HARRY O. ABC / Warner Brothers. Season 1, Part 2. (January-March 1975). Cast: David Janssen as Harry Orwell, Anthony Zerbe as Lieutenant K.C. Trench, Paul Tulley as Sergeant Roberts. Created and executive consultant: Howard Rodman. Executive Producer: Jerry Thorpe. Producers: Buck Houghton and Robert Dozier. Associate Producer: Rita Dillon. Executive story consultant: Robert Dozier. Theme: Billy Goldenberg.

   For anyone who may have missed them, previous portions of this multi-part coverage of the Harry O television series may be found here (Intro) and here (Season 1, Part 1).

   The first half of the season was over and Harry O faced some changes. In Television Chronicles #10, executive producer Jerry Thorpe discussed the changes. To please ABC, the series tone was changed to more melodramatic. But Thorpe made a deal. He wanted the show to follow the path set by the first episode “Gertrude.” That meant more humor between the characters. Thorpe wanted to take advantage of Janssen’s untapped talent for humor.

   In “The Last Heir,” we still have the same opening theme, but we soon see a hint of the changes to come. Harry is driving his car through the empty vast California desert … and the car makes it without a tow truck.

   Harry is hired (he charges $100 a day plus expenses) by Jeff Mays (Clifford David), the nephew of rich, ill-tempered Letty (Jeanette Nolan) who lives alone in the middle of the desert. The nephew is worried she is crazy and will kill someone at the annual family meeting.

   Once the entire family is there, their cars are disabled, stranding all in the desert waiting for the supply truck to make its weekly visit in six days. Then one by one, family members begins to die.

   Next, “For Love Of Money” features a new musical arrangement of the series theme song with a more action feel. The visuals and graphics for the opening have been changed significantly. Gone are shots of Harry on the bus, walking, and sitting on his stranded boat. Now Harry is running, moving in chase scenes on foot, by boat and by car.

   Harry travels to Los Angeles. A woman (Mariclare Costello) in Los Angeles needs help. Her family in San Diego hires Harry to act as go-between for her and her employer (Joe Silver).

   Her boyfriend (Fred Beir) had convinced her to “borrow” $25,000 in bonds from her boss’ safe. She wants to return them but Harry finds the boyfriend and the bonds are gone. When the employer discovers half a million dollars of bonds are missing instead of just $25,000 he calls the cops.

   While working on this case Harry rents an apartment in Santa Monica near the beach. His neighbor is a young beautiful stewardess Betsy (Katherine Baumann). Harry’s manners have not changed and he is blunt and grumpy around Betsy who mothers him. Betsy has a boyfriend Walter we will never see but enjoy Harry’s fear-inspired descriptions of him.

   The mystery, as with most of this group of episodes, is unremarkable with more attention paid to action and characters than clues. The bullet in Harry’s back disappears allowing for more fights and chases.

   This episode also introduces Harry (and us) to Lieutenant K.C. Trench and his quiet sidekick Sergeant Roberts (Paul Tulley). There is an on air chemistry between Janssen and Zerbe that is magic from the very beginning. The two feed off the other, not only as actors, but the characters do as well. It is obvious both respect, like and trust the other.

   San Diego’s Lieutenant Manny Quinlain was played well by the talented Henry Darrow, but both the character and the actor’s style were too similar to Harry and Janssen. The conflict between Harry and Trench gave the series its humor and made the series more entertaining to watch.

   Quinlain played straight man to Harry, while Trench had his own sense of humor. Trench was given this quality due to the underrated character of Sergeant Roberts. Roberts existed as a straight man for Harry and Trench, anchoring the scene as the PI and cop playfully had at it to the delight of the viewers.

   In “Confetti People,” we watch Jack (John Rubinstein) shoot and kill his drunken artist brother (Scott McKay) who was beating his wife (Diana Hyland). Betsy finds Jack wandering on the beach and brings him to Harry, who is still in Santa Monica for some unknown reason, and convinces Harry to help Jack.

   Harry calls the cops and takes Jack back to the murder scene only to find Jack’s sister –in-law and still alive brother denying anything happened. Jack had just been released from a mental hospital, so everyone writes it off except Harry who is worried about his client.

   It is interesting to compare how this melodrama handled mental illness when compared to the nourish drama of the San Diego episode “Shadows At Noon.”

   Trench learns as we have, “Orwell, you have a way of getting involved with some pretty bizarre people.”

   â€œSound Of Trumpets” gives Harry a reason to stay in Los Angeles. Harry learns they have torn down his San Diego home to put up a high-rise. He likes the people and the area so he follows Betsy and Walter and moves to a beach house in Santa Monica. Harry’s unfinished boat, “The Answer” joins him at the beach house. Harry finds a new mechanic, Clarence (Hal Williams) for his car.

   Lovers of Jazz music will enjoy this story of a former great horn man Art Sully (Julius Harris) just out of prison with a secret someone doesn’t want him to live to tell.

   Harry saves his life when Art falls off the pier. When Art disappears with Harry’s car, Harry is back using the bus and not happy about it. Some great jazz and R&B music highlight the episode that has a more active Harry fighting and chasing bad guys.

   â€œSilent Kill” was an “issue” episode, but the heavy-handed new style of the series weakened the message. Harry agreed to help a deaf woman (Kathy Lloyd) clear her deaf mute husband (James Wainwright) of setting a fire that killed three people. Despite a script drowning in pathos, director Richard Lang effectively illustrated the struggles of the deaf by turning off the sound and forcing the viewer to see through the deaf mute’s eyes.

   â€œDouble Jeopardy” is another “issue” episode that would have worked better without the melodrama. Harry witnesses a murder and sees a young man, Tom (Kurt Russell) leaving the scene. Tom is arrested, but let go for lack of evidence.

   In an ironic twist the female victim’s father (Will Kuluva) is an ex-mobster who was successful in San Diego for over twenty years before retiring to Los Angeles. The justice system he had manipulated to stay out of prison seems unfair to him now as he watches the man he believes killed his daughter go free. So he hires some men to kill Tom.

   Harry believes Tom is innocent and tries to keep him alive long enough to find the real killer.

   Exit Betsy and Walter to Hawaii as a married couple. Enter Harry’s most remembered neighbor, Sue Ingram (Farrah Fawcett-Majors) and her large dog Grover (who hates Harry).

   â€œLester” features our first meeting of Lester Hodges, wannabe criminologist and Harry Orwell fan boy, who would return in the second season. College student Lester notifies the police about a missing woman. His rich family learns of it and sends a lawyer to protect Lester.

   The lawyer hires Harry. Every clue Harry finds points to Lester as the killer of the woman. The lawyer is not pleased, but Lester can’t stop smiling. The last scene between Harry and Lester is a Harry O classic.

   In “Elegy For A Cop,” Manny travels to Los Angeles in secret to retrieve his niece (Kathy Lloyd) who is a drug addict. What happens next has Harry going after a drug broker (Sal Mineo) in one of the most dramatic stories of the entire first season.

   Howard Rodman’s script and David Janssen’s talent were the reasons this episode worked despite the fact it was created for budget reasons and recycled several scenes from the original pilot Such Dust As Dreams Are Made On.

   In this episode we learn both of Harry’s parents were dead and he has no brothers or sisters. All he has left is his friends.

      WARNING: SPOILERS. FEEL FREE TO SKIP DOWN TO EPISODE “STREET GAMES.”

   The new local drug broker uses Manny’s niece to set him up as a dirty cop that gets killed in a payoff. The broker shoots Manny and leaves him for dead with “bribe” money in Manny’s pocket. Before he dies, Manny is able to mail the money to Harry.

   According to the article in Television Chronicles #10, this episode was one of the first times a regular character on a TV series was killed off. The series Nichols (NBC, 71-72) had done it, and a month after this episode aired, Henry Blake would die in M*A*S*H.

   Poor Manny, he had to die to get a backstory. He was 37 and married with children. Both of his parents were alive, as well as his brother Jesus, unknown number of sisters, and his niece.

            END OF SPOILERS.

   In “Street Games,” a waitress (Claudette Nevins) at a place Harry eats hires him to find her sixteen-year-old daughter (Maureen McCormick). Mom has reason to worry, as her daughter is a junkie and now on the run after witnessing the local dealer gun down her boyfriend. What follows is the expected twists and turns until we reach a happy ending.

   Harry O’s first season offered a wide range of quality programs, from the comedy mystery of “Gertrude” to the nourish drama of “Eyewitness” to the character comedy of “Lester” to the emotional drama of “Elegy For A Cop.”

   Yet it would be the relationship between PI Harry Orwell and Santa Monica cop Lieutenant Trench that elevated this series to one of television’s most fondly remember shows.

   The ratings for the second half increased from the first half of the season. Harry O ending the season tied for 38th place (out of 70).

   So next: Season Two.

NOTE: Thanks to Randy Cox for a copy of Television Chronicles #10 and the article by Ed Robertson.

WITHOUT A TRACE. 20th Century Fox, 1983. Kate Nelligan, Judd Hirsch, David Dukes, Stockard Channing, Jacqueline Brookes, Keith McDermott. Screenwriter: Bess Gutcheon, based on her novel Still Missing. Director: Stanley R. Jaffe.

   One of the things that has always struck me in the classic “Damsels in Distress” (DID) films is the almost total absence of women other than the star. DIDs attract either psychos or sympas but never, or almost never, another woman.

   However, the revolution in social roles has not gone unnoticed by filmmakers, and a recent example of the DID film reflects some of the changes. Without a Trace, a film version of Bess Gutcheon’s Still Missing, based on the real-life story of the still unsolved disappearance of a six-year-old boy on his way to school, was promoted by our local critics as an entertaining, well-made film.

   In the face of overwhelming apathy, the film was held over for two or three desultory weeks and then shunted off to the Regency Square, where I saw it on a Friday night with a substantia1 family audience.

   Without a Trace stars British actress Kate Nelligan (who earned her credentials as a DID specialist in Eye of the Needle) and Judd Hirsch. playing the police lieutenant who’s put in charge of the investigation when Nelligan reports her son missing.

   As we were asked to believe that stewardess Day could be prompted into landing a plane [in Julia, reviewed here], so are we asked to believe that Nelligan is a university English professor who teaches a course in modern poetry in which she lectures to a sizable audience of over-age actors, in the kind of amphitheater that in my part of the university world is only used for science courses. (Does anyone in Hollywood have any idea what has happened to registration in literature courses in the past decade?)

   My wife pointed out to me that the quote attributed, during a lecture on Robert Frost, to Pope was actually from Emerson, but I found the slip (for which we should really hold the screenwriter responsible) engaging and a reminder that no film based on “real life” is real and that a British actress posing as a professor of American literature in an American university is, after all, only playing.

   (The British usually are much better at playing Germans than they are at playing Americans. The current PBS series, Private Schulz, presents a Germany completely inhabited by British accents. I’m looking forward to the episode in which Private Schulz, “disguised” as an Englishman, is set down in wartime England where he must play a German impersonating an Englishman. The dilemmas posed for the hapless English actor are mind-boggling.)

   In Without a Trace, Nelligan has a mother, a best friend, and some sympathetic women neighbors, but true to the demands of the DID film, she is abandoned by all of them, and at the moment of crisis she is alone, without even the male policeman apparently willing to listen to her.

   And it is at this moment, when everything seems hopeless and she’s almost ready to give up, that a deus ex machina is introduced to turn the situation around. And, since these are the eighties, the deus is a dea.

   In the Doris Day film, Doris hung in until the very end, and although the men are, at times, almost literally propping her up to get her out of the Perilous Predicament, the Star is always center stage.

   In this example of female New Cinema, the star is allowed to go off-stage during the climactic chase. This permits the Inferior Male (Hirsch) to redeem himself but also involves one of the most unlikely coincidences (“Daddy, let’s go to the park”) and extreme double-takes that I’ve suffered through since the days of the Monogram serials.

   Nelligan is attractive and probably intelligent, and Hirsch is fine, but this DID variation finally succumbs to the same weakness that plagued the romantic DID vehicles: implausibility. And the virtues of Without a Trace — the good cast, fine photography, and tragic but not unusual situation — only serve, finally, to expose rather conceal the threadbare plotting.

Previously on this blog:   DAMSELS IN DISTRESS, PART ONE (Julia, 1956).

Editorial Comment:   The author’s book and the movie are based on the true-life disappearance of Etan Patz, who went missing in New York City’s Lower Manhattan on 25th May 1979. On May 24, 2012, Police Commissioner Kelly announced that a man was in custody who had implicated himself in the Patz disappearance. According to a New York Times report from 25 May 2012, the police had at that time no physical evidence to corroborate the man’s confession.

   These are from the gray dawn of the origins of the genre up to 1913. Short story collections are included and a few novels that are only related (but closely) to the genre. They appear here in approximate chronological order, but not strictly so. Some books by an author are listed together even though they were published later.

   My rule on these was simple. They had to fit within the dates and I had to have read them. The end date of 1913 marks the publication of Trent’s Last Case by E. C. Bentley, recognized as the beginning of the Golden Age. A few toward the end were not published in book form until after Bentley, but had been serialized before and so fit in the pre-Golden Age category.

   Historians of the genre will note that Dickens was not writing detective stories and I agree, but many of these early books are direct progenitors of the detective novel as we know it and in their handling of crime and criminals important to the genre.

●   Captain Singleton by Daniel Defoe (the memoirs of a privateer, mostly the imagination of Defoe)

●   The Newgate Calendar by Anonymous (romanticized accounts of the likes of Dick Turpin, George Barrington, and Jonathan Wild)

●   Jonathan Wild by Henry Fielding (while the novel is satirical it could almost be a playbook for the career of Vidoq)

●   Caleb Williams by William Godwin (the first crime novel — and still a rousing tale of chase and pursuit as well as an early social reform novel)

●   The Romance of the Forest by Mrs. Radcliffe (many of the Gothic trappings used by the genre later on and all the supernatural is rationally — if not always logically — explained)

●   The Tales of Hoffman by E. T. A. Hoffman (he may actually predate Poe with the first detective story)

●   Rookwood by Hugh Ainsworth (most notable for the long section of the novel known as Dick Turpin’s Ride, a forerunner of Raffles, the Saint, and the gentlemen crooks)

●   The Bride of Lammermoor by Sir Walter Scott (a fictional account of an actual murder with some Gothic trappings, one of Scott’s Tales of the Landlord series)

●   Wieland by Charles Brockden-Brown

●   Confessions of an Unjustified Sinner by James Hogg (both this and Wieland are examples of the foundations of the psychological crime novel)

●   The Spy by James Fenimore Cooper (the story of one of Washington’s agents during the American Revolution)

●   The Memoirs of Vidoq by Eugene Francois Vidoq (non-fiction, more-or-less about the thief turned detective who gave us Dupin, Vautrin, Jean Valjean, Lecoq, and Sherlock Holmes as well as the modern police force as we know it — and the origin of ‘cherchez la femme’)

●   Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe (no comment needed)

●   The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

●   Memoirs of a Bow Street Runner by Richardson (again non-fiction, more-or-less)

●   Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (Fagin an early model for the criminal mastermind)

●   A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (international intrigue)

●   Bleak House by Charles Dickens (Inspector Bucket)

●   The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

●   The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (the first and still one of the best detective novels)

●   The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (Collins’ best book and with the wonderful villainy of Count Fosco)

●   Armadale by Wilkie Collins

●   No Hero by Wilkie Collins

●   John Devil by Paul Feval pere (the first Scotland Yard detective in Gregory Temple and an early prototype for Moriarity)

●   The Black Coats by Paul Feval pere (an early novel of organized crime)

●   The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas pere (all the mystery men in literature owe a debt to Edmund Dantes)

●   The Horror at Fontenay by Alexandre Dumas pere

●   The Mysteries of Paris by Eugene Sue (a huge crime novel by the Dickens of Paris)

●   The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue (the use of a Tontine as a plot device and an early use of the reading of the will for dramatic purpose)

●   Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (politics, crime, injustice, Jean Valjean — yet another Vidoq figure — and the implacable Javert)

●   The History of the Thirteen by Honore de Balzac (Vidoq yet again, here as Vautrin)

●   Monsieur Lecoq by Emile Gabiorou (Gabiorou was Feval’s secretary and took the name of his hero from one of Feval’s villains — Lecoq is the most important figure between Dupin and Holmes)

●   Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (still one of the seminal books in the genre)

●   Wylder’s Hand by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

●   The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Greene (one of the classics and likely her best)

●   The Trail of the Serpent by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (splendid nonsense recently republished in a trade paperback edition with extensive notes and introduction)

●   Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume (helped to make the cab of the title the symbol of Victorian London — even though Hume is a colonial and a terrible writer)

●   The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (most editions also include “Pavilion on the Links” and “The Sire De Maltroit’s Door,” both seminal to the genre)

●   The New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson (virtually at the birth of the genre Stevenson is already poking fun at it)

●   The Wrong Box by Robert Louis Stevenson & Lloyd Osborne (humorous use of the Tontine plot beloved by the Victorians)

●   The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (again, no comment needed)

●   The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

●   The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

●   The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill (an early and great locked room)

●   The Chronicles of Martin Hewitt by Arthur Morrison (the first reaction against the colorful detective as represented by Holmes, and good in their own right)

●   The Hole in the Wall by Arthur Morrison (a fine crime novel worthy of Dickens or Stevenson)

●   As a Thief in the Night by E.W. Hornung (the first Raffles collection)

●   The Experiences of Loveday Brooke: Lady Detective by C. L. Pirkis (early female sleuth — if not the first — written by a woman)

●   The Shooting Party by Anton Chekov (Chekov’s only novel and it’s a murder mystery)

●   Hilda Wade by Grant Allen (completed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an exceptional mystery of the chase and pursuit kind)

●   Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain (if not a detective story, good use of detectival skills)

●   The Old Man in the Corner by Baroness Orczy (still the best of the armchair sleuths and the final story still has a kick)

●   The Man in Gray by Baroness Orczy (an early example of the historical mystery)

●   Secrets of the Foreign Office by William Le Queux (spy stories featuring Duckworth Drew — fun in the right mood)

●   The Count’s Chauffeur by William LeQueux (an early and influential use of the automobile in crime fiction)

●   The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton (first and best of the paradoxical priest)

●   The Secrets of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton (ironically these were written almost twenty years before Chesterton became a Catholic in 1922)

●   The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton (the detective novel as parable and allegory)

●   My Adventure on the Flying Scotsman by Eden Phillipotts ( a novella really — Phillipotts is important both on his own — The Red Redmaynes — and because he encouraged young Agatha Christie to keep writing)

●   The Passenger From Scotland Yard by Henry Wood (murder, smuggling, and trains)

●   The Great Tontine by Hawley Smart (one of the best of uses of the Tontine plot)     [1]

●   The Rome Express by Major Arthur Griffith (this helped to popularize the idea of intrigue on a train)     [1]

●   Mr. Meeson’s Will by H. Rider Haggard (a mix of adventure story and trial novel with a somewhat racy finale)

●   The Red Thumb Mark by R. Austin Freeman (no sooner had fingerprints been accepted as evidence in court than Freeman proved they could be forged — not unlike the detective work that would break the real Sir Harry Oakes case in 1943 in the Bahamas)

●   The Singing Bone by R. Austin Freeman (the invention of the inverted detective story, the most important innovation since Holmes)

●   John Silence by Algernon Blackwood (the finest of the psychic detectives, everyone a classic — you may never look at cats or French villages the same again)

●   November Joe by Hesketh Prichard (fine tec tales of a Canadian half-breed trapper)

●   The Eyes of Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah (Carrados is a bit of a superman, but these are still great reading)

●   The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope (prototype for a thousand books of international intrigue to come)

●   The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings by L.T. Meade & Robert Eustace (an international criminal conspiracy not unlike those so popular today)

●   The Exploits of Valmont by Robert Barr (highly entertaining stories and an early forerunner of Poirot)

●   The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry (clever stories about charming con man Jeff Peters)

●   The Beetle by Richard Marsh (a mix of horror and detective story, in many ways second only to Dracula for genuine chills)     [1]

●   Dr. Nikola by Guy Boothby (the Italian Peril and great fun, Nikola one of the great villains in the literature)

●   The London Adventures of Mr. Collin by Frank Heller (Philip ‘Flip’ Collin is the Danish Raffles)

●   Carnaki, Ghost Finder by William Hope Hodgson (supernatural sleuth and some real chills)

●   The Thinking Machine by Jacques Futrelle (Futrelle of course perished on the Titanic, but luckily there are two good collections of this series)

●   Cleek, the Man With Forty Faces by Thomas Hanshew ( a great favorite of John Dickson Carr with an penchant for impossible crimes almost as impossible as the hero, but fun in the right mood and who can resist a Scotland Yard man named Maverick Narcom?)

●   The Man in Lower 10 by Mary Roberts Rinehart (this was serialized before The Circular Staircase was published — my own choice as her best)

●   Kim by Rudyard Kipling (granddaddy of the Great Game)

●   In the Fog by Richard Harding Davis (too little read today, a splendid little book, and be sure to get the edition with the color plates by Frederic Dorr Steele)     [1]

●   At the Villa Rose by A. E. W. Mason (without Hanaud there is no Poirot)

●   The Exploits of Arsene Lupin by Maurice Leblanc (the French Raffles and in much of the world a rival to Holmes himself)

●   813 by Maurice Leblanc (Lupin’s greatest case in which is client is the Kaiser)

●   The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux (one of the great locked room tales of all time)

●   The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

●   Stories of the Railroad by Victor L. Whitechurch (these tales of Thorpe Hazel are some of the best short detective stories of their era)

●   Uncle Abner: Master of Mysteries by Melville Davidson Post (the finest collection of American detective stories since Poe)

●   The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason by Melville Davidson Post (Perry’s last name is no coincidence)

●   Ashton Kirk Investigator by John McIntyre (McIntyre went on to become a serious novelist about gangsters; A-K also features in Ashton Kirk Secret Agent and others)

●   Prince Zaleski by M. P. Shiel (the last gasp of the Decadent era — unique is plot and execution)

●   The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (the first serious novel about terrorism)

●   The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace (the birth of the modern thriller)

●   The Romance of Terence O’Rourke, Gentleman Adventurer by Louis Joseph Vance

●   The Lone Wolf by Louis Joseph Vance (Vance’s Michael Lanyard would become the standard for most the gentleman crooks to come, and his adventures are still worth reading)

●   The Achievements of Luther Trant by Edwin Balmer & William McHarg (perhaps the first psychological sleuth)

●   The Power House by John Buchan (Graham Greene calls it the first modern spy novel)

●   The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer (say what you will — I love it — one of the most influential books in the genre — Racist? Yes, the Anglo-Saxons are all idiots as S. J. Perlman pointed out)

●   The Silent Bullet by Arthur B. Reeve (the introduction of Craig Kennedy the Scientific Detective, dated, but these stories show some energy)

●   The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim (the last of the great Edwardian spy novels, within the next year both The Thirty Nine Steps and Riddle of the Sands would leave if forever behind)

●   The Lodger by Mrs. Belloc Lowdnes (the classic novel of Jack the Ripper)

●   Fantomas by Marcel Allain & Pierre Souvestre (the newspaper serialization barely squeezes in — the surreal criminal Fantomas is unique in the genre)

[1]   The Great Tontine by Hawley Smart, The Rome Express by Major Arthur Griffith, In the Fog by Richard Harding Davis, and The Beetle by Richard Marsh, are all collected in one volume as Victorian Villainies edited by Graham and Hugh Greene

GAVIN LYALL – Midnight Plus One. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1965. Charles Scribners Sons, US, hardcover, 1965. Paperback reprints include: Pan, UK, 1967; Dell, US, 1969; Orion, UK, 2005.

   It’s a cold wet April in Paris, and Lewis Cane is nursing a drink in a small cafe when he is suddenly thrust into his own violent past.

   Cane, Caneton was a gunman working with the Resistance. He has old friends and old enemies, but luckily this is a friend, Parisian lawyer Henry Merlin and one time Resistance paymaster. The two men haven’t seen each other since the war, but it is no simple meeting.

   Like Cane Merlin is involved in the scheme to get a man named Maganhard from a boat off the coast of Brittany to Lichenstein, where he is to accomplish a dicey bit of business. A simple job as Merlin describes it: “A client wishes to go from Brittany to Liechtenstein. Others wish him not to go. Shooting is possible. You wish to help him get there?”

   Maganhard has been framed on a rape charge to delay him getting to Lichenstein for his tricky bit of banking so both police and his enemies want to stop him. Cane will have to take him across country by car.

   Cane takes the job and learns he will not be alone, a young American gunman is going with him. Cane’s job is primarily as the driver and to back the American gunman; Harvey Lovell, the third best in Europe, an ex-agent of the American Secret Service.

   But Lovell comes with baggage Cane doesn’t need:

   Part of the fun of any Lyall novel is his considerable know how about guns and the business of guns. He neither romanticizes nor fantasizes about them, but presents them as tools in a deadly game.

   And in Lyall’s sure hand even inanimate objects can become characters:

   Maganhard is accompanied by his secretary Helen Jarmian, and Englishwoman, and she and Lovell are soon drawn to each other in the increasingly dangerous journey through the cold wet French spring.

   It soon becomes obvious why Lovell has that haunted look. He has a problem with drinking, a bad habit for anyone, but fatal for a gunman.

   Cane finds himself with a dipso gunman, a dubious client, a cranky car, and a woman on a job that would be difficult enough in any case. And the enemy has already shown its hand, murdering the driver that delivered the car.

   The journey is dangerous and tense, and soon enough explodes in violence. Violence that pushes Lovell back to the bottle at the worst time.

   But Lovell manages to prove himself an efficient killer even drunk. And worse, the game isn’t as simple as it might seem and as Caneton knew, even if Cane may have forgotten, nothing is ever clean and simple in this violent world, and men play both ends against the middle with the dead bodies collateral damage.

   Nor can Cane get around who he is — or was, and as the violent conclusion draws near he finds he can’t just walk away, because of who he once was and what that meant:

   The ending is dark and powerful. Lovell has learned he can kill and drink, and Helen Jarmian who loves him, loves him too much to see how deadly that will be for them both. It’s the sort of thing Caneton alone can resolve.

   It’s a stunning moment, no less to the characters than the reader:

   Somewhere between Ian Fleming and Raymond Chandler, Lyall is one of the masters of the British thriller, combining the poetry of the Buchan school with the action of Alistair MacLean and the toughness of a Hammett.

   His books include classics of the form like The Most Dangerous Game, Shooting Script, The Venus Pistol and others, including the critically acclaimed Harry Maxim series.

   I’ll grant I’m not the least objective about this book or Lyall. He is simply one of my all time favorites, and Midnight Plus One the best of his many books. I was sixteen when I first read it, and I’m happy to say it holds up as well today as it did then.

   If you want to see the British thriller done as it should be by one of the best writers of that genre read this one. Read anything by Gavin Lyall. The man could not pen a bad book, and this one is his masterpiece.

Editorial Comments: According to Wikipedia, the film rights to Midnight Plus One were purchased by actor Steve McQueen not long before he died. If this is so, a great opportunity was lost — just my opinion, of course.

   For a lengthy overview of Gavin Lyall and his work, and an abundance of cover images, check out Steve Holland’s Bear Alley blog. (Two of the cover images found here came from there.)

   Steve’s essay, written in September of last year, ends by saying, “It’s sad to think that only one of Lyall’s novels (Midnight Plus One) is currently in print.” Has anything changed since then? I don’t believe so.

At 03:53 PM 4/14/2010, you wrote:

Dear Steve,

    I hope I am not asking too much of you guys again but I was wondering if you had a list of “couples on the run” films. Bonnie and Clyde comes to mind but perhaps something from the 40’s or 50’s? Or more recent than the 60’s? I like the urban man-on-the-run movies [see this previous post] and have seen several from the list already. Do any tales of a (possibly mismatched) couple running from bad guys ring bells? Again, I hope this is not too specific but I have great faith in your encyclopedic knowledge of cinema. Thanks again,

       Josh

          — —

   This is, of course, another follow-up to David Vineyard’s four Top Ten lists of “Man on the Run” thrillers posted here a month or so back. Once again I graciously offered to let him see what he could come up with. Here’s his reply:

   First of all, I’ll limit this to films before the seventies. Saves trying to remember all those bad road pictures of recent years, and I don’t have to include Stallone and Brigitte Nielson in Cobra. Since most of the “man on the run” films end up “couple on the run” at some point this could be a long list, so I’ll just list ones that come to mind fairly easily and hope some others contribute too.

   I’ll also include one or two “two men on the run” films, but the “two girls on the run” films don’t really start until Thelma and Louise, which I’ve already set outside this purview.

   These are neither chronologically or qualitatively ranked. And just so this doesn’t go on forever, I’ll skip team comedies like Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, and the “Road” pictures of Hope and Crosby since they often ended up with the boys on the run.

   I’m also avoiding the type film where the heroine hides the hero out, but they aren’t really on the run together at any point. I’ve also tried to avoid most buddy pictures — though many technically fit the bill. I’ve also included a few “groups on the run” films.

The 39 Steps. The classic with Robert Donat and Madeline Carroll handcuffed together. One of the brightest films of this sort and the model for all that came after.

The 39 Steps. Good remake from Betty Box, in color with Kenneth More and Tania Elg. Recently re-done for the fourth time for Masterpiece Theater and currently being filmed as a major theatrical release by Robert Towne for 2011 release.

Young and Innocent. Earlier Hitch based on a Josephine Tey novel and with that famous dance hall scene with the killer drummer in black face with a twitch. The innocent man of the title ends up on the run aided by the young daughter of a Scotland Yard Inspector hunting him. Very much a template for The 39 Steps.

Saboteur. Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane end up on the run together when he is falsely accused of sabotage done by Norman Lloyd. Yet another attempt by Hitch to remake The 39 Steps — it wasn’t until North By Northwest he finally got it the way he wanted.

You Only Live Once. Fritz Lang classic with Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney as the Bonnie and Clyde stand-in’s. Recreates the famous bank robbery sequence from Lang’s Spies.

My Favorite Blonde. Conscious comedic version of The 39 Steps with vaudevillian Bob Hope on the run with British Agent Madeline Carroll.

My Favorite Brunette. Early noir send up with Hope and Dorothy Lamour on the run from the law and the crooks after her inheritance. Alan Ladd’s guest shot is surprisingly the only time he played a private eye.

They Live By Night . Solid crime classic with Farley Granger and Cathy Downs as a reluctant Bonnie and Clyde on the run, based on the novel Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson and remade under that title.

Bonnie Parker Story. Somehow they did Bonnie and Clyde without mentioning Clyde. Dorothy Provine and Jack Hogan. What I remember about this one is that the car the real couple was killed in toured with the film.

Once Upon a Honeymoon. Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers in offbeat comedy as stripper Rogers marries Nazi agent Walter Slezak and is romanced by radio newsman Grant. They both escape after Poland and end up having to escape from Slezak and other Nazis who try and force Grant to become an American Lord Haw Haw. At one point Cary is imprisoned in a concentration camp and just misses being sterilized. From Leo McCarey who directed Going My Way.

Man At Large. Terrific B which has escaped Nazi POW George Reeves and Marjorie Weaver on the run in the US and contacting the fifth column to escape. Very fast and bright in the 39 Steps vein. Though just from the casting you can guess where this is going.

I Wake Up Screaming. Victor Mature ends up being hidden by Betty Grable, and they have to hide from police so technically they are on the run together. Great early noir film with good performances all around and an outstanding one by cop Laird Cregar. Based on Steve Fisher’s novel.

The Defiant Ones . Important racial film has Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier on the run from a chain-gang. Great film with Curtis surprisingly good.

Colorado Territory. Remake of High Sierra as a western from the same director (Raoul Walsh) and writer (W.R. Burnett from his novel), with Joel McCrea and Virginia Mayo in the Bogart and Lupino role, but her role in the chase is somewhat larger in this one.

The Redhead and the Cowboy. Well done western with Confederate agent Rhonda Fleming ending up on the run with cowboy Glenn Ford, who could care less about the Civil War until he comes face to face with choices.

Knight Without Armor. British spy Robert Donat, who has long been undercover in Imperial Russia, ends up on the run with aristocrat Marlene Dietrich in Revolutionary Russia, based on the novel Without Armor by James Hilton. One of the best and classiest pictures no one seems to have seen. Very bright, funny, and wonderfully staged film from the Kordas (Thief of Baghdad, Four Feathers …)

The Adventures of Tartu. Donat again as a Brit spy in Rumania at the beginning of the war to sabotage the Ploesti oil fields with help from Valerie Hobson. Light but enjoyable.

The Burglars. Jean Paul Belmondo and Dyan Cannon evade pursuit by cop Omar Sharif while planning big caper in smart fast film with a classic car chase. Remake of The Burglar with Dan Duryea and Jayne Mansfield and both based on a David Goodis novel.

Belle Starr. The outlaw Gene Tierney and Randolph Scott on the run while pursuing their criminal career. Great cast, but slow as mud.

Ice Cold in Alex. John Mills and Sylvia Syms as an ambulance team and girl trapped in the desert with Nazi soldiers — which side will reach them first?

Blindfolded. Psychiatrist Rock Hudson is hired to help agent who has had a breakdown after torture, but not told where he is taken to treat him, so when everything goes wrong he has to find the locale with sexy Claudia Cardinalle caught up in the chase. Mix of comedy and espionage doesn’t always work, but film has some bright spots.

Escape From Zahrain. Yul Brynner is one of five escaped prisoners along with Madelyn Rhue who’s caught up with them as they escape across the desert from a cruel prison.

Figures in a Landscape. Arty film based on Barry England’s novel with Robert Shaw and Malcolm McDowall on the run after they escape prison. Nice cinematography, but awfully pretentious.

Arabesque. Bright follow up to Stanley Donen’s Charade with scholar Gregory Peck and Arab millionaire Alan Badel’s mistress Sophia Loren on the run as they try to decipher a mysterious message in time to stop the assassination of an Arab prince. It’s no Charade, but gorgeous to look at a much fun with Peck and Loren well matched.

State Secret. Dr. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is secretly brought in to do brain surgery on dictator of Yugoslavian style country behind the Iron Curtain. When dictator dies Secret Police Chief Jack Hawkins wants him dead and he ends up on the run with actress Glynnis Johns. From Sidney Gilliatt.

Highly Dangerous. Margaret Lockwood is a British etymologist sent behind the Iron Curtain to find out what the bad guys are up to with bugs, but when she is tortured she wakes up thinking she is a the heroine of a BBC radio serial and American journalist Dane Clark her partner. Together they find the secret and end up on the run from dangerous police chief Marius Goring. Original screenplay by Eric Ambler.

Uncertain Glory . Arsene Lupin style French crook Errol Flynn has been caught by policeman Paul Lukas in Nazi occupied France, but together they hideout and plan for Flynn to surrender to the Gestapo instead of real saboteur to save hostages about to be executed — but will Flynn go through with it, or is it just a ploy to escape the guillotine? Screenplay by Max Brand.

Torn Curtain. American defector Paul Newman and girl friend Julie Andrews on the run behind the Iron Curtain when his real mission is revealed. Disappointing Hitchcock film, but the murder of the East German agent in the farm house is a classic piece of Hitchcock.

This Gun For Hire. Alan Ladd is assassin Raven on the run with undercover agent and magician Veronica Lake while her cop boyfriend Robert Preston hunts them as Ladd avenges the double-cross planned by traitor Laird Cregar.

Ministry of Fear. Amnesiac Ray Milland on the run while hunting a spy ring in London during the Blitz with Marjorie Reynolds along for the chase. A Fritz Lang classic. Watch for Dan Dureya in a fine role.

Decision Before Dawn. German soldiers Oskar Werner and O.E. Hasse agree to go back behind German lines in desperate mission as the war is coming to an end. Good film, dark and very stark. Richard Basehart and Gary Merrill are the men who train and dispatch them.

Night of the Hunter. Two children escape psychotic lay preacher Robert Mitchum in Charles Laughton’s classic version of Davis Grubb’s novel. Haunting and beautiful with Lilian Gish and Mitchum wonderfully matched as good vs evil. Fine performances by Gish and Mitchum sometimes overshadow how good the kids are in this one.

Heaven Knows Mr. Allison. Charming John Huston film of marine Mitchum and nun Deborah Kerr evading Japanese when they are wrecked on a small Pacific island.

Raw Deal. Escaped convict Dennis O’Keefe on the run with girl friend Claire Trevor and innocent Marsha Hunt finds himself divided between the two while seeking revenge on sadistic and kinky Raymond Burr. One of Anthony Mann’s best films with a terrific ending. This and T-Men are the two Mann must-see film noirs.

The Great Race. Blake Edwards frenetic comedy is more a couple running than a couple on the run film, but Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood are attractive together, and Jack Lemmon and Peter Falk are a delight as the inept villains of the piece.

It Happened One Night. Frank Capra classic with reporter Clark Gable trying to get the scoop on wacky heiress Claudette Colbert while trying to evade the nation wide search for her. Remade as a musical with Jack Lemmon and June Allison, but see the original.

The Runaround. Fine screwball B film that lifts much of the plot of It Happened One Night, but does it so well no one could possibly care. Rod Cameron and Broderick Crawford are maverick private eyes who leave their hated bosses’ agency and vie with him to recover runaway heiress Ella Raines (heiresses on the run were a staple of films in this era) evading their old bosses men and double crossing each other. Cameron is surprisingly good in a largely comic role and perfectly teamed with Crawford.

The Bride Came C.O.D.. Yet another It Happened One Night variation as pilot James Cagney and runaway heiress Bette Davis battle and fall for each other while on the run from press and private eyes.

Arrest Bulldog Drummond. Good entry in the John Howard Drummond series when he is framed and goes on the run with fiance Phyllis (Heather Angel) to hunt down master criminal George Zucco. Fast paced entry in the series. Hugh and Phyllis’s much postponed marriage was a running gag in the film series.

Desire. Car designer Gary Cooper falls for jewel thief Marlene Dietrich in Spain as she and partner John Halliday try to elude police with his unwitting aide — a bright Frank Borzage film produced by Ernst Lubitch (To Be Or Not to Be, Heaven Can Wait …)

City Streets . Carnival worker Gary Cooper and racketeer’s daughter Slyvia Sidney end up hunted by cops and crooks in this rare Rouben Mamoulian film of Dashiell Hammett’s only original screen story (though he did scenarios for at least one of the Thin Man films and contributed to the script of several Lillian Hellman films). Outstanding look thanks to director and cinematographer Lee Garmes, and co-stars Guy Kibbee and Paul Lukas are unusually nasty pair of bad guys. Just barely fits the definition, but I wanted to get it in.

The Getaway. I’ll extend the date a bit to get this Sam Peckinpah film of Jim Thompson’s novel in with Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw on the run from cops and crooks as he plans one last caper.

Where Danger Lives. Intern Mitchum ends up on the run with Faith Domergue in slight but involving film noir, with Claude Rains wasted as her husband..

The Big Steal. Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer on the hunt and the run in Mexico in a great little noir film which is better than it has any right to be.

Borderline. Undercover cop Claire Trevor is after smuggler Raymond Burr with help from tough Fred MacMurray in Mexico. Burr is even slimier than usual in this one.

Nightfall. Innocent Aldo Ray teams with Anne Bancroft to prove his innocence of crime sadistic that Brian Keith committed in a well done noir based on a David Goodis novel.

Me and the Colonel. Jewish business man Danny Kaye and Polish aristocrat Curt Jurgens along with Jurgen’s servant Akim Tamiroff and mistress Nicole Maurey try to escape of the Nazi’s based on Franz Werfel’s Jacubowsy and the Colonel. “More and more I dislike this Jacubowsky.”

They Met in Bombay. Jewel thieves Clark Gable and Rosalind Russell on the run from thieves help to defeat Japanese invaders with British army in off beat film.

China. Alan Ladd, Loretta Young, and William Bendix fight the Japanese in China on the cusp of the war. Well done.

Detour. Tom Neal runs afoul of one of noir’s most fatal femmes, Ann Savage, in legendary film noir by Edgar Ulmer.

Strange Cargo. Based on Richard Sale’s allegorical novel Not Too Narrow, Not Too Deep about group of men led by Clark Gable and one woman, Joan Crawford, who escape from Devil’s Island and discover salvation or damnation on the voyage. Cast includes Peter Lorre, Albert Dekker, Paul Lukas, and Ian Hunter — who may, or may not, be Christ.

Blood Alley. John Wayne is a drunken sea captain who tries to help Lauren Bacall organize the escape of an entire Chinese village as the Reds close in, based on the novel by A. S. Fleishman. May be the only “city on the run” film.

Beachhead. Tony Curtis and Frank Lovejoy are marines who have to help Mary Murphy and her plantation owner father elude the Japanese occupiers and get message off of Japanese held island.

Assignment in Brittany. Jean Pierre Aumont and Susan Peters elude Nazi’s in WW II thriller from the novel by Helen MacInnes.

Above Suspicion Oxford don Fred MacMurray and bride Joan Crawford help British agent Reginald Owen escape Germany with aide of roguish Conrad Veidt while pursued by Nazi Basil Rathbone. Again based on a novel by Helen MacInnes.

Background to Danger. American agent George Raft and Red agent Brenda Marshall evade the police and Nazi’s in Istanbul with help from Peter Lorre and villainy from Sydney Greenstreet in Raoul Walsh film based on Eric Ambler novel. Screenplay by Frank Gruber and W. R. Burnett.

Pied Piper. Monte Wooley finds himself reluctantly teamed with young Roddy McDowall in France as the Nazis move in, and ends up with a small army of refugee children, based in Nevil Shute’s novel, remade for television with Peter O’Toole. Otto Preminger excellent as a Nazi officer with a secret.

Interrupted Journey. Richard Todd runs off with Valerie Hobson in fine thriller that goes head over heels into the toilet thanks to finale, after a fine effort along the way.

Desperate Moment. Dirk Bogarde is a displaced person framed for homicide and aided by Mai Zetterling in post war Berlin well done film from Martha Albrand’s novel.

Night Has 1000 Eyes. Gail Russell is helped by John Lund in this dark John Farrow film based on Cornell Woolrich’s novel (as George Hopley) when psychic Edward G. Robinson predicts her father Jerome Cowan will die — and he’s never wrong. They are on the run from fate, not the law or bad guys, but the tension is even greater and the sense of being pursued by something inevitable potent.

The Man Between. When Black marketeer James Mason helps Claire Bloom in post war Berlin, he finds himself on the run from both sides.

The October Man. John Mills is aided by Joan Greenwood when he is accused of murder and even he doesn’t know if he did it or not. A fine film, with one of Eric Ambler’s best screenplays.

Brighton Rock. Richard Attenborough is the slimy thug Pinkie hunted by the police for the razor slashing of a journalist and aided by Carol Marsh who loves him despite what he is. Dark film with literate screenplay by Terence Rattigan and Graham Greene based on Greene’s novel replete with the novel’s cruel and devastating ending.

Tiger Bay. Pre-teen Haley Mills has a crush on fugitive Horst Bucholtz pursued by her cop dad John Mills in a fine film.

The Moonspinners. English tourists Haley Mills and Peter McEnery on the run from smugglers in modern Greece. A Disney film based on Mary Stewart’s novel.

The Angry Hills. Robert Mitchum and Elizabeth Mueller are on the run from Nazis in occupied Greece, based on the novel by Leon Uris.

Kidnapped. Multiple versions, but I prefer the Disney with James MacArthur and Peter Finch as David Balfour and Alan Breck on the run in Scotland. Also made with Warner Baxter and Freddie Bartholomew; Dan O’Herlihy and Roddy McDowall; and Michael Caine and Armand Assante. Look for Peter O’Toole in the Disney version.

The Clouded Yellow. Ex-spy Trevor Howard takes a job assisting a butterfly collector and ends up on the run with possibly mad possible killer Jean Simmons in this delightful Brit film on classic lines. A great little thriller.

Lisa. Stephen Boyd is a Dutch policeman who helps a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust (Dolores Hart) evade detention and get to Palestine without papers in this film based on Jan de Hartog’s novel The Inspector.

House of Cards. Ex-boxer turned bodyguard George Peppard helps a French aristocrat boy and his American mother (Inger Stevens) evade the father’s Machivellian military family who plan a right wing coup in wake of the loss of colonial Algeria in a thriller based on the novel by Stanley Ellin. With Keith Michell and Orson Welles.

The Last Run. George C. Scott is an aging gangland driver who helps Trish van de Vere and Tony Musante in one last run. Sven Nykvist photography looks great. John Huston started it, but it was finished by Richard Fleisher.

The Narrow Margin. Cop Charles McGraw must protect witness Marie Windsor on a train on the way to testify in mob case. Great little noir suspense film with a neat twist and a well staged finale. Forget the remake with Gene Hackman.

Espionage Agent. When his marriage to Brenda Marshall ruins his diplomatic career, Joel McCrea poses as traitor, and he and Marshall end up on the run in Nazi Germany.

Berlin Correspondent Foreign Correspondent Dana Andrews helps Virginia Gilmore and her father escape Nazi Germany.

Bomber’s Moon. French farm girl helps American bomber pilot George Montgomery escape when he is shot down over Occupied France.

Cloak and Dagger. Scientist Gary Cooper goes undercover in Europe during WWII to find nuclear secrets with aide of Lili Palmer and OSS agent Robert Alda when the Axis closes in. Tense spy film from Fritz Lang, based on a missions by a former New York Yankees owner Michael Mann and the baseball player turned OSS agent, Moe Berg.

Golden Earrings. When British colonel Ray Milland is trapped behind enemy lines he is hidden by and escapes with gypsy Marlene Dietrich. Dietrich is wonderful and usual heavy Murvyn Vye sings the title song. And how often do you get to see the leading man get his ears pierced? Silly sounding film is actually high quality Hollywood romantic hokum and expertly done all around. Also one of my father’s favorite films.

The High Wall. Excellent minor noir as psychiatrist Audrey Totter helps war hero pilot Robert Taylor escape a mental institution when she becomes convinced he was framed for the crime he thinks he committed. Fine little film with good performance by Taylor, Totter, and Herbert Marshall.

Island Rescue. A hard to categorize film as Glynnis Johns aides commando David Niven in rescuing a prize cow from occupied Guernsey islands during the war — and it’s based on a true story.

Never Let Me Go. Clark Gable and Richard Hadyn try to rescue their Russian wives Gene Tierney and Belita out of Soviet Russia in the post war freeze with help from Kenneth More. Based on the novel Two if By Sea by Andrew Garve.

Break in the Circle. Forest Tucker and Eva Bartok help Polish scientist escape in minor film based on a much better novel by Philip Loraine.

Action of the Tiger. Van Johnson is a tough American skipper helping Martine Carol rescue refugees from Albania, with Herbert Lom great as a colorful and less than trustworthy bandit. Based on John Welland’s novel and directed by James Bond director Terence Young, which makes the presence of Sean Connery as Van’s drunken buddy doubly amusing.

Mister Moses. This one sort of fits. Robert Mitchum and Carroll Baker try to lead African villagers out of valley that is to be flooded by new dam.

The Secret Ways. Richard Widmark helps Sonia Ziemann and her father escape from behind the Iron Curtain based on the novel by Alistair MacLean.

Tarzan the Magnificent. And he pretty much is in one of the best films in the series. Gordon Scott as Tarzan lead Betta St. John, Lionel Jeffries, Alexandra Stewart, and Earl Cameron out of the jungle while escorting brutal criminal Jock Mahoney to trial while being pursued by Mahoney’s insane family, led by psychotic John Carradine. The final battle between Scott and Mahoney is beautifully staged. Rare grown-up Tarzan film. Mahoney replaced Scott later on in the role of the Ape Man.

It’s a Wonderful World. One of the best screwball comedies ever made, from W. S. Van Dyke. Private eye James Stewart and poet Claudette Colbert are reluctantly teamed together when Stewart escapes a train to prison in desperate attempt to save his playboy client (Ernest Truex of all people) from the chair, while pursued by Nat Pendleton and Edgar Kennedy. Guy Kibee is Stewart’s exasperated but loyal boss. This film is not only a good mystery, but it rises to heights of zaniness seldom seen with Stewart and Colbert arcing off each other like bare electrical wires. One of the great gems of screwball comedy. Look for the scene where Stewart poses as a nearsighted Eagle Scout. I swear by my eyes. Screenplay by Ben Hecht from his story with Herman J. Mankiewicz.

   This ought to get anyone started — it’s a pretty wide variety on the subject. As usual, any additions are welcome.

      Steve,

   Here’s another “Man On The Run” question: I recently watched Odd Man Out with James Mason and could you or David recommend any other urban-type MOTR films? Whether they be wartime, comedic or western doesn’t matter much.

   I am interested in a city atmosphere. I imagine Escape from New York would be one although that is a little too sci-fi for my tastes. Anything at all that comes to mind would be of enormous assistance to me.

         Best,

            Josh

      — —

   This is, of course, a follow-up to David Vineyard’s four Top Ten lists of “Man on the Run” thrillers posted here about three weeks ago. Naturally I tossed the question on to him, graciously offering to let him tackle it. Here’s his reply:

   Hmm, urban man on the run films — there are quite a few of those, so I’ll limit myself a bit. Obviously Odd Man Out is an excellent choice, but here are a few more. Just to keep from going too far astray I’ll stick to ones where the protagonist is on the run in an urban setting rather than what I call ‘hunt the man down’ films like Panic in the City or M which feature classic manhunts.

   These are in no particular order, and vary as to genre (spy, crime, etc.). I’ll also leave off films like Desperate Hours and He Ran All The Way where the bad guy hides out in a home in an urban setting, that’s a genre to itself. Not included, but worth checking out, is The Lost Man with Sidney Poitier, a reworking of Odd Man Out set in the ghetto. Not really a success, but worth seeing. Others:

This Gun For Hire. (Based on Graham Greene’s novel.) Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar. Remade as Short Cut To Hell, directed by James Cagney and as a television movie with Robert Wagner. Stick to the original.

Street of Chance . (Based on Cornell Woolrich’s Black Curtain). Burgess Meredith, Claire Trevor. Amnesiac is hunted as he tries to regain his memory. Also an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (reviewed here ) with Richard Basehart.

Dark Corner. (Novel by Leo Q. Ross — Leo Rosten.) Mark Stevens, Lucille Ball, William Bendix, Clifton Webb. Private eye Stevens gets help from secretary Lucy when he is set up for murder — great noir film with outstanding performances by all — especially Webb and Bendix.

The Fugitive. Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones This made the first list due to the train wreck and the dam escape in the first part of the film, but much of the action takes place in Chicago making good use of the urban setting and that city in particular.

A Man Alone. Ray Milland. Noirish little western directed by Milland about a fugitive trying to clear himself of a murder in a small town. Perhaps not gritty or urban exactly but tense and claustrophobic. His The Thief set in New York is also worth checking, done with sound, but no dialogue.

The Confidential Agent. (Novel by Graham Greene.) Charles Boyer, Lauren Bacall, George Colouris. Boyer is in London to get help for his cause (Republican Spain in the novel) surrounded by enemies and Fascist agents, falling for Bacall who aides him.

Night and the City. (Based on the novel by Gerald Kersh.) Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney. Great film as Widmark’s wrestling promoter tries to avoid the fixers he has double-crossed in London. Skip the remake with Robert De Niro.

Whistling in Brooklyn. Red Skelton, Ann Rutherford Third film of Red’s series of films about radio sleuth the Fox has him on the run from crooks and cops in Brooklyn including a hilarious turn as a bearded baseball player with the real Brooklyn Dodgers. Probably not what you are looking for, but entertaining.

The Sleeping City. Richard Conte. Once controversial film finds undercover cop Conte in big city hospital ferreting out corruption and with every hand against him.

Twelve Crowded Hours. Richard Dix, Lucille Ball Offbeat and entertaining B of reporter and girl racing to clear an innocent man.

Dr. Broadway. MacDonald Carey Early Anthony Mann film and part of a proposed series that never developed has young doctor getting involved with gangsters and finding himself hunted by crooks and cops. Based on the pulp stories of Borden Chase.

Somewhere in the Night. John Hodiak, Lloyd Nolan A war hero with amnesia returns to his home town where he was a less than honest private eye and finds himself pursued by everyone.

D.O.A. Edmond O’Brien One of the greats. O’Brien is hunting down the man who poisoned him, but at the same time he is literally on the run from death as his time runs out.

Slayground. (Based on the Richard Stark novel.) Peter Coyote is Parker hunted in an amusement park.

Side Street. Farley Granger Part time postman Granger steals some money and finds himself hunted on all sides. Beautiful use of location work in NYC, expertly directed by Anthony Mann. Great car chase finale in a careening taxi.

My Favorite Brunette. Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Peter Lorre, Lon Chaney Jr. Early spoof of film noir staples (1947, yet they hit them all) as baby photographer Bob is mistaken for private eye Alan Ladd and finds himself hunted by the crooks who want heiress Lamour’s money and the cops who think he is a murderer.

The Web. Edmond O’Brien, William Bendix, Vincent Price. Bodyguard O’Brien gets framed by boss Price in good noir mystery.

Take One False Step. William Powell, Shelly Winters Powell gets involved with Winters and wanted by the police in entertaining tale with script by Irwin Shaw based on his own story.

Dark Passage. (Novel by David Goodis.) Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall. Bogie is an innocent man who escapes prison, Lauren always believed he was innocent and helps him hide out, get plastic surgery, and catch the real killer. Extensive use of the subjective camera from the hero’s point of view for the first half of the film (until Bogart emerges after the plastic surgery).

The Big Clock. (Novel by Kenneth Fearing.) Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Sullvan Editor at Time-like magazine conglomerate is framed for murder of the publisher’s mistress and ends up hunting himself in the claustrophobic building where he works. Remade as No Way Out and ‘borrowed’ countless times.

Ride the Pink Horse. (Novel by Dorothy B. Hughes.) Robert Montgomery, Thomas Gomez. Tough guy out for revenge and blackmail of vacationing gangster in New Mexico tries to elude killers and police during carnival. One of the greats of film noir. Remade for television as The Hanging Man with Robert Culp.

Mirage. (Based on the novel by Howard Fast.) Gregory Peck, Walter Matthau. Amnesiac loses his memory (or regains it partially) in a blackout and is hunted as he tries to piece his story back together by his former associates.

Arabesque. (Novel by Gordon Cotler.) Gregory Peck, Sophia Loren. While evading spies and assassins Peck and Loren try to put together puzzle involving a threat to a visiting Arab prince in largely comic caper from Stanley Donen (Charade).

Nowhere to Go. (Novel: Donald MacKenzie.) George Nader, Maggie Smith. A thief in London tries to evade police and fellow crooks in this excellent sleeper with notable jazz score by Dizzy Reece.

The Limping Man. Lloyd Bridges. Man finds himself on the run in London from a false charge.

Interrupted Journey. Richard Todd. Man on the run with another woman in suspenseful film — until the end.

Captive City. John Forsythe. Small town newspaper editor finds himself a fugitive in his own town in well done noir film based on a true story.

It Takes All Kinds. Robert Lansing, Vera Miles. Lansing accidentally kills a sailor and Miles hides him out.

The Whistler. (Based on the radio series.) Richard Dix. Solid entry to the B-series in which a man tries to cancel the contract he took out on his life when he thought he was dying.

Rampage. (Novel: Allan Calliou.) Robert Mitchum, Elsa Martinelli, Jack Hawkins. Mitchum and Martinelli find themselves hunting a killer leopard Hawkins has set free in Munich while Hawkins hunts them.

Arch of Triumph. (Novel: Erich Maria Remarque.) Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman. Paris on the eve of the Fall with refugees desperate to escape.

Saboteur. Robert Cummings. The second half of the film has innocent Cummings on the run in New York trying to stop the spies and clear his name including the famous Hitchcock shootout in the movie theater, the ship sinking (based on the suspected sabotage of the Normandie), and the finale atop the Statue of Liberty with assassin Norman Lloyd. And if you can call Monte Carlo urban or gritty, To Catch a Thief.

Cairo. Richard Johnson, George Sanders More or less a remake of The Asphalt Jungle but with a bit more of the urban man on the run theme for Johnson’s half breed character at the end.

Bedeviled . Anne Baxter, Steve Forrest. Seminary student Forrest helps Baxter when she is witness to a murder.

Christmas Holiday. (Novel by W. Somerset Maugham.) Gene Kelly, Deanna Durbin. Durbin tries to hide and protect her sociopathic killer hubby Kelly, directed by noir great Robert Siodmak. Kelly is good in unsympathetic role.

All Through The Night. Humphrey Bogart, Conrad Veidt, William Demarest, Judith Anderson. Bogie is a Runyonesque gambler who is framed for murder of Edward Brophy when he stumbles on a ring of fifth columnists. Genuinely funny film with a great cast including Jackie Gleason, Frank McHugh and Phil Silvers. Watch for the scene where Bogie and Demarest double talk a room full of Nazi saboteurs. Great looking film too with serial-like action and sharp script.

I Wake Up Screaming. (Novel: Steve Fisher.) Victor Mature, Betty Grable, Laird Cregar. PR man Mature is framed for murder and on the run in glitzy New York in this noir classic. Remade as Vicki with Jeane Crain, Eliot Reed, and Richard Boone.

Man Hunt. (Based on the novel Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household.) Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders. While this Fritz Lang film is a classic of the man hunted in rough country, the scenes in London with Pidgeon shadowed by Nazi agents and his deadly battle with killer John Carradine in the underground are fine examples of the chase film done in an urban setting. Those aspects are largely missing from the well made Rogue Male with Peter O’Toole. Lang recreates the subway setting in his serial killer manhunt film While The City Sleeps.

The Quiller Memorandum. (Novel: Adam Hall — Elleston Trevor.) George Segal, Alec Guiness, Max Von Sydow. Segal’s Quiller finds himself on the run in West Berlin in well done spy film with a screenplay by Harold Pinter.

27th Day . (Novel by John Mantley.) Gene Barry. Preachy but entertaining sf film of group of people from different nations hunted by everyone when aliens give them the power to destroy the world and twenty-seven days to decide whether to use the power.

Ministry of Fear. (Novel: Graham Greene.) Ray Milland, Dan Duryea. Fritz Lang film of amnesiac Milland framed and on the run and the hunt for a spy ring in wartime London. Atmospheric.

The Game. Michael Douglas, Sean Penn. Doesn’t really hold up, plus it’s mean-spirited, but Douglas finds his life turned upside down when his brother gives him an unusual birthday present

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands. (Novel: Gerald Butler.) Burt Lancaster, Joan Fontaine. Ex-POW accused of murder hiding out in London in noirsh film.

The Killers. (Story by Ernest Hemingway.) Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien Insurance investigator O’Brien unravels the story of Swede (Lancaster) a one-time boxer who got involved with crooks who he double crossed and then was hunted down and killed by. Hemingway’s favorite film of his work though only the first few minutes of the film actually recreate the story. William Conrad and Charles McGraw memorable as the killers. Ava Gardner just plain memorable. Remade by Don Siegel with Ronald Reagan (his last film and only villain), Angie Dickinson, Lee Marvin, and John Cassavettes.

Enemy At the Gates. Joseph Fiennes, Jude Law, Ed Harris. Semi-fit of the theme as Russian sharpshooter Fiennes and German sharpshooter Harris hunt each other in the devastation of the battle of Stalingrad.

Five Fingers. James Mason, Michael Rennie. Valet turned spy in WWII Istanbul must evade British and German agents when he is revealed. Based on a true story if not the true story.

Behold a Pale Horse. (Based on the novel Killing a Mouse on Sunday by Emeric Pressberger.) Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn. Again a mix of rough country and city chase. Legendary gunman Peck returns to Franco’s Spain to assassinate brutal Fascist police chief Quinn and becomes object of a manhunt.

The Paris Express. (Based The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By by Georges Simenon.) Claude Rains. Meek embezzler finds himself hunted for more than he expected.

   And since we started with James Mason and Carol Reed we’ll end with James Mason and Carol Reed:

The Man Between. James Mason, Claire Bloom. In post-war Berlin black marketeer Mason falls for Bloom and finds himself torn between East and West and hunted by both.

   But for this list more than the others I think we can count on numerous additions.

             — David

TRANSATLANTIC. Fox, 1931. Edmund Lowe, Greta Nissen, John Halliday, Myrna Loy, Jean Hersholt, Lois Moran, Billy Bevan. Story: Guy Bolton; photography: James Wong Howe. Director: William K. Howard. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   Another rough print (the program notes warned of this) and hardly of the interest of The Letter (reviewed here ) this “Grand Hotel on an ocean liner” (as the notes more or less put it) was an entertaining trifle, owing to a good cast, some fine photography by James Wong Howe, and a serviceable, melodramatic story.

   Edmund Lowe is a gent of dubious moral values who’s skipping out of the country but who ironically finds himself becoming the moral center of a series of little dramas, shot through with crime and attempted murder.

   The most striking part of the film is a climactic chase up and down and around the massive structures of the ship’s boiler room. A really nice print of this might show off the film to better advantage but I’m not convinced that it has (as the program notes claim) “all the ingredients for one of the greats!”

   N. B.:   Charlie Shibuk commented to me that he saw the screening of a beautiful 35mm print some 15 years ago at the Museum of Modern Art, and he still agrees with my summation.

IF I HAD A MILLION. Paramount, 1932. Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton, George Raft, W. C. Fields, Jack Oakie, and 41 featured players. Screenplay by various hands, based on the novel Windfall by Robert D. Andrews. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, Norman Taurog, Stephen Roberts, Norman McLeod, James Cruze, William A. Seiter, and H. Bruce Humberstone. Shown at Cinevent 41, Columbus OH, May 2009.

    The premise of this eight-part anthology film is that wealthy John Glidden (Richard Bennett), close to death, dissatisfied with his life and wanting to do some good before he dies, decides to give his fortune away in the form of million dollar checks to strangers.

    The film seems to include every name actor on the Paramount lot at the time, but the sequence that is best known is “Road Hogs,” directed by Norman McLeod. It features W. C. Fields and Alison Skipworth as former, down-on-their-Iuck vaudevillians who, with the check that Emily La Rue (Skipworth) receives, buy the car of their dreams.

    When the car is demolished by a road hog, the pair buy a fleet of cars and, followed by their new purchases, each with its own driver, they take the lead in an afternoon’s drive during which they demolish the car of every road hog who tries to cross their path, until, they drive off triumphantly in the last undamaged car.

    The narrative spectrum includes a forger trying, without success, to cash his check, a death-row prisoner relieved to have a fortune to leave to his wife, and, in the shortest and most pointed of the stories, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, a lowly clerk (Charles Laughton) who finds the perfect way to pay back his employer for years of indignities inflicted upon him.

    As might be expected, the film is uneven, but it’s never less than entertaining, and at its best, a wonderful display of the writing, directing and acting talent available at Paramount in the early 1930s.