THE ACTRESS. MGM, 1953. Jean Simmons, Spencer Tracy, Teresa Wright, Anthony Perkins, Mary Wickes, Ian Wolfe. Screenplay by Ruth Gordon, based on her play Years Ago; cinematographer: Harold Rossen. Director: George Cukor. Shown at Cinecon 39, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2003.

   I had never seen this movie, based on a play by Gordon, which was in turn based on her own experiences. Jean Simmons was, predictably, a beautiful and luminous incarnation of Ruth Gordon (or of her idealized self; I don’t recall seeing pictures of the young Gordon, but it’s hard to imagine Simmons, who’s still gorgeous, aging into the on-screen persona I am familiar with).

   There was only eleven years difference in age between Simmons (b. 1929) and Teresa Wright (b. 1918), but Simmons caught all the fragile turbulence of late adolescence, and Wright had the dramatic weight to carry her role as Ruth Gordon’s mother.

   Spencer Tracy was superb as the father whose ambitions for his daughter were so clearly at odds with her ambitions, and Anthony Perkins, in a role as Simmons’ suitor that he seemed to inhabit effortlessly, made his film debut. A distinguished set of performances, with direction and cinematography to match.

   Simmons captivated the audience in her interview, displaying an intelligence and beauty that characterized her on-screen persona. One of the memorable Cinecon appearances of recent years.

Editorial Note:   As has been pointed out in the comments, Walter’s review was written in 2003, and Jean Simmons, alas, is no longer with us. She died in 2010.

CARTER BROWN – The Stripper. Signet S1981, paperback original, 1st printing, August 1961.

   She’s billed as Deadpan Delores, the girl who says it all from the neck down. Yes, indeed, she could easily provoke an interesting evening of intimate conversation. Lieutenant Al Wheeler unfortunately has a one-track mind and wants only to read between the lines.

   What it’s about, if it matters, is a suspicious suicide, a lonely-hearts club and a strip joint. It’d be unworthy of anyone to compare Wheeler’s activities to anything resembling actual police procedure, but if you like your detective fiction filled with incessant wisecracks and incredibly sexy dames, The Stripper might serve to soothe that ache in the mushy part of your mind.        (Rating: C)

NOTE:   Geoff Bradley has reviewed both the book and the musical comedy based on it on this blog. (Follow the links.)

AWAKE. NBC. 20th Century Fox Television. “Pilot.” 01 March 2012, Thursday at 10pm (Eastern). Cast: Jason Isaacs as Detective Michael Britten, Laura Allen as Hannah, Dylan Minnette as Rex, Steve Harris as Det. Freeman, Wilmer Valderrama as Det. Vega, Cherry Jones as Dr. Evans, B.D. Wong as Dr. John Lee, Michaela McManus as Tara. Written and created by Kyle Killen. Directed By David Slade. Free sneak preview available at NBC.com, Hulu.com, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and other streaming and downloading services.

   Detective Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs, Case Histories) was driving one night, his wife and son with him in the car. For reasons unknown the car goes off a cliff and crashes. Now Michael has two lives, one where his wife is alive and his son is dead, and the other where his son is alive and his wife is dead.

   We see him with his wife Hannah (Laura Allen, Terriers) who is trying hard to accept and move on from the death of their son. At work, his partner Det. Freeman (Steve Harris, The Practice) is reassigned and Det. Vega (Wilmer Valderrama, That 70’s Show) is made his new partner. His superiors force Michael to see therapist Dr Lee (B.D. Wong, Law & Order: SVU). His new case has him trying to catch a serial killer who poses for security cameras. Back home he falls asleep next to his wife.

   He wakes alone. He walks down the hallway of his home and greets his very alive son. In this life, his wife is dead. Freeman continues to work with him and Vega remains a patrolman. His superiors force him to see therapist Dr. Evans (Cherry Jones, 24). The case here is a kidnapped child.

   The characters in the two worlds seem to be opposites: the wife versus the son, the inexperienced new partner versus the experienced partner, the gruff male shrink versus the sweet female shrink.

   Unexplainably, the crimes connect as Michael finds clues in one life that leads to the solution of the crime in his other life.

   Each therapist tries to convince him that his or her world is the real one and that he needs to accept the death of the loved one in his “dream” world.

   Those who enjoy procedural TV drama should enjoy the double dose every week. Those who enjoy series with deeper mysteries running through the background will find much to speculate about.

   Why did he crash? Why did they find alcohol in his bloodstream after the crash when he hadn’t had a drink that night? Which life is real? Does either world exist beyond Michael?

   Why did both of his partners have life changing events happen to them, yet see those events as they related to Michael? When Michael woke and could not find his wife or son, why did he freak out?

   Can Michael survive living two lives? Given a chance to live life with his wife and his son, Michael sees no reason to accept the death of either. Except his wife and son can’t move on and start a new life without Michael losing one of them.

   Time will tell how long show creator Kyle Killen (Lone Star) and the writers can keep this premise interesting, but this episode is worth watching.

THERE AIN’T NO JUSTICE. Associated British Films, 1939. Jimmy Hanley, Edward Rigby, Mary Clare, Phyllis Stanley, Edward Chapman, Jill Furse, Richard Ainley, Michael Wilding, Nan Hopkins. Screenplay: James Curtis, based on his own novel. Director: Pen Tennyson.

   I don’t watch boxing movies, not even if they’re nominated for Oscars or other awards, or even if they win. That has nothing to do with boxing, per se. I don’t watch sports movies of any kind. Well, maybe baseball, but that’s because I like baseball.

   Call it prejudice if you want, but it has nothing to do with sports movies. I don’t read sports fiction either, not even baseball. There’s nothing the screenwriter of a sports movie can make up that can match (ever) the kinds of things that are reported on every day in the sports section of your daily newspaper, the kinds of things that if you read them as fiction, you’d say, Nah, that’d never happen. But they do, and as often as not, they just did.

   No matter. Here I am reporting on a boxing movie I saw the other night, and after a slow start, I actually enjoyed it. Surprised me, I tell you that.

   Jimmy Hanley is the star. Later on he became a big name in British TV, or so I’m told, but in 1939 he was still a lad. A good-looking, boy-next-door sort of fellow, maybe not the sharpest guy in the neighborhood, but not the dumbest, either.

   In order to win the hand of fair maiden (Jill Furse) he quits his job as an auto mechanic to become a boxer. The money’s better, for one thing, and of course there’s a small bit of fame to go with it, which a cocky young lad wouldn’t mind having, but in 1939, times were tough.

   The problem is, well, boxing is a sport not particularly noted for the honesty of the guys running it, and Tommy Mutch’s big mistake is signing up with a promoter as crooked as they come — the kind of guy that gives snakes in the grass a bad name.

   Which is almost, but not quite, all I need to tell you, but I am going to tell you one more thing, and that’s that Tommy’s would-be girl friend sees one boxing match and wants nothing more to do with him nor his new found profession. Even the cockiest guy in the world would find his world upside down, and Tommy is no different from the rest.

   Let me insert a word about Jill Furse about here. She’s a frail beauty, a mere wisp of a girl, the kind that some men dream about, not only Tommy. She might have had a long successful career in films, but she didn’t. She appeared a stage play that was telecast by the BBC as a special production in 1938, had a small role in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, also in 1939, this movie, and that was it. She died in 1944 soon after giving birth to her second child. There ain’t no justice, that’s for sure.

   In any case, let me end this review by reminding you of the old joke about going to a fight and a hockey game broke out. In There Ain’t No Justice the movies ends with a boxing match in which a fight breaks out. I’ve never seen such a fight, and I’ll bet you haven’t either.

ANDREW YORK – The Fascinator. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hardcover, 1975; Berkley, US, paperback, 1976. First published in the UK by Hutchinson, hardcover, 1975; Arrow, UK, paperback, 1977.

   James Bond is not dead. It’s taken me a while to discover it, but Jonas Wilde, with many years of service to British Intelligence already behind him, is the logical successor.

   He’s not as flamboyant a character perhaps, but Wilde is very much a deadly adversary, and he possesses quite the same remarkable fascination to women. Trained agents they may be, but soon enough they become sexual objects to be toyed with as well. Fascinating.

   Actually he’s retired at the beginning of this one, fed up, torn loose, and lost in the soothing touch of Spanish sangria. A puzzling task presented by Israeli Intelligence under duress reawakens his faculties, however, and when he agrees to become the bodyguard for an Arabian potentate yachting in the Mediterranean, no amount of clever plotting or overwhelming firepower can sway him from the job he was hired for.

   He’s an indefatigable one-man task force, but after he’s trapped by an explosion in an underwater cavern with the wounded prince and his number one consort, all you can do is hold your breath during yet another attempt at escape.     (B plus)

[UPDATE] 02-23-12.   I did not realize it at the time, but this was the last adventure of Jonas Wilde, or at least the last one that Andrew York, one of several pen names of prolific author Christopher Nicole, wrote up about him:

      The Jonas Wilde series —

The Eliminator. Hutchinson 1966.
The Co-Ordinator. Hutchinson 1967.

The Predator. Hutchinson 1968.

The Deviator. Hutchinson 1969.

The Dominator. Hutchinson 1969.
The Infiltrator. Hutchinson 1971.

The Expurgator. Hutchinson 1972.

The Captivator. Hutchinson 1973.

The Fascinator. Hutchinson 1975.

   The first of the paperback covers was from Lancer. The others shown were published by Berkley. One of the covers has a #1 on it, suggesting that they were trying to ride the “men’s adventure” bandwagon started with Don Pendelton’s “Executioner” series for Pinnacle. To go along this theory, some of the books have “Jonas Wilde: Eliminator” across the top of the covers.

GEORGE BELLAIRS – Corpse at the Carnival. Gifford, UK, hardcover, 1958. Penguin, paperback, 1964. No US edition.

   Superintendent Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is flying to the Isle of Man for a vacation with his friend, the Rev. Caesar Kinrade, Archdeacon of Man. Littlejohn had just attended an international police conference in Dublin where he had been asked to lecture on his methods. The other attendees had been shocked to discover he had none.

   Nonetheless, the local C.I.D. hasten to get him involved in the strange murder of a man known as Uncle Fred, whose last names were, depending on where he was, Snook, Snowball, and Boycott. Somebody stabbed Uncle Fred, and he died on the Douglas promenade.

   This is another boarding-house mystery, with all the oddball characters generated by that locale. Interesting also is the Information about the Isle of Man, which Littlejohn doesn’t get to see enough of.

   Despite his lack of method, though, he does discover who killed the multi-named Uncle Fred in a leisurely but fascinating investigation.

Bio-Bibliographic Data:   Quoting from the Fantastic Fiction website:

   You’ll also find a list of titles there, along with loads of cover images.

MICHAEL ALLEGRETTO – Blood Stone. Scribner’s, hardcover, 1988. Avon, paperback, 1990.

   Michael Allegretto’s second about Denver private eye Jacob Lomax (the first was Death on the Rocks, which I missed) is Blood Stone.

   I liked this quite a lot: the narrative moves, the plot is sound, and Allegretto has a nice ear for dialogue. Lloyd Fontaine, a burned-out drunk of a private investigator, asks Lomax for help. Lloyd is he’s still on the trail of millions in jewelry stolen twenty years earlier.

   Jake doesn’t take Fontaine seriously — until he finds Lloyd tortured and dead. To complicate matters, Jake’s nemesis in the cops thinks this is the chance he’s long lusted after to put Jake away. The man convicted in the robbery has just been released from prison, and all manner of greedy nasties have gathered for the kill.

   You’ll enjoy this.

       The Jacob Lomax series —

1. Death on the Rocks (1987)    [Nominated for the 1988 Anthony and Macavity Awards; winner of the Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel]

2. Blood Stone (1988)
3. The Dead of Winter (1989)
4. Blood Relative (1992)
5. Grave Doubt (1995)

    Jake Lomax was also in a handful of short stories, including “The Bookie’s Daughter,” which appears in Justice For Hire: The Fourth Private Eye Writers of America Anthology (1990)

JEAN POTTS – The Diehard. Scribner’s, hardcover, 1956. Dell 982, paperback, 1958.

   I picked up this book on a whim and found it — well, not completely successful, but such a unique blend of the clichéd and quirky that I suspect it will stay in my increasingly erratic memory long after better books have gone their way.

   Before we even start Diehard, we know who’s going to be murdered — I mean that literally, it’s written on the cover: “LEW MORGAN, INEVITABLY, WILL DIE.” Such things are the implicit heart of most mysteries, so I’m not giving away any trade secrets here, but Potts take us on an unusual course: Not “who done it?” but “who will do it?”

   Said Lew Morgan is a small-town magnate who owns the local factory and controls the bank—egotistical and insensitive, the archetypal victim-in-a-murder-mystery. His wife has just died, he’s preparing to marry his patient mistress, and his doddering old aunt keeps seeing omens of his imminent death. Now is that a potential corpse or isn’t it?

   Not content with creating the quintessential chalk-outline-to-be, Potts provides a cast of supporting characters perched not-too-steadily on the brink of mayhem: embittered daughter, weakling son, envious friend, and an avaricious daughter-in-law with a murderous lover. There’s also a drunken beautician Lew knocked up years ago, then ran out of town, and it seems she likes to get soused and brood over old grudges. You couldn’t find so many suspects outside a CLUE game!

   As the story spins out over the course of a day or so, Potts turns the screws, seeming to delight in piling one murder-mystery cliché on another, into an impressive house of carnage. It turns out Lew plans to force his envious friend out of business, then go on a remote fishing trip with him. It also looks like he’s going to ruin his bitter daughter’s one chance for love, publicly disgrace his weakling son, and file criminal charges on his daughter-in-law and her lover. As for the drunken beautician, well, he’s thinking about raising their daughter as his own….

   Any one of these would have been (and has been, no doubt) the plot or sub-plot of many a mystery, so perhaps there’s nothing terribly original in The Diehard except Potts’ evident delight in playing with the conventions of the form. I have to say I figured out who-would-do-it long before the end, and somehow I perversely kept hoping the likeable bastard would cheat his fate, but…. Well, read it and see. You won’t be disappointed.

Editorial Comment: Jean Potts, who has fourteen books listed in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, is little known today. She was, however, an Edgar winner for her first book, Go, Lovely Rose (1954), and several years later her novel The Evil Wish (1962) was nominated in the category of Best Novel.

JOSEPH COMMINGS – Banner Deadlines: The Impossible Files of Senator Brooks U. Banner. Crippen & Landru: The Lost Classics Series, 2004. Short story collection; hardcover/trade paperback. Edited and introduced by Robert Adey; memoir by Edward D. Hoch.

   Banner Deadlines is a fine collection of impossible crime short stories by one of the largely neglected masters of the form.

   The back cover blurb explains further:

   The bibliography lists thirty-two stories featuring B.U.B., so fewer than half are here: 14/32 = 43.8 percent. One hopes that Crippen & Landru can get more published in the future.

   An aside here about character credibility: In the days before ubiquitous television coverage, it seems possible that a person with Banner’s eccentricities of speech, dress, and behavior — not to mention that he does seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in pool halls handily defeating his opponents rather than working on the nation’s business — might indeed have enjoyed a long political career … but, then again, we are talking New York politics, right?

   In his introduction, Robert Adey informs us:   “In the early Banner adventures the cases brought to him, or over which he often seemed to stumble with an almost audible crash, were of the classic impossible crime variety, stuffed to the gills with locked room lore and traditional golden age ambiance.”

   Furthermore, Commings’s “middle period stories contain puzzles which are just as ingenious as those Joe wrote for the pulps, and Banner is as keen in the chase and as stunning in his solutions as ever he’d been.”

Adey concludes, “If your tastes in detective fiction run to ingenious puzzles, locked room murders and atmospheric settings, then look no further. Allow us the pleasure of introducing a writer (one of the very few) whose flair and inventiveness in the construction of impossible crime problems place him fairly and squarely alongside those Golden Age maestros John Dickson Carr, Clayton Rawson and Hake Talbot, and a detective who, by virtue of his personality, eccentricity and ingenuity, stands comparison with Dr. Fell, Sir Henry Merrivale and the Great Merlini.”

   Mike Grost also discusses Commings’s stories on his website here.

         The Stories:

1. “Murder Under Glass” (1947). “I suppose you’ll tell me that you know a way that a murderer can go through solid glass without leaving a scratch on it.”

    I’m working on it,” said Banner.

Comment:   A rich man is murdered in a locked room made of glass (yes, you read that correctly). Characters speak in forties-style slang. The story is flecked with many short but effective descriptive passages that limn the characters’ personalities.

2. “Fingerprint Ghost” (1947). “If you wanna solve these murders, Archie, you gotta grab every opportunity.”

Comment:   Murder right in the middle of a seance. Without wearing gloves, the killer uses the same knife that killed someone else and leaves no fingerprints. Like “Murder Under Glass,” the motive for the second killing is deeply embedded in the first crime.

3. “The Spectre on the Lake” (1947). “The way you tell it a phantom killer with a phantom gun crossed all that water without making a splash, got into the boat, shot both men dead, then went off the same way it came.”

Comment:   Banner is an eyewitness to murder, but even he can’t positively identify the killer — and where did the weapon go? Perception — and the speed of sound — are everything.

4. “The Black Friar Murders” (1948). “As a general rule, wimmin ain’t the stabbing kind; they prefer poison and other mild things that corrode a fella’s carcass by small degrees. That’s why we call ’em the gentler sex.”

Comment:   Banner gets invited to Thanksgiving dinner and is embroiled in a double murder. Quite atmospheric, and the story moves at a good clip.

5. “Ghost in the Gallery” (1949). Seeing the hanging corpse, Coyne crossed himself religiously and exclaimed, “Tis the divvil hisself!”

   Banner scowled. “No. Just a poor sap with buck teeth.”

Comment:   How do you kill Satan? Asians devised a method long ago, and it’s employed here. Banner’s solution is, well, elementary: “Every schoolboy knows that the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence.”

6. “Death by Black Magic” (1948). “He was strangled,” repeated Banner grimly. “While I sat there watching….”

Comment:   Murder in a haunted theater, but the “ghost” is real enough. This is a clever re-working of Othello, right down to the motives. Call it a “locked-theater problem.”

7. “Murderer’s Progress” (1960). “The bullet found in Wheaton’s head was fired from the gun left behind at the club. Then Wheaton was murdered with the gun while it was in my pocket!”

   Lutz said wryly: “Have you got an aspirin?”

Comment:   A game that goes fatally wrong, but Banner is up to the task. Envy and chess do not mix. As sometimes happens with Commings, two murders intertwine.

8. “Castanets, Canaries and Murder” (1962). “Not as much as a fly could have crawled across that space without being seen! How did a normal-sized murderer do it?”

Comment:   The Invisible Man commits a murder, and dead canaries, a volatile movie star, carrier pigeons, and a lens all figure in it. Banner’s simple technical solution reveals hidden motives.

9. “The X Street Murders” (1962). McKitrick sighed. “Times are getting brutal for us investigators when all a murderer has to do is send his victim a gun by mail and it does the killing for him.”

Comment:   Probably Commings’s most famous story. International espionage leads to two murders, the first one a marvel of intricacy and timing. An interesting variation on Christie’s “The Dream.” The author expands his catalogue of Banner descriptions, giving him “the physique of a performing bear” and comparing Banner to “an overgrown Huck Finn. Physically he was more than one man — he was a gang.”

10. “Hangman’s House” (1962). “If it’s suicide,” he said, “how did he cross thirty feet of floor without leaving any marks in the dust? How did he get the rope tied to that high chandelier when there’s nothing in the house to stand on? And if he jumped from the chandelier, he wouldn’t have been strangled — his neck would have been broken!”

    “Brother,” said Banner, scowling, “you said a mouthful.”

Comment:   Death, wearing a mask, vows revenge, and eleven years later exacts it. Banner is trapped with several others, one of them a murderer, who “will never forget the battering rain, the broken Mississippi levee, the thousand dancing candles, and the fifteen feet of rope.”

11. “The Giant’s Sword” (1963). Banner understood her. He understood people and he understood murder. Those were tears of frustration and anger. Whatever the reason for her grief, she wasn’t sorry to find Mark dead.

Comment:   A most unusual murder method. One might say the victim was involved up to the hilt … and who knew that how much mileage a Volkswagen gets could prove so crucial to the solution of any crime?

12. “Stairway to Nowhere” (1979; with Edward D. Hoch). “Whuzzat? Oh, you mean a letter laying out in plain sight is overlooked.” Banner made clucking noises. “Nope. I never believed that theory. It’s a lotta bunk. If you’re hunting for a letter, you’ll examine every one you see. As for hidden bodies…”

Comment:   A young woman disappears, as does a precious stone, and of course the two events dovetail. The crime here is something of a departure for Commings, as is the narrative viewpoint. The point-of-view character is not Banner but a young man emotionally involved with the missing lady. We are privy to his thoughts, not the senator’s.

13. “The Vampire in the Iron Mask” (1984). Banner paused… “I’ ll confess that this’s the first time I’ve found the solution to a murder by reading it in a magazine. Hah!”

Comment:   This one, with its sepulchral atmosphere and intricate jiggery-pokery, is ALMOST as good as John Dickson Carr on one of his off days. Nevertheless, the plotting is first-rate and the setting, essential to character motivations, is well employed.

14. “The Whispering Gallery” (2004). “The weapon wasn’t held in the normal position at all. The guy with the gun must have been nine feet off the floor — and upside-down!”

    “Police headquarters!… Send some boys over to Cagliostro Court to hunt for a man who’s missing in his own house.”

Comment:   When a spiritualist debunker vanishes, a few people hovering around are highly motivated to see him stay vanished. A 3,000-year-old papyrus, a portrait with a bullet hole, a pack of tarot cards, a suave magician, an under-age bride, an albino policeman, and a body frozen in ice all figure in the mix.

   Banner sorts it all out while practicing his own peculiar brand of magic. This is “the first publication — ever — of this story, one of only two previously unpublished Banner short stories of impossible crime.”

BEDELIA. British National Films, 1946. Margaret Lockwood, Ian Hunter, Barry K. Barnes, Anne Crawford, Beatrice Varley, Louise Hampton, Jill Esmond. Co-screenwriter: Vera Caspary (with Herbert Victor and Isadore Goldsmith) based on her novel of the same title. Director: Lance Comfort.

   I’m not sure if anyone could review this film without giving away more of the plot than you’d like to know – certainly more than I’d care to read myself – so take this as a [WARNING] that there’s a good strong possibility I may cross some sort of line you’d rather not have crossed, as far as you’re concerned.   (Personally I like to know as little about a movie I’m watching or a book I’m reading as I can get away with.)

   In one sense this is a straightforward and relatively minor crime novel, but if you have the chance to see this movie, I am willing to wager that you will agree that this is not so.

   We quickly learn that Margaret Lockwood’s character has just married Ian Hunter’s character, Charles Carrington. She’s young and beautiful; he’s an older, well-established type. Not exactly rich, but well enough off that we quickly know why she married him, or we think we do.

   Following her (and then them) around during their honeymoon in Monte Carlo with unknown intentions, however, is Barry Barnes’s character, Ben Chaney (on the right), insinuating himself into their life first with a small dog, then as an artist who’d like to paint her portrait. (She, Bedelia, does not like to have photographs of herself, but agrees to sit for Chaney to please her new husband.)

   We’d like to know that Bedelia is innocent of any wrongdoing, since Chaney’s persona is that of a sneaky weaselly sort of fellow, but she is far from convincing in the falsehoods she tells, and we fear the worse, even back in England when Charles needs to get back to work, where he’s assisted (and more than likely, secretly loved) by his secretary Ellen (Anne Crawford).

   Straightforward enough, as I said up top, but there is also a strange undercurrent going on in this movie. Eventually Bedelia’s lies catch up to her, but who will her husband believe? Bedelia, or the artist who’s also living under false representation?

   If you don’t sense what’s not precisely stated in the story line, you probably won’t make much of this movie, translated from Connecticut in 1913 in the book to England perhaps 25 years later. (The manor house snowed in during a storm makes one think of the standard cliche of the Golden Age of Detection, but no, that’s not the kind of mystery this movie is.)

   But there’s more to the story than exactly meets the eye, and as I said in my opening remarks, I hope I haven’t said more than I should have. And to their discredit, the other reviews I’ve read on this movie have almost always said more. I’m glad I didn’t read them before I watched the movie for myself. I enjoyed it.

Note:   To watch the first eleven minutes of the film, check out this YouTube clip here.