Rogers musicals.

   His sure touch keeps the film consistently afloat, aided and abetted by a talented cast headed by gorgeous Thelma Todd and lovely and delightful Dorothy Lee, with veteran film villain Noah Beery blustering through his role as Todd’s lecherous husband and displaying an impressive bass in a couple of the songs.

   The score may not be memorable, but it’s melodious, and if I hadn’t seen parts of a number of Wheeler and Woolsey comedies that I didn’t care for, I would have been convinced that the team was very much to my liking, with their other films worth tracking down.

THE SCREAMING MIMI. Columbia, 1958. Anita Ekberg, Philip Carey, Gypsy Rose Lee, Harry Townes, Linda Cherney, Romney Brent, Red Norvo (and Trio). Based on the novel by Fredric Brown. Director: Gerd Oswald.

   The Screaming Mimi offers some kicking-and-kinky direction from Gerd Oswald, a cult director in the Jim Jones tradition, which is to say he showed a lot of potential in low-budget westerns and thrillers, and managed one classic, A Kiss Before Dying (1956) before drinking the kool-ade of network television.

   Mimi belongs to his Promising period, with a pleasingly straightforward (for the 50s) approach to homosexuality, bondage, obsession and amour fou, but it’s undone by a screenplay that seems way too limp for a movie about serial killings.

   There’s never a sense of momentum here, no feeling of progressing towards some resolution. Instead, events just seem to come along and happen in no particular order, then head off in any direction whatever, just sort of strutting and fretting across the screen till their allotted hour-or-so is over at last. A pity, because there are glimmers here and there of what could have been a perverse classic.

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE. Central Cinema Company, Italy, 1970. Original title: L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo. Tony Musante. Suzy Kendall, Enrico Maria Salerno, Eva Renzi, Umberto Raho, Raf Valenti. Based on the novel The Screaming Mimi by Fredric Brown (uncredited). Director: Dario Argento.

   The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Italy, 1970) on the other hand, is a certified wowser. The directorial debut of Dario Argento, who became something of a Name in Horror films, this is a garish, fast-moving, humorous movie about serial slashing, stalking, knifing and general mayhem set against colorful locations, played and/or dubbed by a cast a cut (sorry!) above the usual run of Italian imports.

   Fredric Brown got no screen credit for this film, and for years critics who knew nothing about Pulp averred that it was based on an Edgar Wallace story, but I defy anyone out there to show me an Edgar Wallace book with this plot. In fact, I’ll wrestle anyone in the crowd who thinks he can do it. No takers? I thought not.

   Anyway, getting back to the story, this follows Brown’s novel pretty closely, right down to the minor characters and bits of by-play. Argento tossed away the thematic framework of Brown’s novel, and he turned the hard-drinking loner of the book into a young married couple, but that’s a fate that befell many of us in the 70s.

   The fact is, this is a fairly faithful translation of The Screaming Mimi into film, and if not all it could have been. (The real meaning of the book isn’t revealed until the last page, and it’s truly harrowing.) It’s at least a fun ride.

BERNARD THIELEN – A Charm of Finches. Mystery House, hardcover, 1959.

   One of my many biases deals with books that the publisher requires the full front and back flaps to describe. Generally these novels should be shunned. Those who would snickeringly point out the generous length of my reviews and mutter about pots and kettles also should be avoided.

   My reason for reading this novel was the presence of an ornithologist as the principal character. There is a paucity of these, I believe, though Ann Cleeves is currently filling the gap.

   At the Latham Wilderness in Vermont, Joe Coogan, ex-Navy fighter pilot and Ph.D., is recovering from a disappointment in love, attending the Science Brotherhood Experiment there, and planning to do a breeding count of birds. When his former fiancee is kidnapped, along with her new boyfriend, a chap who has been investigating Soviet espionage, the Navy re-enlists Coogan and forces him to find out what the Soviets may be up to in the Wilderness.

   Spy novels seldom appeal to me — I except Ritchie Perry and Anthony Price, of course — but Coogan is a refreshing and not too competent spy catcher. It helps that the spies also verge on the incompetent.

   Interesting information about ornithology and rock climbing adds to the novel’s appeal.

Editorial Comments:   Bernard Thielen wrote one earlier mystery included in Allen Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV, that being Open Season (Mystery House, 1958), later reprinted by the Detective Book Club and in paperback as half an Ace Double D-419 (pictured below). Although it is also a spy thriller taking place in New England, Coogan is not the leading character.

   For a list of other collective nouns for birds, this page on Wikipedia should do. A “charm” of finches was new to me.