LUCKY JORDAN. Paramount Pictures, 1942.Alan Ladd, Helen Walker, Sheldon Leonard, Helen Page, Lloyd Corrigan, John Wengraf, Miles Mander. Screenplay by Darrell Ware, Karl Tunberg, Story by Charles Leonard. Directed by Frank Tuttle. Currently available on YouTube.

   Flag waving gangster epic on a familiar note. Ladd is tough slick New York gangster Lucky Jordan who has just survived a murder attempt orchestrated by his partner Slip Moran (Sheldon Leonard) when he gets the bad news his shyster lawyer Ernest Higgins (Lloyd Corrigan) can’t keep him out of the Draft.

   Ladd tries getting Annie (Helen Page) to pose as his needy mother, but when that doesn’t work, he is in the army and not handling it too well. Still he manages to meet beautiful WAC Jill Evans (Helen Walker) before getting thrown into the brig.

   Lucky isn’t going to take that lying down and slugs a guard and escapes, managing to steal a car and kidnap Jill along the way. Despite that, the two, as is always the way when a good girl is kidnapped by a gangster in Hollywood’s Fairy Tale world, they fall for each other.

   Once on the outside, he goes after his partner Slip, who he knows is moving in on his business and when they clash, he beats up Slip, who he discovers has secret papers he is selling to Nazi Spies.

   Helen begs him to return the papers and become a hero, but Lucky see dollar bills to fund him in his life as a deserter.

   When he goes to sell the papers back to Slip, Annie stops him warning him she saw Slip setting up an ambush. Lucky hides out with Annie, stores the papers in her place, and begins to warm to the old dame.

   When he returns from arranging another meeting with Slip he finds he was followed home earlier and the thugs have worked over Annie. Lucky, not being too bright right then, gets slugged and the Nazi’s get the papers.

   Don’t ask why they don’t kill him or the old woman. Maybe they are sentimental thugs.

   But Lucky’s two-timing secretary Mabel (Marie McDonald), knows one thing, the name of a flower, a rare tulip Slip talked about delivering. Lucky tracks down tulips and finds an estate up in Far Rockaway that has tours of its flower gardens. Along the way Jill has seen him and follows him.

   And yup, it’s the Nazi hideout owned by Miles Mander, where John Wengraf has been dealing with Slip.

   Slip arrives with the papers, but when he meets Mander in the greenhouse Lucky turns the water works on them and drops in through the glass ceiling to snatch the papers. There is some agile stunt work here, a little of it done clearly by Ladd, though not all.

   But now he can’t escape the estate, and Jill, thinking Mander is working with the FBI (she is perfect for Lucky, not too bright herself) is unknown to her a prisoner, and when Lucky gets rid of the papers will the citizen he planted them on call the FBI, and can he stall Wengraf and Mander long enough for the FBI to get there?

   No Spoilers, but if you have any doubt, you don’t know Hollywood.

   Though it is hardly in a class with Sam Fuller’s classic on the theme Pick Up on South Street or Mr. Lucky or as funny as All Through the Night, it is a fairly smart little film with a charismatic performance by Ladd as the usual tough guy with a heart, though to give him credit, his Lucky is far less sentimental than the same roles played by Lloyd Nolan and others in the same period. Even the ending hits a comically sour note.

   Lucky Jordan is nothing new, nothing special, but it is well acted and written all around, and I confess I’m still a sucker for those Patriotic speeches given by tough guys who find out just how much fun it is to punch a Nazi in the face.

   It’s an entire genre of Hollywood films with the good bad guy deciding he is more good than bad when it comes to flag waving and some of his former partners deciding they only see dollar signs.

   Ironically it works in so many movies, and here it has Ladd at his most attractive, full of quiet menace, easy physicality, and a hint of something wounded behind his eyes. Walker is beautiful and smart, Leonard always good, Mander and Wengraf make for fine villainy, and the Damon Runyonesque Lady for a Day business between Ladd and Page is satisfying without getting cloying.

   This is hardly up to the classic that Ladd and director Stuart Heisler put together in The Glass Key, but then there is no Veronica Lake or William Bendix, and at times this one is just a little rushed and half-hearted, an A film that is at heart a B with a little attitude.

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, November 1966. Overall Rating: 2½ stars.

MICHAEL INNES “The End of the End.” Short novel. Sir John Appleby solves a murder committed in a snowbound English castle. Method of murder quite contrived to make it appear suicide. (3)

Comment: According to the cover, this was the first publication of this story. Based on my short description of it, it’s one of my favorite sub-genre of traditional Golden Age stories, even though published way later, in 1966.

EDWARD D HOCH “The Spy Who Walked Through Walls.” Rand of Concealed Communications. Mystery of disappearing reports has a very obvious solution. (2)

Comment: While always solid tales, Hoch’s Rand stories have never seemed as memorable to me as those with either Dr. Sam Hawthorne or Nick Velvet.

FRANK SISK “The Face Is Familiar.” Crooked con becmes involved in bank robbery by his cousin. (3)

JONATHAN CRAIG “Top Man.” A gangland story based on an eventually obvious pun. (2)

HENRY SLESAR “The Cop Who Liked Flowers.” A detective story with heart. (5)

Comment: The highest ranked story of this issue. Apparently a sentimental story that caught my fancy.

MIRIAM ALLEN deFORD “At the Eleventh Hour.” Another execution story: no surprises. (1)

PAMELA JAYNE KING “Nightmare.” Clever short-short [2 pages] by junior high stoudent, about a girl in trouble. (4)

Comment: This was this issue’s First Story, a standard feature of the magazine. up through and including today. While I enjoyed this one, the young author never published another work of crime fiction.

PHYLLIS BENTLEY “Miss Phipps and the Invisible Murderer.” Miss Phipps solves a church killing in the last four paragraphs [of a 13 page story]. (1)

Comment: Miss Phipps was a writer of detective novels who kept stumbling onto mysteries to solve. Her earliest appearance was in 1937, but none of her many others appeared until 1954. Several were collected in Chain of Witnesses: The Cases of Miss Phipps (Crippen & Landru, 2014), but I do not know if this is one of them.

J. F. PEIRCE “The Pale Face of the Rider.” German artists painting save daughter. Weird. (2)

GEORGES SIMENON “Inspector Maigret Deduces.” First US publication. Maigret solves train murder from studying character. No real clues. (2)

Comment: This was, of course, Maigret’s usual way of solving crimes.

JAMES CROSS “The Hkzmp gav Bzmp Case.” The spy story is demolished by this inane nonsense. Title is code for “Spank the Yank.” (3)

VINCENT McCONNOR “Pauline or Denise.” Murder of his two sisters leaves playboy trapped in asylum. Distinctly French. (4)

HOLLY ROTH “The Game’s the Thing.” An interesting anticipation of Dr. Berne, but story may be overshadowed. (3)

Comment: Dr. Berne was the author of Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis (1964). This was Holly Roth’s last published story; she died in 1964.

LAWRENCE TREAT “M As in Mugged.” Lieutenant Decker’s 60th birthday. A comparison of present and past police methods, with experience the key factor. (1)

TARZAN #254. DC Comics, October 1976. Story: Gerry Conway & David Anthony Kraft, based on the novel Tarzan the Untamed, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Cover and interior pencils: José Luis Garcia-Lopez. Inks: Frank Springer.

   When I was much younger than I am now, it was Dell Comics that published the Tarzan comic books, and I devoured them from cover to cover. (And if memory serves me correctly, it was Lex Barker whose photo was on most of them.) I don’t remember reading them by the time Gold Key took over from Dell, but I do remember buying the first issue that DC did, which was in April 1972. DC kept the numbering sequence going, beginning with #207.

   This issue, #254, was part of a seven-issue sequence in which Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel Tarzan the Untamed (McClurg, 1920) was adapted to comic book form. The novel, one I don’t remember ever reading, was somewhat controversial in that Germans were the evil (dastardly) villains in the story, and ERB’s popularity dropped drastically in that country.

   That Tarzan believes Jane is dead, having been killed by German mercenaries, is the principal if not overriding factor in the tale. Obviously issue jumps right into the story, with Tarzan tied at the stake, alongside British aviator Lt. Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick, about to be burned and eaten by a tribe of cannibals. To their rescue, however, comes Fraulein Bertha Kritcher and a band of Great Apes, into whose custody Tarzan had recently placed her.

   This in spite of the fact that Tarzan hated all Germans, whom as mentioned above, Tarzan blamed for the death of his wife. Now if you have read Tarzan the Untamed, you will know this follows the novel very closely, perhaps only exaggerating a little by portraying Bertha as a blonde goddess wearing only the bare minimum of torn and ragged clothing.

   After finishing this particular installment of the story (if I have rest of the sequence, I do not know), I felt it was well done, and I wanted to read more, but the way it was told was disappointing. After the dramatic rescue in the first few pages, the rest of the issue was told in three separate flashbacks: how Tarzan ended up tied at the stake, how the British flyer’s plane went down and he was captured, and how Bertha became friends enough with the Great Apes to have them come to Tarzan’s rescue with her.

   I’d have to read the whole sequence in order to quibble any more about this than this. Adapting a long complicated novel and fitting it into seven 17-pages installments can’t be the easiest thing in the world to do, and if the writers felt that flashbacks were the only way to facilitate it, then no more grumpiness from me.

NIGHT CREATURES. Hammer Films, UK, 1962, as Captain Clegg. Universal Pictures, US, 1962. Peter Cushing, Yvonne Romain, Patrick Allen, Oliver Reed, Michael Ripper. Loosely based on the character Doctor Syn, created by Russell Thorndike (not so credited). Director: Peter Graham Scott.

   Though the movie has numerous elements of horror and some strong frightful imagery of skeletal figures on horseback, Night Creatures is not a horror movie per se. Rather, it’s an thoroughly entertaining adventure film/swashbuckler that neither takes itself too seriously, nor makes a mockery of the proceedings. Released in the UK as Captain Clegg, the movie is rich in atmospherics and benefits from very good set design, costumes, and lighting. Above all, Night Creatures contains a strong leading performance by Peter Cushing and a good supporting performance by a somewhat youthful Oliver Reed whose physicality is on full display here.

   Set in late 18th-century England, the movie pits revenue men against the good (and not so good) townsfolk of a coastal village in Kent where smuggling gin is a primary livelihood. Like Southern moonshine movies of the 1970s, the film very much wants you to be sympathetic, at least somewhat, to the smugglers. The authorities are cold, cruel, and not overly likeable. Holding the town together is the local preacher, Dr. Blyss (Cushing). He seems to have their welfare at heart. But preaching isn’t the only thing he does! He moonlights as the ringleader of the local smuggling outfit.

   As the story unfolds, it turns out that Blyss (Cushing) spoilers alert has a secret. It turns out that Captain Klegg, an infamous pirate who long outwitted the authorities and was presumed dead, isn’t buried in the local graveyard after all. Blyss, it is revealed, is Clegg and has been living under an assumed identity for all these years. There’s also a subplot involving a love affair between the squire’s son (Reed) and Blyss’s daughter (Yvonne Romaine). It works well and serves to humanize Blyss/Clegg.

   All told, the movie is worth your attention. This was my second viewing and I appreciated it a lot more this time. Cushing, because he primarily did horror films, never received the proper acclaim for his acting skills. This movie should prove skeptics wrong. He’s very good here, with the proper amount of cheekiness and deviousness. Captain Clegg is a memorable antihero. Good escapist fun with the proper amount of understatedness. Look for Irish actor Jack MacGowran in a small role.

H. E. WHEELER – The Third Attempt. Chief Inspector Stephen Rant #2. Herbert Jenkins, UK, hardcover, 1946. Probably never reprinted.

   When a wealthy widow of several years standing unexpectedly decides to marry a man who everyone assumes (correctly) is doing so only for her money, it gives all of her relatives and hangers-on who are living with her plenty of motive for doing away with her before she can change her will.

   And from the title of this rather obscure mystery novel, you may easily deduce that the third attempt is the one that calls in Inspector Rant to handle the investigation that follows. Accompanying him is Sub-Inspector Barry Ellingham, who serves him extremely well as his Watson – even though Rant sees no reason to confine in him very much.

   Rant himself is of an extremely miserly nature, a man who is called “Blister” behind his back by his subordinates, and in particular considered “a cross-grained old curmudgeon” by Ellingham. But the mystery is an interesting one that’s well-plotted with a clever twist or two. There’s not much to the story but a lot of questioning of the witnesses, but the characters are clearly delineated, even if their appearances in the tale are there only for the sake of the mystery.

   Most of Wheeler’s books fall into the “hard to find” category. The Third Attempt seems to be easiest, probably because it’s the last one he wrote, and post-war at that. Lots of equally little know mystery writers from the same era are being reprinted today. Based on this particular one, I see no reason why he shouldn’t be among them.
   

      The Inspector Stephen Rant series –

Death Takes a Ride. Jenkins 1942
The Third Attempt. Jenkins 1946

   Wheeler also wrote three novels about a fellow named Kandal Graydon, profession unknown, plus one standalone crime novel, all within the span of twelve years, 1935-1946, all published by Jenkins.

MIAMI VICE. “Milk Run.” NBC, 04 January 1985 (Season 1, Episode 12.) Don Johnson, Philip Michael Thomas, Edward James Olmos. Writer: Allison Hock. Director: John Nicolella.

   If by twelve episodes into the first season, viewers hadn’t realized that they were a long way from Cabot Cove territory, they certainly would have after watching this one. Murder, She Wrote had begun the year before, and while the two shows were never on opposite each other (that I know of), half the country, I’m sure, would have been watching that one, while the other half found a lot more to watch in this one.

   There’s not time for a lot of byplay between the main characters in “Milk Run.” The story begins at the beginning and plays through with no digression to the end. It is assumed that viewers knew who Crockett and Tubbs were when they started watching, and if they didn’t, it was certainly easy enough for them to catch up.

   The main story line involves two young boys who have come down to Miami to turn they life savings into real money. Unfortunately their plan of action requires dealing with a smuggling ring, with one of the two traveling to Columbia, picking up a religious statue filled with drugs, and bringing it back into this country.

   Which is not at all a good idea.

   While the skies in Miami are generally clear and sunny in this one, there is more than the usual sense of darkness and suspense than I think there were in most crime-related television series at the time. The setting, the music, the clothes, all mesh together in a perfectly choreographed tale of crime gone wrong that’s at one time very simple but also very complicated.

   Even better, it’s a story that easily be shown today with very little updating needed.

MICHAEL ROBOTHAM – When She Was Good. Cyrus Haven/Evie Cormac #2. Scribner, hardcover, July 2020; paperback, July 2021. Setting: Contemporary England.

First Sentence: Late Spring. Morning cold. A small wooden boat emerges from the mist, sliding forward with each pull on the oars.

   In this follow-up to Good Girl, Bad Girl, the mystery of Evie Cormac continues. Found hidden away in the hidden room off the bedroom where a man was tortured and killed, the question remains as to whether he was her kidnapper, or her protector. Although the press are still curious, someone more sinister is after the information, and Evie, while psychologist Cyrus Haven, plagued with monsters of his own past, teams up with Sacha Hopewell, the former Constable, who found Evie, to try to protect her.

   There are several elements needed for a memorable book and description/sense of place is one. Robatham has that well in hand— “The air outside smells of drying seaweed and wood smoke, and the distant hills are edged in orange where God has opened the furnace door and stoked the coals for a new day.”

   It is useful to have already read Good Girl, Bad Girl.  However, Robotham not only fills in the backstory of Evie, but includes new information. The way in which Cyrus’s background is conveyed is brilliantly understated yet establishes an important link. We also learn much more about Terry Boland, the man whose body was found in the house where Evie was hiding.

   This is a dark book. Robotham has written a clear and strong example of the impact of abandonment. Then he changes the pace with a surprising plot twist and an example of Edie’s ability as a truth wizard — one who can tell when others are lying.

   There are observations which cause one to pause and are relevant to today— “The real power belongs to the people who control information… Individuals who can suppress stories, fix problems, spin news, and plant false information.” —and make us think of current situations— “…is a classic sociopath, who seeks power and influence rather than fame.

   Where others notice the beauty in the world, he sees only how it could benefit him. Relationships are designed to further his own interest. It’s not about loving or hating but about duplicity and deception and his own corrupt lust.” Intended or not, and although the author is an Australian living in England, the story cannot help but make one think of current events.

   When She Was Good  is a complicated story with unique characters and a satisfactory ending. Slow in places, it picks up with well-done twists.

Rating: Good Plus.

FOUR STAR PLAYHOUSE “Bourbon Street.” CBS, 09 December 1954 (Season 3, Episode 11). Dick Powell, Beverly Garland, William Leicester, Clarence Muse, Ed Platt. Writer: Richard Carr. Director: Roy Kellino.

   In many ways this noirish 25 minute play has more going for it than many a shoot ’em up, ultra violent neo-noir two-hour extravaganza in full color does today. Dick Powell is in full hard-boiled tough guy mode in this one, as a piano player who has managed to make his way out of the quicksand life of New Orleans, only to return when he learns that the girl he loved has committed suicide.

   He blames the young hoodlum who stole the girl from him, and the only thing on his mind is revenge. Along the way he meets another girl (Beverly Garland) who pleads with him to give it up and take her along with him. Does he? Not a chance. He walks out, closing (but not slamming) the door behind him.

   Right into an out-and-out beating and a twist that maybe you will see coming, but I didn’t. It’s beautifully set up, though, and if you decide to watch it (video clip provided), I hope you agree. I liked this one.