The Kalends of Perry Mason 88

Note:  A. A. Fair is one of the many pen names of Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of defense lawyer Perry Mason. The mysteries under the Fair pen name feature the private eye partnership Bertha Cool and Donald Lam.

Double or Quits – A.A. Fair

Writing as A.A. Fair, Erle Stanley Gardner released the fourth and fifth Bertha Cool – Donald Lam mysteries in 1941. In March, Spill the Jackpot had portly Bertha Cool lose weight due to a bout with a virus.  In December, Double or Quits finds Bertha and her crack investigator Lam taking the day off to go fishing. Learning from her health scare, Bertha becomes determined to make time for self-care.

But another angler at the pier turns out to be Dr. Hilton Deverest, an M.D. with a big problem. Jewels from his safe have disappeared and so has Nollie Starr, his wife’s social secretary. He hires Cool and Lam to find the secretary, get the jewels back, and let Nollie know that the doc will let bygones be bygones. Things get complicated for Cool and Lam when their client is found dead on the floor of his garage with his car engine running.

At this point with the case heating up, Gardner tells the tale of how Lam pressures Bertha to make the agency a partnership. Bertha howls as if stabbed, but agrees after Lam applies psychological judo. The first thing new partner Lam does is boost the wages of the agency secretary Elsie Brand. Not just a pretty name (I had two aunts named Elsie), she is a Gardnerian Ideal Woman: taciturn, loyal, resourceful, quick-witted, kind, and easy on the eye.

The setting and motivations are plausible. The characterization isn’t deep but Gardner gets across that the characters are adults having real-life problems. Dr. and Mrs. Deverest have a marriage so troubled it borders on the sick. The doctor’s niece Nadine Croy is dealing with an ex that is milking her for money. Heartless con men exploit widows’ loneliness and discontent. In a fine scene, Elsie Brand’s cooking appeals to cop’s appetite which proves to be his undoing since after Bertha makes him pay for his mooching a free meal, his nasty inclination to push people around, and his all-round poor judgement. Lam has great interrogation scenes and in one he plays a doctor like a fish, getting him to toss his professional ethics overboard.

More cheering is the relationship that Lam has with Elsie. It is not of the platonic nature of the one between Perry and Della. Near the end of Double or Quits, a nurse solemnly warns Elsie not to be alone with Lam because, under the influence, he might be “abnormally stimulated.”

Gardner writes, “Elsie Brand laughed in her face.”

True, the plotting gets convoluted and the reveal requires the focus of reading a loan agreement. A key deduction feels improbable. But this is worth reading just for the enjoyment of the comical interplay between brainy Lam and hard-charging Bertha, plus of the tender back and forth between Lam and Elsie. It’s strange how the Cool & Lam novels are a little hard-boiled and a little cozy at the same time. While the characterization is not what a hardcore reader of Faulkner would call strong, the characters are the best thing going for it.

European Reading Challenge #7

Franz Kafka – Jeremy Adler

This short, copiously illustrated biography tells about the life and times of the subject in enough detail to hold the interest of but not overwhelm the non-specialist. There are many pictures of Prague and the important people in the writer’s life. Also included are Kafka’s drawings from his notebooks.

In accessible language, Adler makes the point that the Jewish Austrian-Czech writer and novelist who wrote in German tore up the blueprint for the 19^th century novel. For example, he used both ordinary and implausible characters. Josef K. is an ordinary bank employee who is arrested one day for no apparent reason and put on trial. Gregor Samsa is a fabric drummer who wakes up one morning to find he has been transformed into a winged beetle. In plain language and a lucid style, Kafka creates characters that anybody anywhere can relate to.

Making the personal and private seem universal, Kafka deals with abstract concepts like “integrity,” “reality,” and “individuality,” as concepts that thinking members of all cultures must contend with in the modern world. His description of urban alienation and anxiety speak to readers who feel isolated in the world, cut off from traditional ways of thought.

The word Kafkaesque has entered our language like Orwellian and Dickensian. It usually describes being trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare of incompetent or mean or zealous (or all three) clerks, pointless protocols, and incomprehensible paperwork. But it seems unfair that Kafka’s name should be associated with such negative meanings when he had such a positive and humane soul. 

Besides, given the Nazis branded Kafka’s art “degenerate” and burned his books, that must mean he’s worth reading.

Forty Witnesses Saw the Killing

Note: Gail Patrick moved beyond ingenue parts when she played Cornelia the mean sister in My Man Godrey. After dozens of parts as the socialite bad girl, retirement from acting drove her batty with boredom. With her husband Cornwell, Gail Patrick Jackson formed the company that produced from 1957 to 1966 the greatest courtroom TV series in creation. One wonders if it was due to Jackson – a lifelong Democrat - that the writers so often returned to themes such as class inequality and friction, the treatment of marginalized groups, and the various forms of corruption in the business world and the entertainment industry.

Murder by Pictures
1936 / 1:09
Tagline: “Forty Witnesses Saw the Killing, But Not One Could Pick the Killer!”
[internet archive]

Gangster Nate Girard (Onslow Stevens) hosts a shindig celebrating his acquittal from a murder charge. But the party is pooped when his attorney is shot to death. No gun is found, but, as the tagline hints, forty witnesses are all suspects. 

In this large pool is Meg “Nutmeg” Archer (Gail Patrick) stands out because her father was killed by Girard. She could have provided evidence that convicted Girard, so Girard wants her to take the fall for the lawyer’s killing. The flatfoots suspect that news photographer Kent Murdock (Lew Ayres) is helping Nutmeg evade the meshes of the law. A flashback explains how a photo of the actual shooting exists and like the rifle in that famous Western (Winchester ’73?), the negative keeps changing hands.

At only 69 minutes, this comic mystery can’t help but move briskly. The clever twists and non-stop turns make up for the now creaky wisecracking. So much in style then, nowadays nonsense grates if the viewer is not in the right mood for period word play.  "Aw, come on. Skin back your ivories. You're as limp as spaghetti. You're the saddest group of courtroom victors I ever trained a lens on."

Granted, though, classic American tall-tale wackiness hits the mark when a deadpan cop reports: “We got her life story from Oklahoma. When she was 12 she shot out all the candles on her birthday cake. They call her Nutmeg.”

Beware: Confusing is the first fifteen minutes. The acquitted killer gives useful information in an aside that is easy to miss due to the muddy sound. Three brash newspaper reporters – Lew Ayres, Benny Baker, and Paul Kelly – all seem to be named Murdock. Trying too hard to hit the screwball comedy note, Ayres takes to the shower with his pants on. Also, Gail Patrick’s backstory is related to what everybody at the time would have known but we post-moderns have forgotten: that in the early Twenties the Osage Nation in Oklahoma were the richest people per capita in the world, which attracted murderous whitemen on the ruthless hunt for oil money.

There is one connection to the classic Perry Mason TV series. Appearing in this movie as his usual comic relief bumpkin is a 30-year-old Benny Baker, who in his fifties was to appear in three episodes of the series. He was good as a cold gambling commission bureaucrat in TCOT Gambling Lady, but he was great as the nasty henchman in TCOT Carefree Coronary and the worst adult male role model in the world in TCOT Shifty Shoe-Box with the great Constance Ford.

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

 

Barbara Hale Week 4/4

Note: The last entry in our Barbara Hale Film Festival. She starred as Della Street, the office manager and confidential secretary of Perry Mason from 1957 to 1966. She had a solid career in full-length movies, just as flourishing as William Talman and probably moreso than Burr and Hopper. She could both 'girl next door' and 'femme fatale.'

The Houston Story
1956 / 1:19
Tagline: “Terror Over Texas!”
[internet archive]

This B-movie is a crime story produced in the waning days of the genre known as film noir. It’s an uneven movie with a shallow script. For fans of Perry Mason, however, the main attractions are two fine actresses. Barbara Hale was a regular on the show as Mason’s faithful sidekick Della Street. And Jeanne Cooper appeared five times as a guest star, usually playing a difficult complex woman.

Hale goes platinum blond in this picture. Lest I go completely ‘male gazey,’ I’ll just opine “In-frickin-credible” and let it go at that. Against her girl-next-door type in TheFirst Time and Clay Pigeon, she plays the ambitious ex-wife of Gene Barry's now dead foreman in the oil fields. Bored with a stable homelife and money problems, she deserted her happy home and took a new name, only to end up as a chanteuse and the mistress of a tool employed by the mobbed-up crime czar of Houston.

Jeanne Cooper plays Gene Barry's current girlfriend. Madge is a waitress, all wholesome loyalty, loving compassion and warm dependability. She’s even adaptable when, in the tradition of nice GF’s in film noir movies, she says they can live on the run from the gangsters out to snuff him. Her mistake is that she thinks that Gene Barry loves her and is not a crook. But in the end after she realizes his true wolfish nature, she returns to her core values of honesty and courage. The movie-goer can see her inner turmoil before she adds the proviso “unless somebody is in danger” to our cultural rule “don’t snitch” and moves the story to its inevitable conclusion.

The story gets rolling when Gene Barry pressures Hale into introducing him to the local crime lord Edward Arnold and his minion Paul Richards. Barry presents to the wise guys his plan to rustle oil directly from the fields and sell it on the grey market to unethical distributors and countries like Cuba under embargo. The wise guys agree to the plan, but Barry is a victim of his own smarts and ambition. Barry wants to rise in the syndicate, and Arnold and Richards plan to knock him off as soon as they learn what he knows about oil rustling.

Barry is clever and magnetic but he’s ignorant in various ways. He’s disloyal: he uses his childhood  friend as a patsy, the fall-guy whose signature is on all the contracts. He’s fickle: he cheats on honest Cooper with temptress Hale. He’s ruthless: he sends Cooper to his apartment though it is probably being watched by the hit men. He’s decadent: The montage shows him smiling as he orchestrates grand theft and bribery, looking nasty but charming (Barry was always charming) as he ruins businesses and livelihoods with crime. He’s dumb: he can’t imagine any rivals would really do him in, doesn’t see that he is just as vulnerable to a couple of rounds to the brain pan as the next guy. He actually says, “I’m the big boy now and nobody’s gonna get me out.”

The script comes close to a criticism of the “corporate man,” a story of rivalry among street-fighters in suits but doesn’t quite get there. The script is also blurry as a morality tale. It is not clear why Barry and Hale fall for each other so hard, nor why Barry is so callous about using a childhood friend like a tool. I suppose we movie-goers are supposed assume that Barry and Hale are both birds of a hedonistic feather, merely greedy for good times.

The pace of the movie, however, is brisk though director William Castle (yes, the William Castle) does give us breathers. One is on top of an observation tower at night (yeah, we get a plunge unto death – cool!). And another follows two hitmen through Houston International Airport, which is attractive to us movie-goers who like mid-20^th century infrastructure.

As for the connection with the classic Perry Mason TV series, Frank Jenks, who played the patsy best friend, drove a cab in this movie just as he did in TCOT Deadly Double. Jenks played a barman that had seen it all in TCOT Violent Vest. Jenks had a craggy face that made him look like an archetypal white working class American man. Paul Richards also appeared twice on the show, in TCOT Startled Stallion and TCOT Melancholy Marksman. Both characters were troubled souls.

Barbara Hale Week 3/4

Note: This is the third of four reviews to celebrate Barbara Hale Week. She starred as Della Street, the office manager and confidential law secretary of Perry Mason from 1957 to 1966.  At Columbia Pictures, she appeared in the title role in Lorna Doone (1951) and with James Stewart in TheJackpot (1951). She wasn't typecast like Burr and Talman were. She could do both comedy and drama, doing both, in fact, in this picture.

The First Time
1952 / 1:29
Tagline: “She's going to have a baby and the fun begins when she begins to feel funny!”
[internet archive]

This is the first live-action movie directed by Frank Tashlin. A movie-goer can tell Tashlin came from directing Looney Tunes because in The First Time a new baby provides voice-over commentary. Plus, the sight and sound gags are so lowbrow that they call to mind Jerry Lewis outings like Cinderfella which Tashlin was to direct later.

At first a movie-goer wonders what Robert Cummings and Barbara Hale, both veterans of serious movies, are doing in a sitcommie movie with a cozy plot. New parents, Joe and Betsy Bennett, navigate sleepless nights, brutal expenses, and the strains a new baby puts on a marriage. 

Seems safe and familiar enough.

But 20 minutes into the picture, the movie-goer senses that director Tashlin aims to express discomfort with his post-war USA. Lots of otherwise sensible people nowadays seem to kid themselves about the good old days of the Fifties, but Tashlin was there, sizing up the world the squares made with insubordinate humor.

First: money. Leaving the hospital, it is paying the bill time in a society where individuals and families still paid large medical costs out of pocket. Back then having a baby cost about $200, around $2,000 in today’s money. To pay for the delivery of the bouncing baby boy, they write the hospital a check that’s going to bounce too.

Second: work. At his new sales job, Cummings has to listen to pep talks from blowhard coaches who are motivating the washing machine salesmen with unholy bromides by Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale. Who needs values when you can fill your head with slogans? And Cummings’ fellow salesmen are all “hail, fellow, well met” types that seem as if they were stamped out of a machine.

Third: shoddy products. As for the product he devotes the best part of his day to selling, Cummings is appalled when he finds his wife Betsy has shelled out money for a diaper service. Why, when they can’t afford it and already have a washing machine? She can’t use the Whirl-A-Mart her husband sells because it tears up diapers.

Fourth: maternal mortality. Somber when Betsy and Joe discuss the terms of her will, which Joe has accidentally come across in her hospital go-bag. The scene works dramatically not only because Cummings and Hale are that good. This scene hits home when we recall that in the USA the maternal mortality rate (deaths per 100,000 live births) was significantly higher in 1950 compared to 2020. In 1950, the rate was approximately 95.1 deaths per 100,000 live births – i.e. like the Dominican Republic is now. By 2020, the USA rate had decreased to 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births, comparable to Lebanon and Grenada and not comparable with howling socialist hellholes like Norway and Sweden.

Fifth: the bourgeois fear of embarrassment and judgement. The hospital recommends a live-in nurse take care of the child for a month. The couple can’t afford it. But they are too embarrassed to tell her they can’t swing it when she just shows up on their doorstep.

Sixth: the cult of expertise and the self-help industry. The nurse (Cora Witherspoon, who is great) tyrannizes them in their own house. When the bossy nurse moves on to another hapless family, she leaves an oppressive schedule for the cowed mother to follow. Betsy feverishly studies the magazine wisdom of experts in parenting advice, a profitable genre of self-help. Barbara Hale does a great job portraying Betsy feeling overwhelmed.

Seventh: what is with American men? The movie touches on the clear message I got when I was a little kid in the Sixties that real men weren’t supposed to be interested in babies, that nurturance is effeminate and thus contemptible in men. On the phone getting the news of the new bundle of joy, the grandmother quizzes the grandfather, who took the call, if it’s a boy or a girl. The geezer replies crustily, “I didn’t ask. It’s bound to be one or the other.” Another man says to new father Cummings “When you got that baby, a millstone was hung around your neck.” Later when a nurse asks Bob the baby’s name he blurts out “Millstone.”

Betsy ends up exhausted with the housework, child-care, and shopping. She feels grody because she zero time for self-care. She is outraged that over their supper of sandwiches and warm beer, her husband wonders aloud, icily, what she does all day and why can’t she even manage to look attractive anymore. His callous cluelessness is expressed in a shot of his ranting visage that will call to mind Jack’s maniacal face in The Shining. The unhappy couple then have a searing argument in tight whispered voices so as not to wake the infink.

Eighth: lions, tigers, aggressive women, oh my! It somehow got by the Hays office when Bob, thinking he is picking up a babysitter at a bus stop, is shocked when a broad-minded woman with a tolerant view of life says breathily, "Just between you and me, two scotches and I'll sit anywhere."

I’m not saying that this is a brilliant take-down of cultural attitudes in post-war American suburbs. The ending, in fact, seems a sop to the squares, though it didn’t help much since the movie enjoyed only moderate success at the box office. But it is worth watching for when Tashlin does depart from the usual slush involving angelic lil nippers making their entry into this vale of tears.

Barbara Hale Week 2/4

Note: Welcome to the second of four reviews to celebrate Barbara Hale week. Best known for her role as Della Street in the TV series Perry Mason, she attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, aiming to be an artist. She modelled to pay tuition. She began her movie career in the 1940s. Her break was appearing with Frank Sinatra in Higher and Higher in 1943. Her ability to portray different characters with depth and authenticity contributed to her reputation as a skilled actress in both dramas and comedies.

The Jackpot
1950 / 1:25
Tagline: “The Prize-Winning Comedy of the Year!”
[internet archive]

This comedy is set in Indiana, in a town of probably 40,000 people since it can support a newspaper and two department stores. Bill, his wife Amy, and their two children are leading a stable life that many folks would give their eyeteeth for. But Bill glumly predicts his pattern of life is set. He assumes that he will live an adventure-free life until he is old, remorseful that nothing has ever happened to him. Why WWII wasn’t a big enough adventure for men in the Greatest Generation is left unexplained, but the upshot is James Stewart’s Bill is an antsy male like Dick Powell’s bored insurance guy in 1948’s film noir classic Pitfall.

Bill gets a glimmer of liberation. In the so-called Golden Age of Radio, giveaway shows were a popular type of program, often featuring quiz formats where contestants could win prizes. The prospect of winning the $24,000 jackpot sends Bill, Amy, and their canasta friends into frenzied dreams of getting, having, and living it up.  Bill exploits the small-city grapevine in order to obtain possible answers to the question that has stumped contestants for weeks. Plus, blind chance takes a hand in a miracle.

Proving once again that nothing is completely bad or completely good, even in victory, Bill and family get a quick lesson in tax laws, which back in the day bordered on confiscatory. An auditor tells them that the government will count as income the prizes worth $24,000, such as the services of the gay interior decorator, quarter-ton of beef, Palomino pony, collection of designer hats, furniture, portable bar, swimming pool, thousands of cans of Campbells and long trailer. Given Bill’s income of $7500 p.a. and his $500 in the bank, the $7000 tax liability could very well be a burden.

The look at postwar USA culture is skeptical but toothless. Bill feels mildly disgusted at the nervous conformity that compels parents to ferry their children to attend the boss's daughter’s birthday party. The four other couples, Bill figures, would jump out of their underwear at the idea of changing canasta night from Wednesday to Thursday evening. 

There is a modicum of genial satire on the culture of consumption as stoked by hard-sell advertising – idiotic jingles and all - on the radio. Granted, there is some bite in the victory scene when the consumption-mad adults don’t even notice that Bill’s little boy is crying for help because he’s gotten his head stuck between the spindles of the staircase. But only funny in the standard way we’ve seen many times are the grumpy and highly-strung teenage girl (12-year-old Natalie Wood) and Bill falling down the stairs (twice, no less).

James Stewart keeps his trademark folksy schtick to a minimum, which was fine with me. In about five A-movies before 1950, Barbara Hale is confident as wife Amy. A little odd is that Hale was in her late twenties when this movie was made so her character Amy would have had her daughter in her late teens. Too true that teen marriage was not a biggie back then. Hale is called upon to put on a variety of acts in this movie, which shows her range. The act 'jealous wife,' which is cliched, is on the writers.

As for the connection to the classic series Perry Mason, portrait painter Patricia Medina was an alluring temptress in TCOT Lucky Loser. The oily obsequious colleague Lyle Talbot appeared in the TCOT Long-Legged Models.

Canasta cheat Claude Stroud appeared in TCOT Ominous Outcast, TCOT Left-Handed Liar, and TCOT Bigamous Spouse. From Texas, he was born to play the small-town heel.

Minerva Urecal, uncredited as Woman Trying on Hats (a funny scene based on the incongruity of battleaxe shooting for elegant), was in two episodes of the classic Perry Mason series TCOT Fan Dancer’s Horse and TCOT Lover’s Gamble. She could dress down and play a landlady of cheap residency hotel or dress up and play a society matron.

Barbara Hale Week 1/4

Note: Welcome to the first of four reviews to celebrate Barbara Hale Week. Best known for her role as Della Street in the TV series Perry Mason, she began her career in the 1940s. She received positive reviews for her roles in movies like The Boy with Green Hair (1948) and The Window (1949). Her ability to portray different characters with depth and authenticity contributed to her reputation as a skilled actress in both dramas and comedies.

The Clay Pigeon
1949 / 1:03
Tagline: “Where Danger Lives”
[internet archive]

In this thriller, Barbara Hale and Bill Williams have excellent chemistry. No big surprise, considering in 1949 that they were in Year 3 of their married life, which was to extend 43 more years to his death in 1992. This picture is one of the watchable half-dozen film noirs that Richard Fleischer directed for RKO

Williams’ character is James Fletcher. He wakes up from unconsciousness totally unaware why hospital staffers are giving him the stink-eye. He overhears that he is to be court-martialed by the US Navy for treason. When he was a seaman first class and imprisoned in a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines, he is alleged to have ratted on his friends for stealing food. He is blamed for the torture killing of his best friend Mark Gregory at the hands of brutal Japanese captors.

Fletcher escapes from the Navy Hospital to clear himself. He catches up with Mark Gregory's widow Martha played by Barbara Hale. In a common post-war trope, Fletcher has PTSD and amnesia related to his service. Since we don’t know if Fletcher is guilty or innocent, for a short time it is hard to sympathize with him for terrorizing Mrs. Gregory.

On the run in SoCal, however, Mrs. Gregory comes around to his side when two thugs try to kill them by running them off the road. In another noir trope "hostile universe bedeviling the innocent,” neither Fletcher nor Mrs. Gregory know the reason bad guys want to kill them. The tension is boosted due to his intermittent neurological symptoms like dizziness, aphasia, and fainting. The cloudy flashbacks are effective.

Barbara Hale is earnest and believable. Bill Williams was an athlete – a champion swimmer, in fact – so he looks in control when he’s running through LA’s Chinatown. 

The writers are to be commended on two points, one small and one big. The name of the villain – Tokiyama - could be a real Japanese family name, which is an unexpected change from names that writers just made up because they sound Japanesey. Kimuri. Fuumiro. Marya Marco plays with quiet dignity a war widow. Her husband was in the 442nd Infantry Regiment. Fletcher acknowledges that it was “quite an outfit.” Indeed, the "Go For Broke" battalion was a highly decorated U.S. Army regiment comprised primarily of Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) volunteers. While they fought in Europe, many soldiers in the 442nd had family members who were incarcerated in camps like Manzanar for the duration.

After his well-known portrayal of Kit Carson on TV, Bill Williams often played the obnoxious heavy. On the classic Perry Mason TV series, in TCOT Crippled Cougar he was that rare bird, the accused that the movie-goer could not like. He played the cold unrepentant perp in TCOT Murderous Mermaid. He was the victim that had it coming in both TCOT Bluffing Blast and TCOT 12th Wildcat.

Inspector Mallet #3

Suicide Excepted - Cyril Hare

Hare takes chances in this 1939 outing, his third novel and the first to feature his series character Inspector Mallet. Hare ensures that we patient readers dislike two of the characters from the get-go. Coincidences abound, even for a whodunit. And Inspector Mallet neither plays a major role in the story nor is he accompanied by his usual foil, the exasperated Francis Pettigrew. Mallet solo worked fine in Tenant for Death, but less so in this outing.

Leonard Dickinson’s death was the result of an overdose of a prescribed medication. Inspector Mallet had talked to the victim and had been mildly distressed by Dickinson’s gloomy pessimism, which the jury thought was sufficient to conclude was suicidal ideation and that Dickinson had later done away with himself. The problem is that insurance company will not pay up in the case of a suicide. The victim’s son, daughter and her fiancé team up to prove it was murder committed by one of the other hotel guests.

The amateur trio bungles their investigation. Their solicitor you-peoples them with “You people took it upon yourselves to prove that the late Mr. Dickinson was murdered. I dare say he was … (but) you have gone about it in a way that I can only describe as imbecile.” However, they meet a variety of curious characters in interesting settings. Hare’s prose is not flashy but it’s always clear. I get a good feeling when a writer plainly assumes that the reader has a vocabulary of more than 500 words. The dramatic twist is a fascinating twist.

This is very much a mystery from between the wars in that we have eccentric characters, little violence, and a countryish setting. So readers of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers will probably enjoy it. The solid prose, self-consciously literary, calls to mind Rex Stout.

The Ides of Perry Mason 87

Note: Below are the memorable episodes from the second season of the Perry Mason TV series that ran from 1957 to 1966, in 271 episodes. Granted, the noir theme of "innocents menaced by a hostile universe" was what PM was all about, but in the first three seasons the noir look and tropes were conspicuous.

The Best of Season 2 (1958-59)

The Case of the Lucky Loser (September 27, 1958). This episode overflows with noir elements, starting with the noir byword “Appearances are often deceiving.” A cranky dying father. His feckless son who digs up ruins instead of running the family empire. Son’s cheating wife. A fixer man who specializes in intimidation and corruption. A crooked resort owner who’s bribed to commit perjury.  Douglas Kennedy plays the sinister fixer, cast for his menacing air of willingness to throw his weight around. Plus he gets our goat because we are jealous of his sharp late Fifties Corvette, second in coolness only to an early Seventies Chevelle Malibu. As the cheating wife, Patricia Medina is drop-dead attractive with her dark Spanish eyes and sultry allure.

The Case of the Perjured Parrot (December 20, 1958). The first half-hour showcases two amazing actresses in two memorable scenes. Being interviewed in Perry’s office, Fay Baker is a mother who’s desperately afraid her daughter’s going to jail but feels angry as hell at the kid for ditching school too. Jody Lawrance plays a gentle and lonely librarian who finally finds love only to have her life shattered when she ends up charged with murder. Lawrance and Burr, in a nice change, don’t have their interview in a cell but on a park bench. Burr characteristically goes silent and gives space to Lawrance and she sustains the scene like a true professional. Two familiar faces, Edgar Buchanan and Frank Ferguson, whip up old-timey corn pone as a country coroner and sheriff respectively. Joseph Kearns – Mr. Wilson on Dennis the Menace – plays a self-styled expert nervous that his imposter syndrome will be exposed. Mel Blanc does the parrot’s voice: “Thank you for coming but you needn’t stay.” What more could we ask? This may be my favorite episode ever.

The Case of the Dangerous Dowager (May 9, 1959) has the familiar despotic dowager, her browbeaten son, and an alligator disguised as a gangster. In a comic scene crusty Ellen Corby (who later played Grandma Walton), gives Paul Drake crap at a poker table for not showing his cards when called. Paul looks put-out as Perry gives in to rare chortles. But the dramatic scene in which Perry does jail-cell therapy with compulsive gambler Sylvia shows great things happen when TV writers and actors get a little room to move. Broken and lost Sylvia tells about how she used gambling and alcohol to blot out the pain of being abandoned by her mother and tyrannized by her grandmother. Sylvia was played by London-born Patricia Cutts who studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. And the stage training shows. It’s an incredible scene.

The Case of the Lame Canary (June 27, 1959). I like another bird episode not only for the non-stop action that involves a broken marriage, attempted murder, insurance fraud, arson, grand theft, and of course the killing of the vic that needed killing.  But also it’s a cavalcade of all the usual suspects. The comely female client with poor judgement and her working-man boyfriend who’s loyal anyway. There is a tag team of evil doers: the sex bunny and dishonest insurance broker. Just classic noir. This was Berry Kroeger’s second appearance of seven on the show. His amazing voice – attention-grabbing but relaxing - got him started in radio in the late 1930s and he could act up a storm, from menacing to congenial, from forthcoming to clammed up. For once, DA Hamilton Burger gets the quotable last line, “That's the first time I ever heard of a lame canary turning out to be a stool pigeon.”

Honorable Mention: The Case of the Howling Dog is notable for its understated acting, melancholy atmosphere, and the highest body count in the whole series, I think. In The Case of the Purple Woman, elegant Bethel Leslie one of her three outings as a nice wife unhappily married to a louse who deservingly ended up on a slab in the morgue. Purple Woman also has Robert H. Harris playing his usual sleazy oaf; he was in seven episodes, as the perp in three and the defendant and victim in one each.

He Scratched her Tender Skin...

The Animal Kingdom
1932 / 1:25
Tagline: “He scratched her tender skin and found a savage!”
[internet archive]

In this Pre-Code love drama, Tom is the owner of a small press in Connecticut. He wants to publish art, not tripe. His father fears that idealistic dreamer Tom lacks punctuality, focus and persistence.

Tom had a three-year romantic relationship with Daisy, a magazine illustrator who wants to paint seriously. They had a vague idea that marriage wasn’t in the cards, that love was a bourgeois thing. But Tom met Cecelia while Daisy was away studying the great art and artists of France. After a whirlwind month that featured judgement-clouding “infatuation,” Tom married Cecelia.

Optimistic Tom wants to maintain a friendship with Daisy, because he knows they are good for each other. They like exchanging news. They give each other advice about making genuine art but making a living too. Daisy realizes with dismay that she loves Tom like crazy, bourgeois thing or not. She bails to Nova Scotia to get him out of her system.

At first Cecelia seems okay with Tom hanging with his bohemian buds. However, in the course of time, Ceceila envisions herself to be the project manager with Tom as the project. “See his ability to organize and carry through? That’s all me!” For his own good mainly but so they can live in the city, not the suburbs, and be the charming power couple in a busy social and professional life.

Playwright Philip Barry puts this complicated triangle in a social world. Cecelia allies with Tom’s father to make Tom a success, whether or not success costs Tom what he thinks is his integrity. Tom selfishly uses his ex-pug butler Regan (William Gargan, comic relief) as a good luck charm. Tom and Daisy’s hipster friends are pulling for them, but feel powerless to snap Tom out of his “bewilderment.” Cecelia keeps an ex-lover in thrall because as a lawyer he (Neil Hamilton) might be handy in advancing the scheme to sell Tom’s publishing house to a conglomerate. No triangle is an island.

Leslie Howard played Tom on the stage in this Phillip Barry play so he’s comfortable in the role. Howard has a warm gentleness that movie-goers will recall from The Petrified Forest. His lightness and tenderness disarm our judgement that Tom might be merely passive and immature. Even puritans like me will understand him doing the head over heels thing with somebody as attractive as Cecelia.

On top of easy to look at, Ann Harding as Daisy is likeable, a rare mix of talent, intelligence, and courage to want a baby even if it means being a single mother in 1932. Harding also has this aura of “Hold me when I’m hurting” that is compelling. "Easy on the eye," "likeable," "compelling," hell - who am I kidding? I'd storm Troy with Menelaus to get Ann Harding back. 

Myrna Loy as Cecelia could have played the part as an unapologetic social climber, but does not. Cecelia thinks she is doing the right thing for everybody involved, manipulating and coercing Tom to get on the path to success in the world of publishing, not an industry that coddles the thin-skinned. A puritan like me, however, has qualms about Cecelia’s esteem of ephemera such as popularity, the high life, status, and money.

The Pre-Code movie is worth watching, if the movie-goer has a yen for a rather talky movie about adult situations. I don’t think it is a “comedy of manners” because there are few one-liners and scenes are not played for laughs. The ex-prizefighter is there for comic relief, which implies to me the playwright himself thought the tone was generally serious, on the level, unironic.

The Nones of Perry Mason 86

Note: Raymond 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. Film historian Alain Silver described Raymond Burr's psycho private investigator in Pitfall as "both reprehensible and pathetic," a characterization also cited by film historian Richard Schickel as a prototype of film noir. 

Pitfall
1948 / 1:26
Tagline: “A man can be as strong as steel … but somewhere there's a woman who'll break him!”
[internet archive]

In an incredible performance, Raymond Burr portrays a brutal private investigator that stalks Lizabeth Scott. She was connected with a case of embezzling that the insurance company, represented by Dick Powell, has to make good. Scott and married-with-young son Powell have brief dalliance that does not amount to much. However, Burr the Burly Brute wants Scott body and soul. He schemes to own her by setting up Powell in an ugly trap. Excellent plotting, pace, and climax with realistic characters.

Burr makes the most of an extended part as an ex-cop turned private investigator. He looks close to 300 pounds, making his head look small on a monolith of a body. The secretaries in Powell’s office nicknamed Burr “Gruesome” because he creeps them out. Doubtless ex-cop for cause, he hulks with repressed violence and moves as slow and leisurely as a cat as if to warn people to run away when he moves fast.

Whether he is redolent of threat or yearning for something nice to happen to him (for once), he stares with a faraway look, as if he has retreated to a place where feverish dreams are fulfilled and sociopathic plans hatched. The scene in which he visits the salon where Scott models clothes and forces her to show more bare shoulders by taking her shawl down will give the movie-goer a full-blown case of the heebie-jeebies.

Burr seems eerily oblivious of the repulsion he provokes. In his narcissism, he figures that if the object of his obsession spends a little time with him, she’ll get over his being horrible and not feel the compulsion to take a shower whenever he looks at her. In his stupidity, he never considers the hazards of driving to desperation a woman who keeps a gun in her apartment. It is too much to expect that imagination-free victimizers to ever conceive of themselves as one day becoming the victim.

The performances make this movie well-worth viewing. Powell looks and talks rather deadpan as he plays the bored suburban husband who makes it easy for noir trouble to find him. It’s his damn fault, he brews his own trouble: he doesn’t tell Scott he’s married – the fink – and, deeply wounded yet again by useless immature men, Scott drops him.

Jane Wyatt is convincing as the dependable wife. When Powell, in a rut, asks her, “You were the homecoming queen and I most likely to succeed, what happened,” she answers matter-of-factly, “We got married. I had a baby.” Quite sensibly, she tries to talk him out of his sulky FOMO and get him to appreciating what he’s got, which is only a life millions would trade their eyeteeth for 

Lizabeth Scott has delightful moments sporting about in a motor boat when she is actually smiling. This is a sea change from her usual defeated look caused by bad luck with the wrong kind of men (see The Strange Love of Martha Ivers). But due to Burr’s menace and stalking, it doesn’t take too long before she assumes her bewildered mien. She’s decidedly not a scheming femme fatale. She’s an ordinary woman who has been kicked around by life. She’s unlucky enough to get unwittingly involved with three clucks: a weak-minded boyfriend (Byron Barr), a bored insurance man (Powell), and a psychopathic detective (Burr).

I'm the kind of movie-goer that's also a moralistic prude so I get the message often sent in film noir: it doesn’t take much to go off the rails and once off, really bad stuff can come down. 

Pre-Mason 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]

Taoist Tradition

The Importance of Living - Lin Yutang

Along with Pearl Buck, Lin enjoyed a vogue in the 1930s when many Americans were interested in our ally the Nationalist Chinese. Lin was not a philosopher but he interpreted Confucianism and Taoism in light, readable essays. Widely read in traditional literature, he translated many obscure Taoists and drunken poet-scamps so in this book, he includes wonderful passages on the Taoist good life that we English speakers won’t find anywhere else.

This book covers topics like fine living, reasonableness, education, art, and wisdom in a refreshing way, though we post-moderns have to be patient with regard to his views on gender and monumental silence about social class. He doesn't provide a counter to the argument of, "Hey, what if everybody listened to his inner layabout all the time? Where would society be then? Buncha slackers!  Huh?"

Lin's voice is humane and mildly dissenting. For instance, he writes

In this present age of threats to democracy and individual liberty, probably only the scamp and the spirit of the scamp alone will save us from becoming lost as serially numbered units in the masses of disciplined, obedient, regimented and uniformed coolies. The scamp will be the last and most formidable enemy of dictatorships. He will be the champion of human dignity and individual freedom, and will be the last to be conquered. All modern civilization depends entirely on him.

His thesis – that it is up to the individual to set his own standards for enjoying life and find her own pleasures – brings to mind Robert Graves' idea that "When people have lost their authentic personal taste, they lose their personality and become the instruments of other people's wills.

In the Taoist tradition, Lin says the point is not to “have a great philosophy or have a few great philosophers” but rather it is “to take things philosophically, to live in a way that makes life not only bearable but delightful.

Reading is key to enjoying life: “… [I]f one knows the enjoyment of reading, one can study anywhere, even in the best schools.”

Also by Lin Yutang

• Moment in Peking 
• My Country and My People

The Kalends of Perry Mason 85

Note: Gardner dedicates this 1953 story to Ralph F. Turner, author of Forensic Science and Laboratory Techniques, a publication that contributed to the field of Criminal Forensic Science. Turner's advances in the field of criminalistics added to the scholarly reputation of then Michigan State College, now my alma mater Michigan State University. The reveal of this mystery is, among Mason fandom, one of the most famous of all.

The Case of the Green-eyed Sister – Erle Stanley Gardner

What has poor old Ned Bain done to deserve such a troubled old age? He’s got the guilts on account of over-dutiful daughter Hattie who’s sacrificed her chance at a loving husband and family so she could nurse him and his dodgy heart. Instead of getting an honest job like any man should, his son Jarret has married rich and spends his wife’s money anthropologizing at ruins – i.e. fallen down buildings --  in the Yucatan. His daughter Sylvia is a loose-cannon manipulator and divorcee to boot. Snooty and cold Sylvia makes a poor impression on intuitive Della Street who sums up Sylvia with, "She'd cut your heart out for thirty-seven cents."

As if his children were not worry enough, a false friend, J.J. Fritch from their sketchy past, is trying to blackmail him. J.J. is threatening to tell the bank that Ned’s fortune is based on money stolen in a heist. Such a tale, of course, would wipe out the Bain family. Pal J.J. is using crooked PI Brogan to plague him. Daughter Sylvia goes to Perry Mason to get the family out from under its vulnerable position.

The actions careens around tight corners with the upshot being Perry Mason finds himself having to defend daughter Hattie on a murder charge. Who would have thought such a mousey woman would take a bad guy out with an icepick?

Gardner has socially-conscious fun as Mason dissects questionable police procedure such as priming witnesses and not bothering to look for evidence because their "gut instinct" tells them they've got the perp. Police corner-cutting happens so often in Perry Mason novels that one wonders if Gardner got guff from cops and DA’s who didn’t like their short-cuts and thinking errors being publicized. 

The trial scene in Chapter Fourteen, about 50 pages, is one of the longest in all the Mason novels. The reveal is clever and counts as one of the more famous endings among Mason fans. Mystery fans who like retro expressions (“lead pipe cinch”) will enjoy this readable story.

European Reading Challenge #6

The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life - Tom Reiss

This biography examines the life and times of Lev Nussimbaum, a stateless Azerbaijani writer who lived between the two world wars.

The narrative is a bit less on the mercurial, magnetic, and elusive personality of the subject than on the major geopolitical upheavals of the 20^th century, such as the collapse of empires after WWI, the rise of Russian Bolshevism, the tragedy of Weimar democracy and the rise of Hitler’s National Socialism.

Reiss departs from the intricate story of Nussimbaum’s short life (from the Caucasus to Central Europe to America to end in Posillipo, Italy) to give primers on the horror of the Cheka; the brutality of the Freikorps; and the global rise of conflicting revolutionary and counter-revolutionary groups. This will interest readers (like me) who knew about such phenomena only superficially.

Reiss’s narrative captures and holds our attention because he continually draws from eyewitness accounts in memoirs and interviews, and Nussimbaum’s letters to intimates and fragments of his autobiography. He compares this evidence against historical sources. Did Nussimbaum soften frightful events due to his own nostalgia? Or conversely when did he see harsh reality but soften it in his fiction? This critical approach allows the biographer to substantiate the claim that Nussimbaum was probably the author Kurban Said, who wrote the iconic novel Ali and Nino ​​(1937).

An exceptional work. The book is well-worth reading if a reader can’t stop reading about the painful history of 20^th century Europe. Historical figures are presented in an interesting way (such as the young bank-robbing Stalin knowing the subject’s mother). The vision of Baku at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries as the Paris of the East brings us closer to the culture, customs and peoples of the Caucasus and neighboring regions that are never mentioned in our schools or the mass media.

Chandler but More Heart & Soul

Ask for Me Tomorrow - Margaret Millar

Gilda was married to B.J. Lockwood, a nice guy that bad stuff just happened to since he never learned from experience and was too dumb to evaluate the risks of impulsive decisions. B.J.’s decision to run off with their pregnant 15-year-old house girl back to her natal village in Mexico left Gilda at loose ends. Gilda then married Marco, who had a paralyzing stroke soon after their nuptials.

Wanting to conclude unfinished business with B.J., Gilda hires young lawyer Tom Aragon to go down Mexico way and find him. Though he’s by no means an experienced detective, Tom is bilingual and quickly finds out B.J. and a con man named Jenkins were jailed on fraud charges. 

Their hapless plan to convert a poor Baja California village into a resort transformed into a criminal enterprise mainly because they were both out of their financial league. As Tom gets closer to his quarry B.J., however, three brutal murders eliminate informants.  

I found the ending a surprising hoot, while harder to please, less willing to be tricked readers of mystery may be less impressed.

Millar’s settings of Southern California and Mexico in the mid-1970s feel authentic and evocative though the attacks on the corruption in both places may put off readers who like those places. The dialogue is snappy and funny, but sometimes we wonder if it is likely that sleazy Mexican cops would really come up with such witty rejoinders. Many scenes shine as Gilda and Tom interact with each other, mainly by phone, and with a variety of curious characters. I think the exposition, dialogue and characterization make this one worth reading.

Margaret Millar was married to Kenneth Millar who wrote mysteries under the pen name of Ross Macdonald.

And the Butler-Blonde Battle was On!

Note: It’s impossible to have the Gail Patrick film festival without talking about this movie though it's hard to come up with anything new to say about one of the most popular screwball comedies ever. Mean Girl Cornelia was the role that typed Gail Patrick as The Sexy Smart Haughty One for the next dozen years. When Patrick retired from acting in 1948, inactivity drove her crazy. So she created the job of executive producer for the TV series Perry Mason and did that from 1957 to 1966.

My Man Godfrey
1936 / 1:34
Tagline: “...and the butler-blonde battle was on!”
[internet archive]

William Powell claimed that the only actress right for the part of Irene was Carole Lombard. Only an amateur critic, I hesitate to argue with a respected professional, but I wonder if at 24 years old Lombard was a little long in the tooth for the role of the giddy socialite Irene Bullock.

But I’m wrong since what trivializes a couple of years too old is that Lombard personified Thalia, the goddess of comedy. Only the powers of a goddess could make uproarious being flopped over Powell’s shoulder when he carries her up the stairs to toss her into a shower. Somehow she still manages to convey that she’s fakin’ and is as content as a puppy being carried. Even the way she lolls her head and shakes her hands is funny. Hilarious when she romps around on the furniture like a four-year-old, gleefully sing-song chanting “Godfrey loves me! He put me in the shower!” Lombard was a fearless actress, not afraid to look a wet and disheveled mess or act the looniest of tunes.

Lombard herself felt the character of Irene Bullock had a sense of tragedy about her. The movie-goer suspects that Irene’s bounteous love and compassion have been frustrated. Family with scads of kiddoes and doggoes or running a charity would be just the thing for her. Any foundation would benefit from her strength and kindness that badly need to find an object.

Also having a sense of the tragedy of the waste of talent was the character of Cornelia, the tough cookie sister played by Gail Patrick.

Godfrey: Very well. You belong to that unfortunate category that I would call the "Park Avenue brat." A spoiled child who's grown up in ease and luxury, who's always had her own way, and whose misdirected energies are so childish that they hardly deserve the comment, even of a butler on his off Thursday.

Cornelia: Thank you for a very lovely portrait.

Cornelia is hurt and angry at this devastating critique because she knows it’s true. She knows that she’s wasting her intelligence, adventurousness, and determination. She is all too aware that she is turning away from the challenge of life by hanging out with wastrels and worldlings. When ex-spoiled child Godfrey is taking his leave of the Bullocks, he has learned even from bad examples. He says to Cornelia:

You taught me the fallacy of false pride. You taught me humility....Miss Cornelia, there have been other spoiled children in the world. I happen to be one of them myself. You're a high-spirited girl. I can only hope that you use those high spirits in a more constructive way.

High spirits, a powerful psychological resource, run in all of us, already there, we don’t get high spirits from somewhere else. High spirits fuel the warrior in Cornelia, making it possible for her to face adversity and overcome obstacles. She needs to fight whatever is stealing her joy and dampening her high spirits, figure out her own values and work toward her own unique goals.

Other Gail Patrick Movies: Click the link below to read 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

Hercule Poirot #32

Mrs. McGinty's Dead - Agatha Christie

First published in 1952, the Belgian series detective is called upon by Superintendent Spence to gather enough evidence to Stay the Executioner’s Chop. Though he worked up the case, Spence doubts that James Bentley committed the murder for which he was tried and convicted. 

But if Bentley was not the culprit, who bashed Mrs. McGinty over the head, got her cash from under the floorboards, and secreted the hoard in a place her boarder James Bentley had easy access to? And why frame harmless Bentley, an out of work, lonely oddball?

Spence asks ageing detective Hercule Poirot to look into the case quietly. Poirot grants Spence’s request. He goes to the village of Broadhinny where the crime took place. To his misery, he is compelled to stay in a guest house with draughts, squalor, half-wild kids and dogs, and bad cooking. 

He meets his old friend the mystery writer Ariadne Oliver. She is having a rough time collaborating with a writer who adopting one of her series characters for a play. Her detective is a middle-aged Finnish vegetarian but the writer wants to make him into a handsome, dashing, meat-eating 35-year-old.

Through logic and method, Poirot quickly enough finds other probable motives and culprits and discovers what brought about Mrs. McGinty’s killing. There is another killing. This causes Bentley's execution to be postponed and gives more time for Poirot, by exciting his little gray cells, to untangle the mystery. Poirot's boundless self-confidence is always on display and always likable.

Agatha Christie was a plot genius. I shake my head in wonder at how she weaves her magic. Happily, Poirot is on stage from the first page. The entire mystery, in fact, is told from his point of view. The unfolding of the plot is smooth and plausible but too many characters make the reader sometimes pause and wonder, “Now who was this.” 

She doesn’t spend time describing and moves incidents along. When we readers are misdirected we know we are being conned and marvel that we still feel the suspense. High entertainment value, with all suspects gathered in a room for the climax and period references – still rationing in the early Fifties!

A Strange and Fascinating Woman

Note: This picture is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Craig's Wife by George Kelly. Directed by Vincent Sherman, it is the second of three films he made with Joan Crawford when they were “close to each other.”  When Sherman later revealed the affair to his wife, she observed “Well, I guess it’s too much to ask of any man that he turn down the opportunity to sleep with Joan Crawford.”

Harriet Craig
1950 / 1:34
Tagline: “A Strange and Fascinating Woman, at War with the Whole World.”
[internet archive]

Harriet Craig (Joan Crawford) is severe in her appearance, wearing clothes with straight lines, no curves. Harriet, particular to the point of being peculiar, keeps her housekeeper and her cousin Clair on the hop keeping everything just so. The upshot is that the house has all the warm coziness of the waiting area of a busy urology practice. Harriet keeps her husband Walter happy where it counts especially when she can use connubial delights to divert him from golf games with poker buddies.

But it is not like she is buckling to all the expectations of a stern patriarchy. Though she believes a wife’s duty is to look nice, she wears a hairstyle that is easy to take care of instead of attractive. Though Walter wants kids, she doesn’t want messes so they don’t have kids. In an incredible scene, she damages her husband’s reputation with his boss to head off Walter getting a promotion and a long business stay in Japan. Harriet feels she has achieved a secure stasis and doesn’t want anything as uncertain as kids or trips full of illicit temptations to rock the boat lest they all be devoured by chaos.

Harriet Craig escapes into perfectionism for safety, a fantasy world in which she is in control of the course of her mother’s dementia, Clair’s marital prospects, and her husband Walter’s promotions and business trips. She can’t face without anxiety the reality that she has control over none of these things. This movie is about how the world, other people, and her own unhelpful responses to normal changes in life all form a tornado to topple her perfect house of cards, to blow away her nutty belief that by dominating other people with her tyrant ways, she will exert control over what is in fact out of her sphere.

Wendell Corey is genial as Walter Craig. He’s probably best remembered as the dour police detective in Rear Window, being all judgy about Stewart sleeping with Kelly without benefit of clergy.  He plays Walter as a social and reasonable guy. The movie-goer can see it in his face when the realization strikes him that Harriet doesn’t like or trust other people when she claims, “We don't need other people to make us happy.” K.T. Stevens effectively portrays Clair as vulnerable in her lack of confidence and experience, defenseless against Harriet’s manipulations. Her nonverbals are expressive when it hits her that Harriet is playing fast and loose with reality.

Joan Crawford's performance is outstanding. Commanding. I had to re-evaluate my previous dismissal of her as a habitually over-acting movie star, associating her often overheated style too much with the melodramatic roles and situations of her many movies. Crawford brings to life Harriet Craig's embattled and controlling nature as she deals, not well, with a crazy world in which husbands tell each other, “Wives are mighty handy gadgets to have around the house.”

The Ides of Perry Mason 84

Gold Comes in Bricks – Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair

This 1940 exercise in noir-lite was the sixth of 30 novels starring the private detectives Donald Lam and Bertha Cool. Like Laurel and Hardy, the partnership features the shrimpy one (him) and the stout one (her). Temperamentally speaking, Lam is a thinking machine and Bertha a bull in a china shop. As Bertha frankly sums up:

You have something I’ll never have, Donald. You’re resilient. Put pressure on you, and you bend. Then as soon as the pressure is removed, you spring back. I’m different. Put pressure on me, and I put pressure back. If anything happens, and I can’t put any pressure back some time, I won’t bend, I’ll simply break.

The strain between contrasting styles is as funny as Bertha’s smarmy pseudo-concern over Lam’s love life. Women inevitably fall in love with Lam for his kind respect and willingness to listen. So Cool is always worried that Lam will end up in romantically deep waters and be too distracted to do his assignments for her. It’s a hoot.

This mystery opens with Lam taking lessons in the martial arts per the orders of Bertha, who likes her tobacco, liquor, steaks, and comfort. She thinks it would be the smart move to get Lam to toughen up in order to minimize recovery time after he gets beaten up on the job.

The client Henry Ashbury has brought them a problem of a debutante in deep trouble, the kind of case pulp writers enjoyed (even Faulkner used "deb in danger" in his notorious potboiler Sanctuary). Dad Ashbury is concerned about his independent-minded daughter Alta. She is burning through his money either by gambling or paying blackmail, and Dad fears both. He hires Cool and Lam to look into the girl’s financial dealings with her rummy friends. So that the daughter will not wonder why Lam is in the house he is to pose as Ashbury’s personal trainer.

To say this is a cockamamie plan is to say it all. Miser Bertha sees only visions of dancing dollar signs earned by Lam’s labor. Dubious but really shaking the tree, Lam uncovers a bewildering trail involving fraud, blackmail, and murder. As is usual in the Cool and Lam books, they make the situation worse until they grift the grifters and narrowly escape being arrested just for being pains in the neck.

During Gardner's lifetime, discerning hardcore readers like us thought the Cool and Lam novels were funnier, grittier, and sexier than the Perry Mason novels. For we happy few, the comedy between our two protagonists balance out the rushed or confusing endings.

Powerful Techniques for Positive Change

Change Your Life Now: Powerful Techniques for Positive Change – William J. Knaus

I read this 1994 self-help book because Dr. Knaus was one of the stars of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Self-help books, to my mind, are a waste of time if the author doesn’t have the credentials.

Knaus presents a five-point change program, which is easy to follow. His advice is founded on research up to that time. Having seen hundreds and hundreds of patients, Knaus knows change is not easy and people throw up roadblocks in their own path for various irrational and rational reasons. He tells ways to overcome obstacles of our own making. His suggestions can be adopted for all the usual problems: improving diet, quitting smoking, finding love, beating back the urge to procrastinate, and changing careers.

The writing style is from 1994, when Knaus was still able to assume that even general readers knew how to read. That is, the sentences are a little bit involved and he uses some big words. The writing is concise and practical, given the reader does not have anxiety or depression to the extent that professional help really would be a good idea. This is for readers who are serious about change, and disciplined enough to change on their own, with just a book.

Murder at a Hollywood Preview!

Note: The Gail Patrick film festival continues, having viewed If I Had a Million, The Phantom Broadcast, The Murders in the Zoo, Death Takes a Holiday, The Crime of Helen Stanley, and Murder at the Vanities. What’s with all the attention, a reader wonders, to a forgotten actress on what is largely a Perry Mason blog? Gail Patrick Jackson was the executive producer of the greatest courtroom drama TV show in the history of creation: Perry Mason.

 The Preview Murder Mystery
1936 / 1:00
Tagline: “Murder at a Hollywood Preview!”
[internet archive]

This B-picture is a murder mystery set in a movie studio during the Golden Era of Hollywood. While the fast-paced story isn’t too far-fetched and the characterization amusing, the main draw is the “behind the scenes in Tinseltown” feeling and look.

That is, the mise en scene is literally the back lots and the soundstages of World Attractions, Inc. Director Robert Florey is known for being a pioneer of noir so this collaboration with cinematographer Karl Struss is worth seeing simply for its look. Silhouettes, outlines, profiles, and shadows make images striking, especially intense faces talking on phones. Florey, like Bergman and Fellini and Spielberg, likes eye-catching faces. Without being too arty they make shots from angles above and below. Inevitably he uses mirrors, but not too much and always to unusual effect. The pace and the rhythm of the movie are really fast, with a few fluid images lasting mere seconds; see the scene at minute 22 when the homicide detective is questioning a group of scared witnesses.

Imparting a feeling of unreality is the Thirties tech of switch banks, lights, lifts, dollies, and other equipment so antique as to be unidentifiable. Also putting us off kilter are the actors mingling in a variety of costumes from various time periods.

I got the feeling the writers were telling inside gags about Hollywood. The horror star Batboy (or something) is upbraided by the director for being a scaredy-cat though he is the one notorious for keeping little kids up at night sleepless and scared with his character. But when the director takes a close look at Batboy’s Igor (or whatever), he is so unnerved he calls for a break. Ironically, the killer is trapped because the big clunky technology of movie-making is used against him.

Giving a funny meta feeling is the movie within a movie when we are watching people watch the preview of a bad musical The Song of the Toreador. Over the top musicals are thus parodied with silent heart-throb Rod LaRocque, who looks slightly embarrassed to be singing. Gail Patrick assumes the melty and dewy look that damsels don for being sung to in musicals.

All the professionals like the director and the actors are watching the preview with a calculating look, that dispassionate eye of artists, crafters, and creative professionals not wholly satisfied with the version they see, convinced they could have done something better or planning to do a technique in another way in the future. "When I do this again, I am convinced that I will do it more effectively" seems like it would be a healthy stance in an artist or a crafter.

Contrary to my expectations, the print posted at IA was VG+, with good contrasts and nothing washed out nor any dropouts of sound. Gail Patrick and Frances Drake both look wonderful in their bodacious brunetitude. Patrick does not have all that much to do but the air around her seems charged, as if she’s a pulsar funneling particles. Drake, with her expressive eyes and luminous smile, plays the astrology-smitten girlfriend of Reginald Denny. Drake plays a steadying influence on the boisterous Denny who was prone to hyperactivity.

In what must be an in-joke of some kind, the end cast list provides not the real stars but only the supporting players like Chester Conklin - like LaRocque, another unexpected blast from the past.

The Nones of Perry Mason 83

Note: After playing the heavy in San Quentin (1946), Desperate (1947), and I Love Trouble (1948). Burr was probably happy to accept the small but atypical parts of a police detective in Sleep, My Love (1948) and the slacker father in Ruthless.

Ruthless
1948 / 1:44
Tagline: “Power...and Money were his gods!”
[internet archive]

Raymond Burr has one scene in a flashback in the first 15 minutes of the movie. As the boy hero’s ne’er-do-well father, he’s dressed in the tacky duds of the early 20^th century American fop and cad: a flashy suit with wide pinstripes with a showy vest. The deadbeat dad sports an oily chevron moustache and jaunty straw boater. The movie-goer can see the dandy character is putting on the dog, playacting “larger than life.” With the gaudy patter of the hustler that’s all talk and zilch walk, it’s easy to see how he insinuated himself in a rich young girl’s affections and then disappointed her and their son when he bugged out, only to end up living with a harridan of saloon-keeper and procuress.

It’s nice to see a departure from his usual typecasting as the heavy.  Burr brings to the bumbler a tentative side, with a bashful spark of paternal affection. It's as if he's baffled his son even likes him, considering what a terrible father he is. His role, while far from central, is significant in the film's exploration of the role of family dynamics in stoking unbridled ambition.

Anyway, this improving drama is all about a man with a fatal flaw. Zachary Scott comes out of broken home with a weak father and angry depressed mother a man deeply unhappy with himself. Not connecting with himself, he can’t connect with other people either so he grabs things and throws his weight around. He grows crazy rich not only because he is driven by inner demons but also because he finds it expedient and fun to manipulate women and is willing to disregard pressures in our culture to reciprocate good turns.

American writer Alvah “Hollywood Ten” Bessie wrote the screenplay. He was one of nearly 3,000 American volunteers to fight in the Spanish Civil War. On the side of the angels, of course. So we'd expect that his take on insatiable greed and intemperate ambition American-style would be nuanced. Thus, he has Sydney Greenstreet quote from Obadiah 1:2-4 "Though you set your nest among the stars, From there I will bring you down," as a gloss on his own fall due to Zachary Scott's machinations. 

Like the Chinese say, "If you ascend high, heavy must be your fall."  It’s also the message we get from literature and virtue ethics: it’s sociopathic to be so venal and power-hungry and it’s stupid to build your happy home on the sands of money, property, status, repute and other shit you can lose or rivals can take away from you.

In a big cast, many actors do a fine job.  Totally plausible are the child actors Bobby Anderson (what an expressive face!), Ann Carter, and George McDonald. Diana Lynn plays two characters, one sweet, one designing, both subtly played. Lucille Bremer and Greenstreet play a power couple that revel in putting the screws to people. When Greenstreet yanks her hair to pull her head back and kiss her, it implies way more than we want to know about their intimate life.

As for the connection with the original Perry Mason TV series, noir duchess Martha Vickers appears in the 1959 episode The Case of the Jaded Joker as Sheila Hayes, a hard-nosed hustler determined to take financial advantage of the victim’s killing. Buffs will recall that she played Carmen Sternwood, the corrupt baby sister that posed for dirty pictures, who tries to seduce Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946).

Nigel Strangeways #8

Minute for Murder - Nicholas Blake

The setting of this 1947 mystery was probably inspired by Cecil Day-Lewis’ wartime experience working in the offices of the Ministry of Information, which Orwell satirized in his novel 1984. Series detective Nigel Strangeways is working at the Ministry of Morale in the Visual Propaganda Division.

Despite his name, Nigel Strangeways is not a collection of quirks and mannerisms a la Nero Wolfe. He’s an ordinary guy, at least as ordinary as a guy with literary leanings can be. Transferred from Intelligence in the last days of the conflict, he is happy to greet a friend who is returning from Germany. The friend has an odd war souvenir, a poison capsule. After showing it off around the office, a hottie blonde secretary collapses and expires. Nobody can find the capsule of death.

Seven persons of interest have a variety of motives. Strangeways cuts through the psychology and motives to identify the perp. Well worth reading.

The author captures the tensions among different grades of staff and the problems of supervising talented and brilliant but temperamental people. The characterization and red herrings combine to make this longer than the typical whodunnit, but the psychology is so convincing and the plotting so inventive that we hardcore readers don’t mind. Not too much, though a page count greater than 250 rather taxes my patience with a mystery.

Others by the Same Author: Click on the title to go to the review

• A Question of Proof (1935)
• The Beast Must Die (1938)
• The Smiler with the Knife (1939)
• The Corpse in the Snowman (1941)
• Minute for Murder (1947)
• The Dreadful Hollow (1953)
• Whisper in the Gloom (1957)
• The Widow’s Cruise (1959)
• The Worm of Death  (1961)
• The Private Wound (1968)

The Kalends of Perry Mason 82

Note: Like Epictetus analyzing Medea, I apply the Stoic orientation to the crooked thinking of fictional characters in the TV stories of the original Perry Mason (1957 - 1966).  Even when I was little kid I didn’t like the idea of role models because I thought only weak-minded people needed to imitate anybody. Boy, was I dumb! Now that I reflect on my youth I think Perry Mason gave me a sense of professionalism: fairness, tidy grooming, clear thinking, fluent speaking and doing the right action with confidence.

The Case of the Cautious Coquette (Season 1, Episode 18; January 18, 1958)

Stephen Argyle: I've done nothing I'm ashamed of.
Perry Mason: You're very fortunate, Mr. Argyle, most people have a conscience.

Marcus Aurelius asked, “… [I]s a world without shamelessness possible? No. Then don’t ask the impossible. There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious or untrustworthy, or with any other defect. Remembering that the whole world class has to exist will make you more tolerant of its members.”

That’s for when dealing with other people, the whole parade of brazen people acting badly. Massaging data until statistical significance is achieved. Denying credit to other people, especially subordinates. Stealing the ideas and work of others. Disregarding all social cues to sit down and shut up. Being confident deadlines will be relaxed for them. Playing dumb to avoid work, no matter the extra tasks for other people. Giving lame apologies after avoidable repercussions go off. Pretending they remember a conversation in which you approved their request.

Daily! Forever! Bring ‘em on!

But feeling ashamed of ourselves is tricky and complicated. On one hand, shame is rational and virtuous, for example, if I feel ashamed of my own cowardice, procrastinating telling a superior bad news just because they may get upset or it makes me look bad.

On the other hand, shame makes me not take showers in a locker room because I don’t want other patrons to see my sternotomy scar. Respect for people, I say to myself, suggests not to disgust people. But irrational is feeling ashamed of the appearance of my body, something I have zilch control over. How craven, to be worried about the reactions of people I don't even know, concerning things not up to me.

Like I said, shame is tricky and complicated.

European Reading Challenge #5

Entangled in Terror: The Azef Affair and the Russian Revolution - Anna Geifman

Evno Azef was born in a Russian shtetl to poor Jewish parents in 1869. He was intelligent but anxiety and anger twisted his personality, which made him unpopular at school and work. In a fix, he impulsively stole 800 rubles and escaped to Germany where he studied engineering.

In order to keep the wolf from the door – poverty was his great anxiety – he supplanted his income by turning into a spy for the Tsar’s secret police. He told the dreaded Okhrana of the plans for terrorist attacks by the Socialist Revolutionary Combat Organization. Azef was regarded as the mastermind of two spectacular political assassinations, though in reality he tried in the SR itself to thwart attacks while telling the Okhrana about the plans.  After a 15-year career as a double-agent, he was unmasked in 1908, causing a huge scandal that shook up Europe.

Professor of modern Russian and Jewish history at Harvard, Prof. Geifman tells this interesting story, one right out of Brian Moore or John LeCarre. Also a psychohistorian, Geifman argues that Azef’s anxiety had its roots in abuse at his father’s hands, fear of poverty and pogroms, and his physical ugliness. In order to avoid facing his overwhelming anxiety and feelings of worthlessness, she argues, he sought the concrete risks of being an informer.

This is a fascinating book for students of secret agents and their handlers, terrorism and its stupidly dream-struck and mercifully disorganized practitioners, and Russia’s endless struggle with modern ideas and reform. Geifman’s scholarship seems impeccable and she makes convincing arguments based on what she has read in Russian archives. She writes in a style scholarly yet her own, especially when deploying adjectives professors don't usually use like "philistine," "shady," and "ill-omened."

Happy Birthday Dashiell Hammett

Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett

The first-person narrator of this violent crime novel from 1929 is an anonymous operative of the San Francisco branch of the Continental Detective Agency. It seems to me our Nameless Narrator is not a protagonist with a code or sense of purpose or impulse to protect harmless villagers or retired plutocrats.

Nameless takes up a risky challenge to clean up Personville, a corrupt town in Montana, because do something or do nothing, death, that remedy of all ills and payer of all debts, will come out of nowhere. So we may as well play a no-limit game:

“…Poisonville is ripe for the harvest. It’s a job I like, and I’m going to it.”

“While you last,” the gambler said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I was reading in the paper this morning about a fellow choking to death eating a chocolate eclair in bed.”

“That may be good,” said Dinah Brand, her big body sprawled in an armchair, “but it wasn’t in this morning’s paper.”

This calls to mind in The Maltese Falcon Sam Spade’s story of the man who escapes death when a beam falls to the ground just yards behind him.* Realizing the abyss is always yawning, the man leaves his family and starts a new life.

No one has tasked the Nameless Narrator with the civic reform that he is willing to carry out. Robber baron and tinpot potentate Elihu Willson had only hinted that he wanted his town back. But Nameless seizes the opportunity to unleash a bloodbath by setting the hard cases of Personville against each other. Nameless is an ace Machiavellian, mixing lies and truth for civic order if not truth and justice. We can see where Akira Kurosawa got the inspiration for Yojimbo and Sergio Leone for A Fistful of Dollars (the Coen Brothers got the phrase “blood simple” from this novel).

Writing for serialization in a pulp magazine, Hammett packs this short novel full of episodes and flat characters, often introduced by a physical description with grotesque details (this was a pulp convention, making heavies appear repulsive). No other characters are as round as the shabby femme fatale Dinah Brand. Her brazen greed is a caricature of any crafty and calculating American climber in thrall to hankering for wealth. Ultimately, the main character is Poisonville – Butte? Helena? - the mining town on which Hammett vents his anger with violence and corruption American-style, as if disgusted by our sinister decadence in accepting strong-arm gangsterism and trails of blood in murders and massacres as normal.

Often called the first hard-boiled novel, Red Harvest tells a dark grisly story and does so in an exceptional way, with a raw, concise and unvarnished style, but at the same time always ironic, fresh and high-spirited. All the noir elements are in place: rival gangs, corrupt policemen, femme fatales, fixed boxing matches, score settling in ambushes and shoot-outs, and Prohibition-era speakeasies and rum-running.

In this cauldron of booze, deception, and blood our Nameless Narrator sidestrokes with ease, playing the anonymous detective with an anti-heroic beer belly and low-down enough for his colleagues to think he could be a murderer. But he’s blessed with a quick mind, glib tongue and ready gun so he always ready to solve the thorniest issues. The archetypal American hero: help yourself and help others if your help avails because talent, wit, fame, wealth, security, property, health we have only on loan, all are subject to Fortune waving a wand and poof-it’s-gone.

 

* From 1994 to 1997 I lived in Riga, Latvia. During thaws, chunks of ice would slide off the roofs of the five- and six-story Art Nouveau buildings. A couple of times I walked on sidewalks spattered by the blood of unlucky pedestrians who were hit by chunks of ice. Once time about a block from my apartment on Chaka-iela, I heard a thump behind me. I looked back and saw a chunk of ice the size of a medium-sized pumpkin. I didn’t have any hard-boiled epiphanies but I swallowed pretty hard. And clearly I’ve not forgotten my close shave. More recently I was walking in my neighborhood after jogging, cooling down. A car pulled up and a teenage girl jumped out. She let me have it with a super soaker water blaster. It felt good but it could just as easily have been an AK-15, yes?