THE WORLD IN HIS ARMS. Universal, 1952. Gregory Peck, Ann Blyth, Anthony Quinn, John McIntire, Hans Conried, and Sig Ruman. Screenplay by Borden Chase and Horace McCoy, from the novel by Rex Beach. Directed by Raoul Walsh.

   Rollicking.

   Greg plays a two-fisted seal hunter known as The Boston Man, just arrived in San Francisco (1850) with the richest haul of pelts ever, full of ambitious plans to buy Alaska from the Russians and stop their rapacious seal-slaughter. He also engages in friendly rivalry with a scoundrel called The Portugee (Anthony Quinn, playing the part like Chico Marx) and more serious pursuit of Ann Blyth, a Russian Princess passing as a commoner for the sake of the plot.

   Screenwriter Borden Chase once said the secret of his success was to write in a part for John McIntire, a character deliberately added, whose dialogue will provide background, explication and foreshadowing, and relieve the leading man of a lot of burdensome talk. In this case the part is played by McIntire himself as a sort of soloist in a Greek Chorus, and done quite smoothly.

   And in this case Chase also wrote in a part for Bill Radovich, an ex-linebacker built like a tow truck and entrusted with the role of Ogeechuk, Greg’s Inuit pal, whose function it is to break down doors and throw folks around—it seems The World in His Arms was originally written for John Wayne, who could do all the door-breaking and folk-throwing himself, but with Greg it just didn’t work. Hence Ogeechuk.

   This film could have coasted along on sheer charm, but someone felt constrained to fill in some kind of story. Something about Greg being disappointed in love, fighting with Anthony Quinn, getting blown out of the water and captured by Russians, but the whole thing is so hopelessly interlarded with fights and chases, it’s hard to care about the story, much less follow it.

   One thing does stick in my mind, though. I saw this movie on local TV back in the 1960s, and I distinctly remember a scene where Greg and his boys go about clubbing baby seals to death while John McIntire explains that what looks like gleeful Pinniped Slaughter (Clunk!) is actually a responsible culling (Boink!) of excess population (Whack!) necessary to protect the species (Smack!)

   Which is as may be, but when The World in His Arms showed up on my streaming service, those few minutes were conspicuously absent.

MICHAEL INNES – Honeybath’s Haven. Charles Honeybath #2. Victor Gollancz, UK, hardcover, 1977. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1978. Penguin, US, paperback, 1979.

   After not reading Innes for a long while, it comes as a distinctly insidious pleasure to learn that both he and his unmistakably erudite style are still in top form. On hand is not Appleby, in this his latest, but noted artist Charles Honeybath, who is filled with concern with the increasing eccentricities of an old friend and with the inevitable approach of his own old age.

   A retirement estate called Hanwell Court seems to be the answer to both problems, but unhappily it is not — and predictably the result is murder. The knobby humor tends to irritate, but full compensation is a worthy consideration of the artistic temperament, one well up to Innes’ standards.

Rating: B

ROBIN BLAKE – Secret Mischief. Cragg & Fidelis #7. Severn House, hardcover, May 2021. Setting: Lancashire, England, 1746.

First Sentence: It was on a breezy Monday in April 1746 that I received a letter from a townsman of Ormskirk.

   A letter from a townsman of Ormskirk sends County Coroner Titus Cragg, and his friend Dr. Luke Fidelis, to the farm of Richard Giggleswick. There they find Geoffrey, the farmer’s potent boar, has been shot. Several days later, they are asked to return but now it is Giggleswick who is dead; murdered. They discover Giggleswick was one of six people involved in a Tontine; an agreement where each member contributed an amount of money to be claimed by the last surviving member. The one person who did not join was attorney Ambrose Parr.

   One learns about a great deal about the legal system of the 18th century. This was a time when the accused had no right to subpoena witnesses, have their lawyers argue the case for them, or testify on their own behalf. This was not a time when justice was served, especially for the poor. The period is presented in stark and painful accuracy.

   There are a fair number of characters, several of whom, though relevant, are dead before the story even begins. One that had the potential for being interesting, Giggleswick’s daughter, is shuffled off almost immediately. Of our two protagonists, Titus comes across as weak and rather incompetent. He leaves his judgment up to the intuition of his clerk. Rather than conducting a full investigation, he is influenced by the opinion of others until it’s too late. Fidelis, especially for a doctor, is bigoted and judgmental, willing to cost a life.

   The period is well conveyed, from the descriptions to the dialogue which has a sense of the time without being uncomfortable. In general, a plot involving a tontine can be suspenseful, but the author waited late into the story before creating any real sense of grave danger. Although there are several twists, they aren’t effective enough to save the story.

    Secret Mischief  is a muddled, rather unpleasant take on And Then There Were None, with the protagonists being annoyingly weak, and the ending patently absurd.

Rating: Poor.

MAN ON THE RUN. Associated British-Pathé, UK, 1949. Stratford Pictures, US, 1951. Derek Farr, Joan Hopkins, Edward Chapman, Laurence Harvey, Howard Marion-Crawford, Kenneth More. Written & directed by Lawrence Huntington.

   Peter Burden (Derek Farr) is an army deserter, one of twenty thousand British men who live in fear of imprisonment even after the war has ended. After having served four years, the authorities denied his request for compassionate leave in order to attend his mother’s deathbed and he absconded in disgust.

   He is now working as a landlord of a country pub and is pulling pints when an old army acquaintance (Kenneth More) walks in and recognizes him. Corporal Newman is newly demobbed and, having found only low-paid work in the area, opportunistically blackmails Burden.

   Terrified, Burden flees again, this time returning to London, where a lack of funds and the late rent on a ragged bedsit force him to try and pawn his old service revolver. At the jeweller’s, however, two armed robbers arrive and promptly kill a copper, with Burdon believed to be part of the gang.

   His attempts to elude the police become more perilous than ever and a desperate escape sees him bounding breathlessly into the house of young widow Jean Adams (Joan Hopkins). Jean takes pity on the ex-soldier and agrees to help. The pair become determined to find the robbers, knowing only that one of them (Edward Underdown) is missing two fingers on his left hand.

   All the while, they must avoid the grimly persistent Chief Inspector Mitchell (Edward Chapman) and Detective Sergeant Lawson (a young Laurence Harvey), who prove to be quite able pursuers…

   Lawrence Huntington directed, produced and wrote this foray into near-noir which was presumably inspired by the many deserters still at large long after V.E. Day. His script carefully positions Burdon as a sympathetic figure (the name is well-chosen). The sad circumstances surrounding his desertion and the fact he had spent most of the war in combat is repeated at least once.

   To steer clear from presenting him as a coward or a chancer was undoubtedly important as everyone in the audience would have known soldiers or might even have been one themselves. Huntington also has his protagonist plea for a more constructive solution to the problem, particularly when so many such people inevitably turn to crime to survive.

   This situation, often forgotten today, makes Man on the Run interesting and slightly more nuanced than other chase thrillers, though it so solidly sides with Burdon that a more minute exploration of similar issues facing other such soldiers – for example, post-traumatic stress or the frustrating futility of war itself – is avoided altogether. There’s a sense that each man would have his own story, though nobody describes what those might be.

   Derek Farr is excellent as Burdon: pained, thoughtful, and reluctant to enlist anyone else’s help. It’s a shame he didn’t have more of a career as he could easily have become a Kenneth More. More himself pops up early on, well before his middle-class every-man persona, like an English James Stewart in tweeds and a pipe, would lead him to become one of Britain’s biggest film stars.

   The police investigation, meanwhile, is headed by the sort of dogged, pipe-smoking detective familiar to pictures of this period, with Chapman’s chief inspector wry and astute enough to elicit tension. It’s this quietly humming, will-they-catch-him? element which carries the film, particularly in the excellent first half, though a thrilling set-piece of the sort included in The 39 Steps (which also had a bad guy deprived of a digit) or North By Northwest is unfortunately even more elusive than Burdon himself.

   Particularly interesting for its glimpses of post-war life (from genuine London locations to a reference to radio’s proto-James Bond Dick Barton), plus some gently amusing moments, Man on the Run makes for an entertaining and compelling thriller which is much recommended.

Rating: ***1/2

PHILIP MacDONALD – The White Crow. Colonel Anthony Gethryn #2. Collins, UK, hardcover, 1928. Dial Press, US, hardcover, 1928.

   This is the second of MacDonald’s books featuring Colonel Anthony Gethryn. The much better-known The Rasp was the first.

   In The White Crow he presents a puzzle of the locked-room variety.  An elderly financier, clad only in his underwear, sits in his office chair with  his throat cut. The door is locked; the window looks out on a sheer drop; there is no way a murderer could have been concealed in the room, nor could the key have been turned from the; outside.

   The office boy has disappeared, though at first that seems to have no connection with the murder. He is an interesting office boy, however, with an  unusual sideline for bringing in extra money. Lucas calls in Gethryn, and A.G. works side by side with Superintendents Boyd and Pike.

   Not a whisper or jealousy or hostility; the police think Colonel Gethryn is just too, too marvelous. Embarrassing, their hero-worship is at times. The will is a puzzler, and some sleuthing on the part of Anthony’s brother-in-law catches a strange element there.

   Naturally it is A.G. who sorts out the lot of secretaries, lawyers, and night-club habitues, deduces bow the crime was done, and finds out whodunit.  Though there is good detective work done, the identity of murderer-in-chief is pulled out of a hat.

SIMON BRETT – Star Trap.  Charles Paris #3.  Gollancz, UK, hardcover, 1977. Scribner’s, US, hardcover, 1978. Berkley, US, paperback, 1981. Dell, US, paperback, 1986.

   This is the third mystery case tackled head-on by Charles Paris, an aging British actor who’s something of a tosspot, and a guilt-ridden womanizer to boot, but if you enjoy stories that take you behind the scenes of show business and can appreciate immoderate doses of clever sardonic wit, make it a point not to miss any of them.

   In this one he’s asked by an important investor in a new West End musical to investigate a series of suspicious accidents happening to some of the cast.  Midst the excitement and pressure of a hit show being put together, Paris’s purely amateur sleuthing adds considerably to the charm.

Rating: B

THE SAINT “The Careful Terrorist.” ITC, UK, 18 October 1962 (Season 1, episode 3.) Roger Moore (Simon Templar), Percy Herbert (Hoppy), Alan Gifford (Inspector Fernack). Guest Cast: David Kossoff, Peter Dyneley, Sally Bazely. Based on a story by Leslie Charteris. Directed by John Ainsworth. Currently streaming on the Shout Factory channel.

   This third episode in the long-running The Saint series starring Roger Moore is only a little better than average, but it does have a few things to note about it. First of all, it has Simon Templar living comfortably in a New York City apartment, complete with a manservant named Hoppy, straight from the books, and a homicide detective named Furnack, a friendly adversary on the NYPD police force, also from the books. He is also up against a villain whom he deems one of the “ungodly,” and from whom he extracts a particularly wicked revenge.

   The fellow, an urbane but totally crooked union boss who blows up a newspaper friend of Templar’s, really doesn’t stand a chance. When The Saint seeks retribution, he gets it, and the boss is thereby “hoist by his own petard.”

   Although he appeared in several of the Saint’s book-length adventures, this was the first and only appearance of Hoppy (Uniatz) in the TV series, and perhaps thankfully so. In this episode he’s played as an out-and-out moron with a mind full of bricks, spending his free time watching kids’ shows on TV and ogling girlie magazines. The fellow who plays Furnack, though, looks much the same as I pictured him, and yet he showed up in only one later episode, due to the fact that he’s pretty much tied down to his home base of New York City.

   So it’s fairly obvious that the show’s producers were still feeling their way with this one, only a short way into the series, I thought it was the best so far. (Number two in the series was reviewed here by me.)

This is me in my younger days:

DARK STREETS OF CAIRO. Universal, 1940. Sigrid Gurie, Ralph Byrd, Eddie Quillan, Katherine DeMille, Rod La Rocque, George Zucco, Yolande Donlan, Lloyd Corrigan and Henry Brandon. Written by Alex Gottlieb. Directed by László Kardos.

   An afterthought to The Mummy’s Hand (also 1940) with the same sets, music and extras. George Zucco even wears the same shiny fez! But the players somehow manage to carry it off.

   Alex Gottlieb’s script is nothing special, and the characters are strictly from boilerplate: Stuffy old archeologist (Wright Kramer) his brash young assistant (Ralph Byrd) and the assistant’s wing man (Eddie Quillan) icy aristocratic lady (Sigrid Gurie) just waiting to be melted, dance hall girl (Yolande Donlan) with a heart of gold and a jealous boyfriend (Henry Brandon) etc. etc.

   The actors are so accustomed to parts like these by now they slip into character gracefully and even with a certain amount of authority. Rod La Rocque makes an effective Police Inspector, up against suave master criminal George Zucco, and their wit-matching scenes have that kick that comes when two veteran actors strike sparks together.

   The plot also has a few unusual wrinkles. Stuffy old Kramer has unearthed the priceless jewels that usually turn up in movies like this, and Zucco wants them. In fact, he has already arranged a sale to wealthy collector Baron Stephens (Lloyd Corrigan – and come on now: “Baron Stephens?” Really?) with a cover story that Kramer is selling them under the table, and he’s even got some fakes to switch with the real jewels, when henchman Henry Brandon bungles the theft by killing Kramer — which tips off Baron Stephens that it’s kinda shady under that there table. But when Corrigan backs out of the deal, Zucco abducts him, with an eye to framing him for Kramer’s murder. So it’s up to Byrd and Gurie — who turns out to be Corrigan ‘s daughter — to find and rescue him.

   That’s a lot of plot to squeeze into less than an hour, but director Kardos steps on the gas and runs through it with speed that defies illogic in the plot.

   I’m not here to tell you Dark Streets of Cairo is an undiscovered classic. Bu it’s a little better than it needed to be, and fans of fast-paced B-movies won’t regret watching this one.

   There’s a new Jack Reacher in town. Physically, he’s got Tom Cruise beat, hands down: