Everybody is Under Suspicion

Note: Gail Patrick moved beyond ingenue parts when she played Cornelia the mean (albeit breathtaking) sister in My Man Godrey. After 60 or so parts, often as the bad girl, retirement from acting drove her batty. With her husband, Gail Patrick Jackson she formed the company that produced from 1957 to 1966 the greatest courtroom TV series in the history of Creation. She was the soul of the series, said Raymond Burr. One wonders if it was due to Jackson that the writers so often returned to serious themes such as the long row women have to hoe in a world ridden by the lust, anger and greed of men; friction between the social classes; sharp practices in the business world; the dark side of the entertainment industry; and the harsh treatment of vulnerable groups.

Wives under Suspicion
1938 / 1:09 minutes
Tagline: “…THAT JEALOUSY feeds strongest on the heart of a wise man!”
[internet archive]

In this gritty courtroom drama set in a large, unnamed city, a district attorney becomes consumed by his role as a prosecutor, taking disturbing pride in sending convicted murderers to the electric chair. His desktop features a macabre abacus made of skull-shaped beads, tallying the lives he's ended - a detail that unsettles both his secretary and his wife, who fear he’s lost touch with his humanity.

Despite promising his wife a long-overdue vacation, the DA is drawn back into work when a distraught college professor is brought in for questioning. In the pre-Miranda era, the professor is interrogated without legal counsel, and the DA coerces a confession to the murder of the man’s unfaithful wife. The DA’s cold mockery of the professor’s emotional breakdown reveals a chilling lack of empathy, especially given his disdain for an educated man succumbing to mindless violence.

During the trial, the DA’s wife pointedly remarks that he’s treating the proceedings like a “Roman Holiday”—a spectacle enjoyed at the expense of someone else’s suffering. This comment sparks a slow realization in the DA: he and the professor are not so different. The film ultimately suggests that justice must be tempered with empathy.

The opening sequence features a haunting look at the electric chair’s machinery - mid-century technology rendered terrifying through close-ups of switches and turbines. Surprisingly, the film’s visual style is restrained, especially considering it was directed by James Whale, known for the iconic sets of Frankenstein.

Warren William delivers a compelling performance as the DA, balancing dedication with arrogance and cruelty. His shift toward compassion feels slightly stiff, though it’s unclear whether that’s a flaw in the acting or the character’s emotional repression. Gail Patrick stands out with her poised presence and a particularly powerful scene reacting to the professor’s recorded confession. Ralph Morgan plays the stereotypical absent-minded academic, while Lillian “Billy” Yarbo provides comic relief as a maid - a role steeped in racial tropes but given a rare moment of agency.

Though critics at the time have dismissed the film as melodramatic and moralistic, it offers a sincere attempt to entertain and provoke thought. Its message - that justice should be guided by fairness and mercy - is one worth hearing, especially in a system where conviction often overshadows compassion.

Other Gail Patrick Movies: Click on the title to go to the review

·         If I Had a Million
·         The Phantom Broadcast
·         The Murders in the Zoo
·         Death Takes a Holiday
·         The Crime of Helen Stanley
·         Murder at the Vanities
·         The Preview Murder Mystery
·         My Man Godrey
·         Murder by Pictures
·         Artists and Models
·         King of Alcatraz
·         Wives Under Suspicion

The Nones of Perry Mason 95

Note: Who to cast as Donald Lam? Cagney - too pugnacious, not smart enough. William Powell - too old. Alan Ladd - too young. Dick Powell -  perfect in his 30s, yes, but older, no. As Bertha Cool? Marie Dressler had a commanding presence, but too matronly. Thelma Ritter - too small. Lucille Ball - only after 1960, hard to picture her smacking somebody, but possibly.... Geraldine Wall in her 40s - about perfect.

Give 'em the Ax - A. A. Fair aka Erle Stanley Gardner

In this 1944 mystery Donald Lam returns Stateside from duty in the Pacific. The hardcore reader trusts the Navy got a lot of milage out of Lam’s sharp legal mind – which got him disbarred when he talked too much to a gangster about how to get away with murder. Suffering from malaria sequelae, he's been discharged from Navy Intelligence with symptoms such as decreased appetite and unpredictable onsets of sudden fatigue. The sharp legal mind is subject to brain fog like memory problems, difficulty focusing, and slower less efficient processing.

He finds in a precarious state the detective agency that before Pearl Harbor he ran with partner Bertha Cool. Cool and Lam had attracted complex cases with serious money, headlines, and the enmity of the cops involved. But after Lam’s deployment, business fell back to the penny-ante insurance and cheating spouse stuff, though the professional animosity from Sgt Sellars of the authorities continued. Paradoxically, Sgt Sellars has a thing for Bertha because she is what he looks for in a woman: tough and practical.

And that’s Bertha’s problem when she’s client-facing. Bad-tempered Bertha is smarmy when she attempts charm. Her obvious faking of care and concern turns potential clients off. The office manager Elsie Brand, target of Bertha’s acting out, tells Lam that the only reason she stayed on was to try to hold the business together. Another reason is that Elsie is in love with Lam. Manipulative monster Lam pretends not to know her feelings for him though it would a tough lift to find somebody as loyal, smart, and kind as Elsie, an ideal Gardnerian woman like Della Street.

Lam is a client-pleaser because he’s such a good listener. So on his first day of popping into the office, a new case comes their way. It’s hardly a lulu. Admitting to being a home-wrecker, a woman wants a private detective agency to get something on her boss’ new wife. The woman says she and the boss were very “close,” but when she returned from a long vacation, the boss, pining and bereft, married a woman he had met when the two had a car accident together. Angry and hurt, the woman wants the goods on the new wife. Ho-hum, nothing to get excited about here.

Eager to get back in the saddle, Lam luckily finds the wife in the Rimley Rendezvous. This is a nightclub that has tapped the afternoon market of bored married women who are looking for afternoon delight. The operator of the club, a hard case named HJH, recognizes Lam and throws him out since a PI on the cheating side of town is “as welcome as smallpox on an ocean liner.”

Pressed to time, Donald calls Bertha. He describes the owner and tells Bertha to tail him when he leaves the club. The tail job ends in an auto accident, which will be followed by an ax murder. Lam finds himself involved with a cigarette girl with legs up to here, who's way close to the murder.

Highly recommended.

The Kalends of Perry Mason 94

Note: Sure, everybody wants an honest, loyal and efficient lawyer that will fight like the devil when the going gets rough. But even more, everybody wants a supporter, an advocate who knows their weaknesses and understands their messed-up choices but pleads their case eloquently and shrewdly anyway.

The Case of the Negligent Nymph – Erle Stanley Gardner

This 1959 mystery starts with the usual working girl – pretty, naturally; full of moxie, certainly – needing super-lawyer Perry Mason when she finds herself in a jam. Perry is in a canoe scoping out a millionaire’s island on behalf of a client in a real estate case. The naked nymph, pursued by a savage dobie, swims up to the canoe so Perry saves her and takes her to her own battered yacht.

The next day Perry finds out that the game and canny beauty he rescued is wanted by the cops on suspicion of stealing $50K worth of gems from the millionaire’s island mansion. She is apprehended and bound over for trial for grand theft. In an exciting courtroom scene, Perry sets off legal fireworks during a cross-examination and gets her bail whittled down to a manageable $2,500.

Things start looking up for the accused, but, self-reliant to a fault, she makes errors in judgment, the worst of which are not following Perry’s legal advice and then lying to him. Perry ends up defending her on the inevitable murder charge.

He finds his back up against the proverbial wall yet again since he faces as many legal woes as his client does if he doesn’t find out the truth. Perry kicks himself for letting impulse rule him and helping the fibbing brat in the first place, but he defends her with all he’s got. Perry acknowledges his own fallibility and is thus compassionate about the short-comings of others.

Usual. Of course. Inevitable.

Why return again and again to the Perry Mason stories that invariably feature damsels in distress, the powerful exploiting the vulnerable, and the cunning and resourceful hero who combines wise tactics and swift action to exonerate the innocent? Because these irresistible elements, the essentials of heroic myth and folktales, exert a magical appeal over our senses of fairness and courage, shared senses that come easily to us because we are human beings hard-wired with the same nature.

European Reading Challenge #9

The Generation of 1914 - Robert Wohl

This intellectual history was released in 1979, four years after the seminal book The Great War and Modern Memory (Paul Fussell) influenced historians to examine the idea that what people think happened was just as interesting as what really happened. Wohl explores the intellectual and cultural landscape of Europe before, during and after World War I. To study what young educated men regarded as “generations,” Wohl delves into the thoughts and writing of the intelligentsia who came of age during the tumultuous period running up the WWI, focusing on the middle-class elite of five European countries: France Germany, England, Spain, and Italy.

Readers like me who are not so up on European history in the 19^th century will appreciate Wohl's comprehensive approach. He examines briefly the events and how each country’s unique experiences shaped its intellectual climate. For instance, in the example most familiar to us hardcore readers because of Fussell’s book, in England, the concept of the "lost generation" emerged due to the significant losses suffered by the British upper class during the war who happened to be literary guys like Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden, and Wilfred Owen. In contrast, Germany's war generation became a driving force on the political right, emphasizing the supposedly “moral” strength gained through the hardships of the trenches. I had no idea that the war had damaged Ernst Jünger so severely as to drive him to such wrong conclusions about human nature, democracy, and the Weimar Republic.

The book is structured around separate chapters for each country, allowing Wohl to highlight the distinct generational concepts that developed in each culture. Wohl's use of primary sources, including novels, journalism, autobiographies, and political speeches, adds depth to his analysis. He skillfully connects these personal and collective experiences to broader historical trends, such as the rise of Communism and Fascism, and the decline of liberal and humanitarian values.

One of the book's strengths is Wohl’s decision to disregard the definition of a generation, in favor of analyzing what the figures such as Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset thought was a generation. Wohl is careful to point out that the thinkers themselves were well aware of the logical problems with defining what a generation is. Translating theoretical constructs like "generation" into specific variables or factors that can be studied in quantifiable research is a challenging intellectual task, for example, needing the statistical tools of sociology. Wohl captures the sense of disillusionment and sheer confusion that characterized the generation of 1914, making the book both an intellectual history and a poignant human story.

Overall, this is an engrossing study that offers valuable insights into the minds of young, more or less educated or well-read men who lived through one of the most transformative periods in modern history. Serious students of European history will get much from this book, even if they think that terms like ‘generation z,’ ‘boomers,’ and ‘millennials’ are the worst kinds of pseudoscientific horseshit.

Happy Birthday Marcia Muller

Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller

A reader with some pretentions to taste would expect, after a dozen installments in a series, to hear the gears grinding in the thirteenth in a series. But not at all in this case because Sharon McCone, the baddest female PI in San Francisco, learns, grows, and changes from book to book.

This 1993 mystery deals with the issues of immigration and dolphin-protecting environmentalists. With her bosses going all corporate on her and pressuring her to accept sitting at desk and moving papers around, she proves herself to be the Coolest Toughest Girlfriend Ever and works on finding her missing boyfriend Hy Ripinsky who has gone missing.

As usual, the characterizations, even of the secondary characters, are very finely drawn, as are the settings. Nothing mars the elaborate plot but a couple of melodramatic scenes. Worth reading. 

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr 6/6

Note: September 21, 1957 was the date of the first episode of the classic Perry Mason TV series. So this past week we celebrated Raymond Burr’s performances in film noir. Burr built up quite a reputation playing movie villains in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Probably to stay sane and pay the rent, Burr took roles in comedies, too. In Casonova's Big Night (1954), he played Minister Bragadin, a minister in service to the Doge. I’ll watch Brother Ray in westerns if the first 10 minutes are tolerable, but I draw the line at Bob Hope’s silly goldang costume pictures, in beautiful Technicolor or not. 

Unmasked
1950 / 1:00
Tagline: “Smeared by Scandal that led to MURDER!”
[internet archive]

Raymond Burr puts in a turn as an unscrupulous publisher of a scandal sheet. A stoolie analyzes him, “You kinda like to hate in bunches, doncha.” The publisher murders a guy’s wife and then frames the guy.

This was produced by Republic whose competitive advantage was its ability to churn out slick movies to fill out the bottom of bills in the theaters. Clocking in at only 60 minutes, this movie does not have the time to feature well-rounded characters. The crime story script is fast-moving, full of chase and duplicity, with a twist that came out of the blue for me.

Burr, a true professional, puts in a very good account of himself, as he did in the many so-so movies where he played the beast that somehow learned to walk and talk among us humans. Despite the precisely tailored pinstripe suits, bulky Burr seems to loom just sitting behind his desk even without arty camera work. Imposing, menacing, but somehow graceful like the Graf Zeppelin at the end of a tether. When he ponders his next move into blackmail and murder, he seems to withdraw from our common mundane plane to a dark place where moral judgement no longer exists. That is, he makes his face toddler-like in its guile-free mercilessness so that on seeing it the parent or pet parent or movie-goer knows for all his seeming innocence, he’s cooking up nothing good.

This solid B picture also stars Robert Rockwell, who was to appear in the original Perry Mason series five times. Like Denver Pyle, Rockwell is another actor with a solid career with high points to be proud of, totally right that a handful of us fans remember.

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Station West (1948) [my review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive] [my review]

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr 5/6

Note: September 21,1957 was the date of the first episode of the classic Perry Mason TV series. So this week we will paradoxically demonstrate Raymond Burr didn't just come out of nowhere. Burr was a demon for work, appearing in more than 50 feature films between 1946 and 1957. He was typecast as the villain because his stoutness gave him a commanding menacing presence. "[Raymond Burr] tried to make you see the psychosis below the surface, even when the parts weren't huge," says film historian James Ursini. "He was able to bring such complexity and different levels to those characters, and create sympathy for his characters even though they were doing reprehensible things."

Borderline
1950 / 1:28
Tagline: “Two Undercover Agents Unwittingly Stalk the Same Target”
[internet archive]

The martial Dragnet-type music hints that in the offing is heavy-handed cheerleading in the fight of US Customs agents against dope smugglers along the US-Mexico border in 1950. However, the movie is not awkward PR. It is in fact a chase and action crime story with elements of romcom and mistaken identity.

Some but not much cinematography is interesting, especially reflections in window glass and mirrors. Otherwise, visually the movie is unexciting. Some scenes take place outside in what purports to be northern Mexico, which is a nice change from gritty urban dramas.  Sometimes the soundtrack is hard to square with the action. Funny, whimsical music plays in what a movie-goer would think is a frightening situation like when Claire Trevor wakes up in captivity after being knocked out with a slug to the jaw.

The humor is off beat. Claire Trevor gets a job as a dancer in a floor show in a Mexican resort. The dance act is so clodhoppingly, high-pitched bad that you wonder if director William A. Seiter was going for camp. We get banter between Trevor and MacMurray. He: Don’t talk to any strangers. She: I don’t know any strangers. But, as amusing as it is, light banter seems out of place in a crime movie about dope smuggling. The jokey treatment of Mexicans and their cute ways has not aged well, though the Mexican pilot was funny in his imperturbability when the plane ran out of gas.

Raymond Burr plays Pete Ritchie, a narcotics smuggler operating from Mexico to the United States. He looks imposing in an ice-cream suit with black shirt and white tie. Remote, calm, and poised, his character is not given a chance to be more than cunning and ruthless. He does however get a movie-goer’s skin a-crawling when he embraces Trevor and promises in a voice so silky it’s terrifying, “You'll find me nicer when you get to know me better.”

Claire Trevor is the swizzle stick that stirs the drink. She is energetic, eye-catching, and as bright as a new penny. She is sensible and resourceful and is mercifully in almost every scene. A graduate of the George Raft School of Performing Arts, Fred McMurray plays his usual type, stolid and reliable if gruff and cross with no discernible personality.

To fulfill its mission to generate conversation on dates after the movie, the movie offers up this claim for lively philosophical talks: “All dames will stay in line if the payoff is big enough at the end.” Burr also urges would-be victims to clarify their values when he says, “I hope you haven’t got a good reason to live.”

As for the connection with the original Perry Mason TV series, Morris Ankrum plays Bill Whittaker, a Customs agent who runs Claire Trevor’s undercover agent. He played Da Judge no fewer than 22 times from 1957 to 1964.

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Station West (1948) [my review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive] [my review]

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr 4/6

Note: September 21, 1957 was the date of the first episode of the classic Perry Mason TV series. Let's mark that happy day this week by celebrating Raymond Burr’s many scary performances in film noir. Burr started his career in the late 1940s in bit parts. In Fighting Father Dunne (1948) he appears as an attorney in trial montage. Blink and you’ll miss him. But soon after Burr built up quite a reputation playing villains. His psychopathic private detective in Pitfall is a must-see.

Abandoned
1949 / 1:19
Tagline: “NO NAME FOR HER BABY...only a PRICE!”
[internet archive]

The introductory voice-over solemnly intones this is a true-to-life story that could be happening in our own cities as we speak. The movie describes how heartless scumbags promise the moon to young single expectant mothers. And then deliver nothing to the mother as they traffick the newborn baby to “nice people” who want to add that finishing touch to their middle-class lifestyle. The problem is that their purchase of a bundle of joy enriches a criminal enterprise that is run by racketeers who will kill mothers and babies – anybody - if they find it expedient.

The strongest point of this movie is simply its telling about the sorry system of illegal baby brokering. It’s a helluva story of how a black market thrived at a time when oversight was so loose that only about half of adopted children in the USA were placed through legitimate agencies.

I am not so credulous a ninny that I learn history through noir movies, but I’m willing to conclude that 1) baby selling must be bad because libertarians think it is good, and 2) this movie was on target in its portrayal of the kind of stone-cold criminals that would run such networks.

Mrs. Donner (Marjorie Rambeau) hands out Bibles and makes cynical promises to scared girls who are not being told what they are getting into: a baby is being sold to people who want to seem “people of unquestioned character” but don’t want to do what “people of unquestioned character” do. They simply want to avoid the “rigamarole” of investigations and “the bothersome details of a legal adoption.” When the head man of the syndicate (Will Kuluva) finds out an underling is stepping out of his domain, he remarks, “Rumors around town are that I’m getting soft so I’m going to have to cut a couple of throats.”

Raymond Burr, the shady private detective, is getting out of this lane, and knows a pin-stripe suit can be very slimming. As PI Kerric, he manages to look aloof and arrogant even as he skulks behind bushes like a goblin when he follows the good guys Dennis O’Keefe and Gale Storm. But Burr finds that kidnapping and murder get him in over his head and he wistfully remarks, “I was just thinking how nice life used to be when I stuck to blackmail and petty larceny.”

Dennis O’Keefe plays a newspaper reporter who is helping Gale Storm find her sister who has disappeared in the big bad city. O’Keefe is really obnoxious at first. Gale feels distraught and out of sorts over her missing sister, but he’s putting his hands on her and flirting and talking glibly. But he softens a bit when she reports about her father “He didn't want us back home but he didn't want to leave us alone” – isn’t it just like a noir movie to hint incest is more common than most people would think? And O’Keefe practices cognitive behavioral therapy without a license when he suggests to beat anxiety “Why don't you stop thinking about it.”

Camera work is effective and some cuts are startling and effective. The climax has a certain amount of cop porn – stakeouts, crackling radio, car chases, yadda yadda – but it doesn’t overwhelm the tension surrounding the saving of Gale Storm and ultimate fate of the characters, all of whom are under pressure. The film, directed by Joseph M. Newman, is considered a solid example of film noir, blending crime thriller elements with social commentary on black-market adoptions.

As for the connection with the original Perry Mason TV series, Sid Tomack plays a clerk but he is not given a chance to crack wise. Appearing three times on the classic Perry Mason, Tomack was especially great in a satirical scene in TCOT Envious Editor. Jeanette Nolan played a Salvation Army major who took care of single expectant mothers. A wonderful character actress, she was keen on accents and an array of clothing and accessories. She appeared no fewer than six times on Perry Mason. She was the perp three times, a loyal secretary once, and a sorely-tried ordinary woman twice. 

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Station West (1948) [my review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive] [my review]

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr 3/6

Note: September 21, 1957 was the date of the first episode of the classic Perry Mason TV series. Paradoxical, perhaps, to celebrate that happy day by examining Raymond Burr’s many performances in film noir. In the ten years after WWII, Burr had busy career playing villains in noir movies. He was cast as the thuggish minion (Walk a Crooked Mile, I Love Trouble) or, because he was hefty, he looked old enough to play big bad crime bosses (Raw Deal). Perhaps if syndication had not kept his Perry Mason in the public eye for half a century, only we hardcore movie buffs who know who Anthony Mann was would still remember Burr’s career as The Portly Prince of Noir. We’ll never know. Thank heaven.

Red Light
1949 / 1:23
Tagline: “It takes everything MAYO has to stop a guy like RAFT!”
[internet archive]

This crime drama opens with a convicted embezzler stewing in his prison cell. He blames the owner of a trucking firm for his imprisonment. So he hires a killer to exact revenge on the owner by killing the owner’s brother who is a priest. The owner then seeks revenge by going on a manhunt for the killer or killers of his brother. The owner and newly-released embezzler feverishly question people in order to locate a Bible which may contain evidence that points to the killer. The cops are working to find the priest killer and stop the owner from pursuing vigilante justice.

Fans used to Perry Mason may see as peculiar Raymond Burr as a vengeful brute but moreso is seeing Harry Morgan as a cold-eyed killer, he who was serious but colorful Bill Gannon and warm but crusty Col. Potter. Drafted by George Raft the owner to be a people-finding private eye is working-girl Virginia Mayo, full of her usual fight. The archetypal tough homicide detective, Barton McClane, warns George Raft not to go after the killer of his brother, employing noir sayings in support of communitarian ideals, “When you're playing solitaire, you can only beat yourself.”

Raymond Burr sometimes looks rotund, wearing the waist of his pants at navel height the way men did up to the late Fifties. At other times, as stout as he is, he still wears a suit snappily. He plays the unstable embezzler as oleaginous and dangerous at the same time. Burr really knew how to use his eyes to give the oddest amphibian effect. He uses his wide froggy eyes that are quick to be wary but slow to be alarmed. Burr is well served with his underlit face, shot from low angle, with a light at the top, all in shadow, as he prepares to commit a murder. The black and white cinematography is wonderful in this movie, definitely the second reason to view this, after Burr.

The dramatic music by genius Dmitri Tiomkin is much needed to support the glaring and staring, stomping and clomping by George Raft. Raft’s acting style – oh, never mind, he was a dancer first. Running around impersonating a homicide detective, he yells, smacks people around, and breaks stained glass windows as if all this frantic movement will distract us movie-goers from suspicioning that Raft doesn't seem to have any zip or pizzazz or mystery to him. 

Trying to salvage a scene that could have been written better, feisty Virginia Mayo rebukes him with, “You can't take the law into your own hands - it's not the way things are done.” When she tells him the truth that he’s being selfish and egocentric by not dealing with difficulties that many other people handle daily, Raft hits her. Going out the door, she warns him that he'll end up in trouble with the law since the cops are after both the killer and him. Mayo gamely does the best she can with bad lines but Raft seems to be on automatic, not consumed by anything deep inside him.   

As movie-goers expect of films made in the late Forties, this picture has a dark look full of shadows. The settings include offices, hotel lobbies and cheap rooms, and barber shops with shoeshine stations. A lousy diner (“They serve bicarbonate for dessert”) is fantastic, with its ceiling fan, checkered tablecloths, wooden counter and stools, and walls covered in signs. The murder on a caboose is very well lit and shot. Also beautifully done was Burr stalking Raft’s colleague Gene Lockhart in the parking lot, all ominous shoes and scraping soles. Strangely beautiful cars - like the 1940 Chrysler Royal - look fine to me, who usually notices automobile design in the Forties only with disgust. The climax with the neon sign on the roof of the trucking firm is worth seeing.

To fulfill its mission to educate the public, the movie offers up claims for consideration such as “Liquor doesn't drown your troubles, it only teaches them how to swim,” and “There’re only two kinds of hotel guests: the ones that steal Bibles and the ones that steal towels.” Pop history buffs can pat themselves on the back when they recognize antique allusions that nobody under 70 could be expected to recognize: “as chummy as Leo Durocher with an umpire” means “not chummy at all” since baseball manager Leo the Lip always gave umpires crap.

As for the connection with the original Perry Mason TV series, Arthur Shields plays Father Redmond, the mentor of George Raft’s brother-priest. Shields reminds us of Barry Fitzgerald because Shields was Fitzgerald’s younger brother by ten years. In TCOT Screaming Woman Shields played Dr. Barnes who would have expectant mothers “confined under the name of the married woman who wanted the child,” so at birth the certificate would list the adoptive mother as the birth mother. As if private adoption were not fraught with enough ethical and legal peril, Dr. Barnes kept a notebook with the names of unmarried women with children and women who did not legally adopt. Naturally the book was stolen for the purposes of blackmail. This episode is one of the best noir episodes of the first three seasons, featuring that rarest of birds, the sympathetic perp.

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Station West (1948) [my review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive] [my review]

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr 2/6

Note: September 21, 1957 was the date of the first episode of the classic Perry Mason TV series. So this week we celebrate Raymond Burr’s performances in film noir to demonstrate that Burr didn't come out of nowheresville.  Burr built up a fearsome reputation playing villains in the late 1940s and 1950s. For instance, in They Were So Young (1955) he plays a felon who is involved in a human trafficking ring in which young women are tricked into traveling to Rio de Janeiro to join an elite modeling agency, only to find out it's a front for sexual slavery in brothels. An easily shocked moralist and prude, I’m not into exploitation movies so not even the yen to view Brother Ray’s film noir outings would induce me to watch a movie whose alternative titles are Violated and Party Girls for Sale.

 Station West
1948 / 1:18
Tagline: “She Was Sweet...and DEADLY AS POISON!”

Tolstoy said the elemental story begins with a stranger coming to town. In this noir western, Dick Powell is that stranger hitting town where the Chorus of the movie, hotel man Burl Ives, is singing a ditty about the short life spans of strangers in town. Powell plays an underground federal agent whose mission is to break up a ring that is robbing stagecoaches of gold, killing the soldiers guarding the consignment, and disrupting transportation and the smooth functioning of the economy.

The black and white cinematography is beautifully shot, especially an epic fist fight that a movie-goer can’t believe any fighter would walk away from. With stirring orchestral music, any western has a travel log aspect, with its views of big nature, open skies, and weird landscapes. But there are noir touches as well, such as cool shadows, light on faces in darkness, and warehouses burning down in the night. Noir influences the dialogue. Jane Greer: I think he secretly likes you. Powell: Well, he keeps it a secret. Powell also assures us, “Trouble and I are old enemies. We understand each other.”

Directed by Sidney Lanfield, the movie is considered a unique hybrid of Western and film noir, with a complex narrative and atmospheric tension. The screenplay, in fact, won the award Best Written American Western from the Writers Guild of America in 1949. It was based on a novel by Luke Short, a well-respected author I remember fondly from when I read westerns long ago.

Dick Powell could do anything, musicals, comedy, or noir. His chemistry with Jane Greer works as Hollywood works in the inevitable love interest. In fact, the exquisite Greer is so attractive even a tight-lipped noir hero would fall in love with her. Besides, she’s the richest woman in town, even wealthier than Agnes Moorehead who has a thing going with the local Army General. The three plug-uglies look the part, especially one that looks like George Atzerodt, one of the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination.

Raymond Burr plays Bristow, a cowardly and crooked lawyer in the town. He has a poker jones. Jane Greer, who inherited the saloon-casino-bordello from her father, uses Burr’s IOU’s to make lily-livered Burr fold like a card table. In his four scenes, duplicitous Burr has a skittish manner, jumpy voice, and spine of macaroni, thinking it terribly unfair that the bad guys would kill him when they had no use for him. He’s persuasive when we see him realize how exposed he is as he crosses the street between the casino and his office. Maybe he wanted to put in an excellent performance because he was so happy not to be playing the heavy for once.

As for the connection with the original Perry Mason TV series, a familiar face in noir movies, Steve Brodie was a young officer in one scene in this movie. Brodie was the perp in TCOT Garrulous Gambler and a PR man in TCOT Angry Astronaut. His best part was as a political fixer in TCOT Witless Witness, probably in my Top Three Favorite Episodes.

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Station West (1948) [my review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive] [my review]

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr 1/6

Note: September 21, 1957 was the date of the first episode of the classic Perry Mason TV series. To mark the happiest day in the history of television, paradoxically, this week we celebrate Raymond Burr’s performances in film noir before the role that made him immortal. Burr was a demon for work, appearing in more than 50 feature films between 1946 and 1957. He was typecast as the villain because his stoutness gave him a commanding menacing presence.

Raw Deal
1948 / 1:19
Tagline: “Bullets! Women! -- Can't Hold a Man Like This!”
[internet archive]

“Would any dame wait three years for a guy to get out of prison,” incarcerated individual Dennis O’Keefe asks Marsha Hunt, a social worker who is convinced he has some good in him. She read once that when a teen he saved kids from drowning at risk to his own young life. He shrugs off her faith in his better angels, and tells her not to wear perfume the next time she visits lest he ruin his run of good behavior. O’Keefe is realistic but hard-hearted and not real smart.

Meanwhile, Raymond Burr, who crossed O’Keefe and landed him in state prison, works an escape plot so that O’Keefe will be killed during the sneak-out. Minion John Ireland sarcastically sticks it to cowardly Burr by saying he’s good at getting the cops to pull the trigger for him. Bully and sneak Burr doesn’t like that and warns in a cold voice that he’s saving up something special, really special for Ireland. Burr is lensed from an angle that that makes him look massive and imposing but he also has a doughiness that minions and movie-goers don’t feel a need to respect.

O’Keefe beats the odds insofar as he escapes the pen with the help of his old GF Claire Trevor. She, in fact, provides important insights in voice-overs such as “Waiting…waiting… All my life it seems as if I’ve been waiting for Joe.” This narrative is spiced with theremin music, which gives an other-worldly sense that is not always suitable for a gritty crime drama directed by film noir demigod Anthony Mann. In a couple of scenes the music from the late swing era comes from a radio, giving a carefree contrast to the dramatic situation.

But staying alive while breaking out of prison exhausts his fortune. Bad luck and the inability to plan dog O’Keefe and Trevor as they drive around and find places to hide out. Bad luck takes the form of car trouble. Then, bureaucracy, which reaches into every corner of modern life, represented by a lone horseman, demands camping permits. Luck also determines if cops are going to be more or less prone to cognitive distortions like jumping to conclusions, mental filters, over-generalizing, and inability to see the forest for the trees. The cops are brought down on our fugitives by the bad luck of a runaway killer in a crime of passion running to the same remote hide-out as O’Keefe and Trevor flee to.

The cinematography, beautifully shot by John Alton, features amazing shadows, shots from various angles and striking images like pale faces surrounded by darkness; the climax is of San Francisco in fog and crackling fire. Also attention-grabbing are the sounds of the modern world such as train whistles, sirens, bells, and foghorns. As for indirect social critique, O’Keefe is not terribly bright though he's brave and resourceful. He understands in a dim way that he would be happier if he just lived an honest life supported with modest ranch or small business. But he’s still angry that he had to hock the bravery medal he won at sixteen to buy food because he lives in a society where teens go hungry from food insecurity.

Besides the empty promise of a society whose youth go hungry, betrayal is all over this drama. Claire Trevor’s moll realizes that O’Keefe has never told her clearly that he loves her. He does not listen to her when he gets lost in his own thoughts. He doesn’t listen to her advice or ultimatums either. The many slaps to the face in the movie signal a moment of revelation to the characters that they have been lied to or betrayed or they have been kidding themselves. For instance, Claire Trevor slaps Marsha Hunt, who replies, “Thanks, I probably deserved that” when she realizes she’s been working under an illusion.

It is indeed hard to feel sympathy for O’Keefe or Trevor since they are ready to kill people to get out from under the cops and they kidnap the social worker Marsha Hunt.  The social worker loses her illusions about O’Keefe when she sees how ready he is to kill the park ranger on horseback. She later remonstrates with him when he accuses her of living her life in fear, only seeking safety and security. She tells him that living life straight is what everybody does to get food on the table and maintain self-respect, that she doesn’t need safety so much as she thinks that she is living a life of decency. Ideas like “living an excellent life is the most important thing” are much more substantial than I was expecting from a noir crime drama.

All the acting here is plausible. Appearing in only three scenes as the mobster Rick, Raymond Burr dresses sharply in a pin-stripe suit but clothes don’t take away the cold remote look of a shark, especially in his eyes. Burr is shot from below to look very imposing, but his words, manner and actions are motivated by cowardice and wishful thinking. In a shocking scene famous among film noir buffs, he brings puerile acting-out to his sadism when he burns a waitress because he is angry at his minion John Ireland. Ireland is always persuasive as a heavy. He is later lambasted in the one of the three amazing fight scenes in this movie. The fog and fire of the climax with Burr’s deception is incredible. The crackles of the fire really pop.

This review grows long – I have only to finish by saying this gripping movie, directed by luminary Anthony Mann, is an example of perfect film noir, up there with The Maltese Falcon, Touch of Evil and Sorry Wrong Number. Keep an out for a keen 1948 Willys Jeep Station Wagon.

As for the connection to the classic Perry Mason TV series, Whit Bissel plays the killer on the run that brings legions of cops down on our runaways. Bissel was in four episodes, only once as an upstanding citizen. In one he was an embezzler and an office lecher-corporate spy in another, and in two he was the perp.

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Station West (1948) [my review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive] [my review]

Our Values are Disintegrating before our Eyes

Note: Last month TCM aired the movie version of Marquand’s H.M. Pulham, Esq., directed by King Vidor in 1941. He effectively used two devices that don’t often work, the voiceover as an interior monologue and the flashback. Like the book reviewed below, the movie is about the transience of values and groping for happiness while living an unlived life. A man from a well-to-do Boston family, now middle-aged and doing the quiet desperation thing, receives two calls that shatter his fragile tranquility. Only then does he – Robert Young - look back, grappling with the question “Hedy Lemarr or Ruth Hussey – did I make the right choice?”

The Late George Apley - John P. Marquand

One would expect that a Pulitzer Prize winner for 1938 would be merely picturesque and quaint in 2025. And it’s kind of harmless and genial, given Marquand was ambivalent about the people he was satirizing.

Basically, it is the story of a man whose upper-class ways and traditions have narrowed his life. George Apley says, “I have always been faced from childhood by the obligation of convention, and all of these conventions have been made by others, formed from the fabric of the past. . . . They were designed to promote stability and inheritance. Perhaps they have gone a little bit too far."

This novel is so smoothly written that its 400 pages fly by fast. Marquand sharpened his writing skills in magazine fiction and was later well-known for his detective Mr. Moto. Marquand tells the story of a blighted life mainly through letters, but also uses other genres such as meeting minutes and speeches. I like a writer who uses many devices.

This is for hardcore readers who think spending time immersed in novels by Willa Cather or Sinclair Lewis is an utterly ordinary thing to do or those interested in the best-sellers of bygone days like Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah. 

American Women who Served in Vietnam

A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of 26 American Women who Served in Vietnam - Keith Walker

The middle and late 1980s saw an outpouring of memoirs about the Vietnam War. Maybe people needed a decade to cool the passions of the late 1960s and early 1970s and recover from depression over the 1975 withdrawal before they felt like thinking about the war. Eager to profit from renewed interest, publishers released excellent books. Oral histories about American women in Vietnam were Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam (Lynda Van Devanter), In the Combat Zone: Vivid Personal Recollections of the Vietnam War from the Women Who Served There (Kathryn Marshal), and the book under review here

About 15,000 American women served in Vietnam. Journalist and filmmaker Keith Walker interviewed nurses (14 army, one Navy and the remaining 11 represented organizations such as the Red Cross and the USO). Walker provides introductions to the women's monologues. Though only a paragraph long, expressive details include one interviewee who covered her eyes with her arm during her entire talk

Walker uses ellipses to show hesitations and silences and indicate distress so the text should be read slowly. The extended monologue gives an idea of the shared experience many veterans, male and female. The interviewees have a range of political opinions and responses to the war. Many see their experiences in a positive light and reject casting themselves as victims.

They also share the tension of never knowing where the enemy was except everywhere and being under attack. The nurses underwent repeated exposure to the injury, disability, disfigurement, and death of men who were terribly young. One nurse wanted to ask her mother to check around and see if she could find one whole 18 year old man. Women recount feeling fear, boredom, callousness, and the gradual loss of the ability to feel that prolonged stress causes.

Readers who have read more than a few memoirs of Vietnam Veterans will be struck at the common themes, like male adrenaline junkies. Some women talked of the intensity of work in-country and the tedious blandness of life back home after so much excitement. “The one thing Nam did for me was that I felt like I could walk on water,” says a nurse. The women also reported that on coming back stateside, like male veterans, they too suffered PTSD, usually called delayed stress. They dealt with alcohol and substance abuse, changed jobs and residences frequently, experienced nightmares and had trouble finding somebody who would understand them. More than male memoirists, however, the women remark on the beauty of the country.

 I recommend this book as readable and valuable oral history which underlines the personal and unique instead of the historical. Critics rank it among the best oral histories about the war. Anyone wishing to learn more about ordinary women who gave extraordinary service in the Vietnam War would do well to read this book.

The Ides of Perry Mason 93

Note: In the first couple of seasons (1957-58-59), the classic Perry Mason had the cool look of film noir. Granted, Raymond Burr in the title role tends to talk rapidly, lots of actors get into hambone territory, and the stories are complicated. As time passed, the stories never become more streamlined or comprehensible. From 1960 on, the plots tended to be ripped from the headlines of the day, which dates the show: ESP, JD's, open wheel race cars, corporate espionage, folk music and beatniks. By the 7th season, many of the story lines and scripts were lame compared to earlier seasons. Exhausted Raymond Burr remarked that the show should have ended after the 5th season. Gutsy, considering that he was making a million a season, amazing money for those days - William Tallman as Hamilton Burger was making only $65K.

The Best of Season 7 (1963-64)

The Case of the Nebulous Nephew. Season 7 was kicked off with this incredible episode. Two heartless scamsters aim to con two harmless old ladies. But after living with the two women for a little while, one fraud becomes fond of them and argues for abandoning the nefarious plan. But his henchman (scoundrel Hugh Marlowe of course) objects and ends up murdered. Besides the stellar acting, the long set-up is without a wasted scene or line. The writers make points about staying in touch with your values, feeling family loyalty, acting as a faithful retainer, undergoing wartime deployment and its effect on romance, and using love and faith as guides to belief, despite having little evidence. Up there with TCOT Perjured Parrot and TCOT Nine Dolls, this may be my favorite episode ever.

The Case of the Deadly Verdict. Janice Barton has played the part of the society party girl to the hilt. Her madcap antics have ended up in the death of a boyfriend who fell from the balcony of an Italian guest house and the partial paralysis of her sister in a car wreck. Now Janice was caught in a lie by DA Hamilton Burger and refuses to tell her lawyer Perry Mason the whole truth. So she has been convicted of murder and sentenced to die in the gas chamber. Perry and Paul pull out the stops to exonerate her. This is a somber, quiet episode with plenty of Hitchcockian moments. Perry broods and in a rare-as-hen's-teeth moment of losing his signature unflappability he throws a medicine ball into a lout’s gut. All the acting is exceptional in this episode, especially videogenic Julie Adams as the troubled accused.

The Case of the Nervous Neighbor. Charles Fuller (Richard Rust) hires the Paul Drake investigation agency to locate his missing mother, Alice Fuller Bradley (Shelia Bromley). Paul’s operatives locate her in an assisted care facility. She is suffering from amnesia, which for once has a reasonable explanation: she sustained a traumatic brain injury and in an unconscious state killed her husband with a fireplace poker. So the first court room scene is Burger waiving prosecution, sympathetic to the case of the accused. However, after the trial the son acts in an ill-considered way that leads to his mother ending up accused of killing a smarmy operator played by, in a bold casting decision, Paul Winchell (Jerry Mahoney puts in no appearance – a mercy).  William Talman’s DA Burger tears Richard Rust’s character to shreds in a great interrogation scene. Francis X. Bushman puts in a funny cameo as a nursing home Romeo and ever reliable Les Tremayne pops up too. All the actresses - Katherine Squire (the nurse) and Jeanne Cooper (of The Young and Restless fame) – put in great performances. And the tone, look and ending are as Hitchcockian as we’ll ever enjoy in the series. In my Top Five Fave Episodes.

Honorable Mention: TCOT Shifty Shoebox features the incredible Constance Ford, and overall the acting is quite good in this plausible story of adults have genuine grown-up problems. TCOT Drowsy Mosquito takes Perry and the Gang out of LA and features Arthur Hunnicutt in the crusty prospector role that he owned in scores of TV westerns and Strother Martin as a small-town main-chancer.

Happy Birthday Henry Wade

Note: Born in 1887, veteran of WWI Major Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher, 6th Baronet KStJ CVO DSO, was Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire from 1954 to 1961. Under a pen-name, he was also one of the leading authors during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. In their classic reference book Catalogue of Crime, Barzun and Taylor said of him: “Though insufficiently known in the US, Wade is one of the great figures of the classical period. He was not only very productive but also varied in genre. His plots, characters, situations, and means rank with the best, while his prose has elegance and force.”

Lonely Magdalen: A Murder Story – Henry Wade

In this classic English detective story from 1940, a sex worker is found strangled in a park in Hampstead Heath. Scotland Yard is called in and young insightful Inspector Poole is assigned a case that is rapidly growing cold. With no clues, he inquires into the background of the victim.

So right away we depart from Golden Age mystery. Mercifully. Instead of a loathsome uncle poisoned in a library in a country house, we have a gritty urban setting, with the victim a woman of the town, worn out and in the abyss, killed brutally.  We are not treated to the usual troop of suspects gathered in a room as a climax. Wade spurns police worship, because here the cops are prone to human error and their irresponsible lack of professionalism leads to an ambiguous reveal. Uncertainty in a reveal is a rarity in mysteries up to WWII. Worry not however: in the 2013 edition Arcturus released they provided a map of the scene of the crime, a mainstay of Golden Age mysteries.

Henry Wade started his career with mainstream puzzlers and made his way over to more stimulating police procedurals and crime novels. This mystery features a middle section that is more like a flashback in that it describes the backstory of the victim (another departure: usually victims in the Golden Age were barely sketched out). Unlike Golden Age writers who want to spare the feelings of the reader, Wade assumes we can handle settings, incidents and motives without seeking out the fainting couch and sending the maid to fetch the sal volatile. Chronicling how drinking devastated the lives of the victim and her husband, Wade is ahead of his time when he theorizes about a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, a possibility today's experts are learning more about.

Wade wrote as many as 22 detective novels or story collections between 1926 and 1957. The Hanging Captain and Mist on the Saltings were published by Harper Perennial in a series of great re-issues in the Eighties.

The Nones of Perry Mason 92

Note: I have a dim view of comparisons but here I go, Cool and Lam versus Perry Mason. The Cool and Lam novels, written under the A.A. Fair pen name, are known among us happy few for their comedic elements and witty banter between Donald Lam and Bertha Cool. They are generally shorter and move through twists and turns quickly. Donald Lam, a former lawyer with a knack for getting into trouble, and Bertha Cool, a brassy and independent detective, make for an entertaining pair because they contrast: while both are tough as nails, he's quiet and insightful and she's as sensitive as a fire hydrant. These novels delve into the seedier side of life, with more emphasis on family problems and private investigation than courtroom drama, police procedures, or legal technicalities. 

Owls Don’t Blink – A.A. Fair a.k.a. Erle Stanley Gardner

The mysteries under the pen name A. A. Fair  feature the private eye partnership Bertha Cool and Donald Lam.

Like all famous whodunit partnerships ranging from Holmes & Watson to Gravedigger Jones & Coffin Ed and Nick & Nora, Cool & Lam appeal to readers because, though they are both smart about figuring out scams, they are opposites in personality. Impulsive Bertha Cool has a hair-trigger temper and has only a porous filter between her brain and her mouth. Ex-lawyer Donald Lam has a sound grip on legal matters and police procedures. Lam is a master at interrogation, making inferences, and keeping his mouth shut. He frustrates Bertha mightily by being impossible to pump for information. 

Bertha is recovering from a health scare so she doesn’t push herself away from a hearty meal. Lam has a slight build, but is skilled in boxing and jujitsu. Because they know they make a good team, they like each other enough to banter affectionately but frankly.

Owls Don’t Blink is set mainly in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Lam is on the trail of a missing woman. Bertha arrives in the Big Easy with the New York lawyer who has hired them to find an ex-model for reasons he is reluctant to explain. As Lam often does, he locates the woman very easily - too easily, in fact. Then, a corpse is discovered in the missing woman’s former apartment.

The scene shifts from New Orleans to Shreveport and from there to Los Angeles, though there is also a desert scene where Gardner can describe the landscape he loved so deeply. Plenty of action and convoluted incidents capture our attention before the conclusion, which is complicated. The scams and schemes in this novel are ingenious, but the best point is the interplay between Lam and Bertha, between Lam and the persons of interest in the case.

The time for this mystery is early 1942 (at the latest) so with the decisive Battle of Midway yet to be fought, the outcome of the war with Japan is a question mark. Bertha wants to keep Lam a civilian because he attracts big money cases. She is trying to finagle a deferment for him - maybe 4F, "not acceptable for military service" since he was a disbarred attorney.

Crime Crashes Off "The Rock"

Note: In this movie future producer of the classic TV series Perry Mason, Gail Patrick, plays an earnest and even-keeled nurse. She is cool and calm enough to be guided through long-distance abdominal surgery. She ought, however, to wear the surgical mask over her nose too. We learned such technical niceties in 2020.

King of Alcatraz
1938 / 54 minutes
Tagline: “He Changed his Prison Stripes for a Pirate's Hat!”
[internet archive]

Robert Preston and Lloyd Nolan are two radiomen on a cruise ship. They are frenemies who brawl over boop-a-doop girls named Dixie. One day in San Franciso they are almost run down by a speeding car.  It was being chased by cops because a gangster stole it to escape police custody.

The gangster J. Carrol Naish is sly enough to escape from Alcatraz by claiming he needed medical attention. He was also resourceful enough to disguise himself as an old lady to get aboard the same cruise ship to which our two sparks guys were assigned. But he impulsively kills a traitor on board ship though the victim will be soon missed. And the plan to take over the ship, change course, and then escape into the wilds of Central America seems half- baked, at best. The sailors call him “King of Alcatraz” out of contempt.

Too much time is spent establishing the rivalry of Preston and Nolan. But in short order, the movie becomes fast-moving to a fault, never giving the movie-goer’s attention a second to wander. Gail Patrick’s part is under-written and there’s no time to give her any chance to act. The climax was rushed and breathless. J. Carrol Naish does not give himself up to the dark side of the hambone as he was so often to do later in his career, which may disappoint movie-goers who are bracing themselves for when he leaves “restrained” in the rearview mirror.

The movie is still worth an hour because Robert Florey is the director.  His images of the tramp steamer make it feel as if it were in the moist grip of subtropical humidity.  A movie-goer has to respect Florey’s attention to craft, even in lowly movies like this one. No missteps at all when it comes to camera work.

Dennis Morgan and Anthony Quinn have tiny little parts. This B-movie was Robert Preston's first movie. What a voice that guy had! Ya Got Trouble!

Other Gail Patrick Movies: Click on the title to go to the review

·         If I Had a Million
·         The Phantom Broadcast
·         The Murders in the Zoo
·         Death Takes a Holiday
·         The Crime of Helen Stanley
·         Murder at the Vanities
·         The Preview Murder Mystery
·         My Man Godrey
·         Murder by Pictures
·         Artists and Models
·         King of Alcatraz

The Kalends of Perry Mason 91

Note:  In the 271 episodes of the original TV series Perry Mason (1957 - 1966), many business dramas unfold. Relatable were family businesses fighting over succession and bigger companies that were bedeviled by competitors, office romances, or rivalries over promotions. Writers liked to examine the dark sides of businesses in the arts, entertainment, and high fashion.

There’s No Thief like a Bad Book

As professionals, the Mason writers were probably of two minds about the cultural phenomenon entitled Peyton Place (1956), marveling at its massive success and cultural impact but also taking jabs at the literary racket, plagiarists, and authors of bad books that become best-sellers.

The Case of the Wayward Wife (1/23/60). The premise is shaky because it would have been impossible for a prisoner to keep a journal in a North Korean POW camp. Still, author and sage Arthur Poe manages to do just that. During an escape attempt, however, he is re-captured and his journal ends up in the larcenous hands of his fellow soldier Ben Sutton. Back in the USA, Sutton publishes the journal under his own name. Ordeal becomes a best-seller, and attracts the attention of movie producers. Sutton is an all-round heel because when not reaping the fruits of plagiarism, he is blackmailing the family of his wife Sylvia. Sylvia makes the wrong choices at the wrong time and place and ends up in the dock accused of Sutton’s murder (regal Bethel Leslie played three times the murdered louse’s nice wife who ends up Perry’s client). Besides the shaky premise, Poe’s Stoicism-lite is neither consistent nor convincing. The subplot of the blackmailed family members clouds the story. But the acting is superb and the mood somber even if the writing tries to pack ten pounds of story into a five-pound sack.

The Case of the Prankish Professor (1/17/63). In a university classroom, a condescending English prof stages a shooting as the basis for a writing assignment. That the prof would traumatize at least 10% of the students in the room for the sake of a writing prompt shows that his judgement is unsound, his pedagogy dubious. He is thrown a curve ball when the sister of one of his former students accuses him of plagiarism. It seems he filched the manuscript of trashy novel L'Affaire Annabelle and published it under a pen-name. Referring to the best-selling Peyton Place ripoff, a bookstore clerk leers, “If it smells, it sells.” The prof is spared the embarrassment of a scandal when he is murdered with a letter opener to the pump. His wife, long-suffering and noble, ends up in the dock. Good acting especially from the relentless and greedy sister, played by dynamic Joyce Van Patten.

The Case of the Skeleton’s Closet (5/2/63). Richard Harris is full of rage and hostility against his ex-wife and young children because after the divorce she changed their surnames from his to her maiden name. So he writes a tell-all book called Dishonored, about the tawdry high jinks of dwellers of an upper-class LA suburb. His ex-wife is afraid the tacky book will disgrace the kids and she wants it pulled from the market. Their scenes of bitter argument hiss and sizzle, kudos to Michael Pate and Peggy McCay. In a poignant scene, a broken young woman is weaving a basket as her occupational therapy. I ask my weaving and basket-making wife if that stereotype of “basket weaver as basket case” still dogs her and her buds. “Only with narrow-minded people,” she says with a glare that adds, “like you.”

The Case of the Bountiful Beauty (2/6/64). Ryan O’Neal plays a small part as John Carew, the boyfriend of Debra Dearborn (gamine Zeme North). John has told Debra stories of his bad-girl step-mom Stephanie (Sandra Warner, a Joan Collins type). Budding writer Debra has woven these stories together into a lurid novel like – you guessed in one - Peyton Place. The book becomes a best-seller, attracting the attention of a rotten movie producer (John Van Dreelan, a George Saunders cad). This episode illustrates the tendency of this series to paint the entertainment industry in the worst colors. In an episode that features superb acting, the best character is an agent man who protests his innocence and calls our favorite lawyer “Perry baby.”