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Author: Bob Byrne

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Johnny Angel (Raft)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Johnny Angel (Raft)

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Raft_JohnnyAngelLobby1EDITED“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era termsp for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

This essay on Johnny Angel is not about the song sung by Shelly Fabares; though, I do like it. Instead, it’s a nautical noir starring George Raft, now at RKO after what can only be deemed a disappointing career at Warners. Of course, Raft can only blame himself for that, after passing on High Sierra, The Maltese Falcon, and Double Indemnity. You think his career wouldn’t have gone differently with those classics on his resume? However, he actually did make some solid movies at RKO in the mid-to-late forties, and this is one of them. THERE BE SPOILERS HERE! Look – I’m talking about a 75 year old movie here. If I ruin something for you; well, you had plenty of chances to see it before now. Okay?

Here, Raft plays Johnny Angel – a merchant ship captain who followed his father into the same career. His father has simply disappeared, along with his ship. Johnny takes offense at insinuations his father did something wrong, and is determined to find out what happened. Raft makes a decent civilian skipper, with a stiff walk. As always, he’s the toughest guy in the room, glowering at, and verbally berating, weaker characters. And of course, beating up the bad guys. You know what you’re getting in a Raft movie.

The female co-lead is the completely forgettable Signe Hasso (though she’s third-billed). She had a funny role in George Segal’s The Maltese Falcon spoof, The Black Bird. But I don’t think she brings anything to this movie at all. If this had been a Warners flick, Joan Blondell, or Ann Sheridan, or maybe even Sylvia Sidney, would have made this a better film. Her character, Paulette Girard, knows something about Johnny’s father’s disappearance, and she’s on the run.

However, it’s top-billed Claire Trevor who carries the female load. Trevor was a terrific actress and played a number of fine parts in hardboiled and noir films. She didn’t have much screen time as Baby Face Martin’s syphilitic, hooker ex-girlfriend, but she brought another layer of emotional depth to Bogart’s character, in Dead End. She had just shone opposite Dick Powell’s Philip Marlowe in Murder My Sweet, when she made Johnny Angel. And of course, she won an Oscar for Key Largo.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: “The Adventure of the Tired Captain”

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: “The Adventure of the Tired Captain”

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CuriousIncidents_CoverEDITEDTwenty years ago, I had a short story published for the first time. Charles Prepolec and J.R. Campbell had not yet put out their four Gaslight collections of Holmes horror stories. Their initial book outing was a little collection called Curious Incidents. For some reason that escapes me now, I thought it would be clever to have a story in which Arthur Conan Doyle plays Dr. Watson. The part that made it really clever, was that he would be assisting William Gillette as Holmes. And they’d be solving one of Watson’s untold cases! I’ve since gone on to write ‘straight’ Holmes pastiches – several of them published. As well as short stories featuring Solar Pons, and others with Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. But getting my name in print began with a twist on Sherlock Holmes.

It was a blustery evening in the Fall of 1901 when I received an unexpected visitor to my hotel room. I had come down to London to meet with my editor at The Strand, Martin Greenhough Smith. Dining at the Westminster Palace Hotel, where the fare is always excellent, we had discussed some particulars relating to the new Sherlock Holmes story that I had, somewhat reluctantly, agreed to provide him with. Returning to my home in Southsea upon the morn, I was still debating upon the merit of bringing Holmes back to life, albeit for only one more adventure.

I arose at the knock upon my door and opened it. To my considerable surprise, I found myself gazing upon the face of Sherlock Holmes. Well, not quite Sherlock Holmes, but the man who had become most identified with him on two continents. The talented actor William Gillette had come to pay his compliments to me.

I shook his hand and relieved him of his wet coat and cap. I bade him make himself comfortable in the over-stuffed armchair by the lamp and poured him a warming glass of good brandy. William Gillette was a famous actor in America. He had starred in several plays and was quite popular. In 1899 he had rewritten an offering of my own, entitled it ‘Sherlock Holmes – A Drama in Four Acts,’ and achieved new levels of success. It had been the toast of New York City and every show had played to a full house. He had recently brought it across the ocean and presented it at our own esteemed Lyceum Theater. It came as no surprise that it was an even bigger smash here in London. Though I considered these detective stories as less important than my other writings, Sherlock Holmes was immensely popular and, I had to admit, financially profitable.

Ensconced in my own chair, Gillette regaled me with his tales of Holmes in America. He certainly made an excellent portrait of the sleuth. Of course, Sidney Paget had drawn a more handsome Holmes than I described, but that had probably been for the best, as it attracted more female readers to the stories. Gillette was tall and lean, with a very distinctive profile. His nose wasn’t quite the hawkish affair that I had pictured, but I could easily see how playgoers had come to identify his visage with that of Sherlock Holmes.

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What I’ve Been Reading Lately: September 2020

What I’ve Been Reading Lately: September 2020

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Whitfield_GarCoverEDITEDI haven’t done one of these in a while. And I’ve been reading a ton of stuff as summer has moved into Fall (hopefully the weather will follow suit!). So, here we go…

West of Guam: The Complete Adventures of Jo Gar – Raoul Whitfield (Ramon Decolta)

I re-read this entire anthology for the third time. I absolutely love Whitfield’s stories about the little Filipino detective. Written under the name Ramon Decolta, there were 24 Gar stories, all of which appeared in Dime Detective. Imagine a hardboiled David Suchet as Poirot, not afraid to blast it out with the bad guys. This is just about my favorite hardboiled series, and I’m working on a massive essay about Gar. Steeger Books (formerly Altus Press) put out this collection, which is still available. I can’t recommend it enough.

Whitfield was a Black Mask Boy right up there with Dashiell Hammett, Frederick Nebel, and Carroll John Daly. But he has largely been forgotten – even though he had a couple of his pulp serials novelized: including Death in a Bowl, which really established the tropes for the Hollywood mystery story.

 

The Annotated Sherlock Holmes – William Baring-Gould

I’m working on a new Holmes short story, so I decided to go back to the source material as a refresher. And I chose my two-volume Baring-Gould annotated set to read from. I’ve got annotations from Baring-Gould, Klinger (two different ones) and the Oxford edition. And I was in a Baring-Gould mood this time around.

 

BBC Sherlock Holmes Radio Series – Clive Merrison and Michael Williams

I absolutely love this series, which covered the entire Canon, created and produced by Bert Coules. After Williams (Judi Dench’s husband) passed away of cancer, Andrew Sachs stepped in as Watson and the series continued on with original stories.

When I write Holmes, I hear Merrison and Williams. Their voices are simply perfect for the roles. Throughout the year, I listen to various episodes, and I’m never disappointed. This is the best Holmes radio play ever recorded.

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William Goldman’s Hollywood Adventures

William Goldman’s Hollywood Adventures

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Goldman_PrincessBrideEDITED

Today, I’m going to take a week off from A (Black) Gat in the Hand. And no, not to dust off The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes. I constantly read. Often related to my weekly column here at Black Gate. A thousand words every Monday morning takes some research. And I like to ‘read now’ to start future projects. And I read ‘how to’ books to try and bolster my fledgling attempts at writing fiction. And I do Bible study. So, I don’t read ‘just to read’ that much these days. Which is fine. I like reading the stuff I do. But sometimes, I just want to pull something off of the shelves solely for enjoyment’s sake. And it’s often something which I’ve read before.

I read two books just for fun last week. And since a big part of why I write for Black Gate is to introduce people to things I think they might be interested in, I’m going to talk about those two books. William Goldman, who passed away in 2018, was a very successful screenwriter (that’s short for ‘screenplay writer’ – Nero Wolfe would not approve!). Harper, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, Marathon Man, A Bridge Too Far, Misery, Maverick, Absolute Power: the guy knew what he was doing. And he was a novelist first – not only did he write the screenplay for The Princess Bride, he adapted it from his own novel.

In 1983, Goldman published the best-selling Adventures in the Screen Trade. It is simply a FANTASTIC book. It is an honest, compelling memoir from a Hollywood insider who remained an outsider (he never lived in California. He would go there to work, but he always returned to NYC). And the book contains insights into screenwriting, as well. I read it about twenty years ago when I decided to teach myself how to write screenplays (I’ve written a couple. That’s all we need to say about that). I really liked it.

And last week, re-reading it, I liked it even more. In 2000, there was a followup: Which Lie Did I Tell?. And it is also a fun, absorbing read. Anybody who enjoys movies should read these books.

Goldman was sure The Great Waldo Pepper was going to be huge. And as he’s sitting in a screening, he realizes why it didn’t fly (see what I did there? Helps if you actually saw the movie). He dishes the inside scoop on the battle over the hobbling scene in Misery (if you haven’t read King’s story, the source material is brutal). We learn that Clint Eastwood stood in line to get his lunch at the cafeteria while filming and producing Absolute Power. Just like a normal person. Goldman explains why he walked out on The Right Stuff (the only time he quit a project).

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Steven H Silver Asks ‘Can You Name This Hardboiled Flick?’

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Steven H Silver Asks ‘Can You Name This Hardboiled Flick?’

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SilverMarx_Todd2EDITEDA hallmark of my success here at Black Gate has been to get other writers, with actual talent, to write for my column. I accomplish that feat again today as fellow Black Gater Steven H Silver takes a look at a classic film and gives it a hardboiled review. You may not immediately guess what film he’s looking at, although I’d bet you’ve heard of it before. Take it away, Steven!

I’m going to look at one of the stranger “Gat” films. With action taking place in a variety of places, ranging from a state room on an ocean liner to a swanky long island party to a rousing conclusion in a barn.

Rockliffe Fellows plays “Big Joe” Helton, an older mob boss who is returned from Europe aboard an ocean liner with his daughter, Mary, played by Ruth Hall. Also on board the ship is Alky Briggs, played by Harry Woods, Briggs is accompanied by his wife, Lucille, portrayed by Thelma Todd, right at the midpoint of her career. Oddly enough, aside from these women, both of these men seem to be traveling without any members of their gangs, although they both are able to rectify that oversight.

We’re first introduced to Briggs in his cabin, where his wife, Lucille is complaining that he has been ignoring her on the voyage. Briggs makes it clear that he isn’t making a play for any other woman, rather his purpose for being on the ship is because he has determined that being alone on the ocean is the perfect time to attempt to muscle in on Helton’s territory. Here is a huge difference between Lucille’s language and Briggs. The writers have given Thelma Todd natural dialogue and she delivers it well. Briggs’ lines are written almost as a parody of a movie gangster, with no recognition that he and Lucille are in an actual relationship and Woods delivers them in a such a stereotypical manner that the only conclusion a viewer can have is that he’s decided to play tough-guy Briggs as a satire.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Talking about Philip Marlowe

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Talking about Philip Marlowe

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Marlowe_MitchumLovely2EDITED

“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era termsp for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

I got in a bit of a Philip Marlowe mood when I wrote that A (Black) Gat in the Hand post on Powers Boothe’s excellent HBO series a few months ago. Now, I normally did pretty deep when I pick a subject for a Black Gate post. Which is why more than one never actually gets written. Yet, anyways. I’m going to try a different tack and write less in-depth on several different Marlowe projects. We’ll see how that goes.

Robert Mitchum’s Farewell My Lovely.

In 1975, two years after Eliot Gould’s The Long Goodbye (which I do NOT like), Mitchum was an older, world-weary Philip Marlowe. In 1978, he followed it up with The Big Sleep. It was a mess and his first movie as Marlowe is definitely the better of the two.

I’ve not been much of a fan of his Marlowe . It’s a combination of his age, and him seeming too stiff. Kinda like watching Charlton Heston play Sherlock Holmes in Crucifer of Blood (which isn’t actually too bad, overall). Re-watching Farewell My Lovely on WatchTCM, I did like him a bit better this time. I think his voice-over narration is the strength of his performance.

Charlotte Rampling is Velma/Mrs. Grayle. She played Irene Adler opposite Roger Moore in Sherlock Holmes in New York. And she was a regular for season two of Broadchurch a couple years ago. Velma’s inner nature really comes through in the showdown on the boat.

Jack O’Halloran plays Moose Malloy. Now, I have a hard time picturing anybody being Moose Malloy better than Mike Mazurki was in 1944’s Murder My Sweet. But O’Halloran is pretty darn good. He went on to be Emil Muzz, the goon in the Tom Hanks/Dan Akroyd Dragnet (which I love). He also played villain Non in Christopher Reeve’s first two Superman movies.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Norbert Davis’ ‘Have One on the House’

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Norbert Davis’ ‘Have One on the House’

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DimeDetective_March1942EDITED“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era termsp for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

I’ve said many times that Norbert Davis is on my Hardboiled Mt. Rushmore. He’s not the first face carved in hardboiled stone, but he’s one of only four that are. Max Latin is my favorite Davis character, and he appeared in five issues of Dime Detective. There were five Benjamin Martin stories – all in Detective Tales. It was William (Bail Bond) Dodd that was Davis’ frequently recurring character. There were eight stories in Dime Detective between February, 1940 through December, 1943.

Dodd is a physically unprepossessing bail bondsman. He doesn’t actively seek out trouble. You can’t even call his adventures cases. “Have one on the House” was in the March, 1942 issue of Dime Detective. That issue also included a Steve Midnight story from John K. Butler. Midnight was a broke former playboy who found adventures as a night shift cabbie. There was also a Bookie Barnes story from Robert Reeves. Reeves broke into Black Mask in 1940 at the age of 28. He was serving with a bomber unit in the Philippines when he died in 1945, only one month before the war ended. He had continued to write while in the service. His budding career was cut tragically short.

Back to Dodd! Norbert Davis is remembered as perhaps the best at screwball hardboiled. However, then and now, that carries a stigma and he is generally dismissed because of it. And it’s both inaccurate and unfair. He could write straight hardboiled, like “The Red Goose,” which Raymond Chandler praised as influencing him when he decided to become a writer. But what Davis did so well was inject humor into his hardboiled stories, without overwhelming them with it. That’s the case with the Bail-Bond Dodd stories. It’s not that the characters are funny – it’s the situations that Dodd (and his assistant, Meekins) find themselves in.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: C.M. Kornbluth’s Pulp

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: C.M. Kornbluth’s Pulp

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Kornbluth_PolkaEDITEDSteven H Silver and I shared office space in the dungeon…cellar…basement….journalist’s suite (yeah, that’s it) at the Black Gate World Headquarters. Then, Steven published his cool new novel, After Hastings, and got moved above ground level. He tapped out a message to me on the pipes and said that it has taken a while for his eyes to get used to all that natural light. But before he moved on up, we worked on the joint post you are now reading. I look at a hardboiled PI story by C. M. Kornbluth. Then Steven follows with one of the author’s science fiction stories. Kornbluth wrote a lot more of the latter, than the former. So, read on from the pride of the BG World Headquarters underground offices!

C.M. Kornbluth started to emerge as a science fiction star, then went off and earned a Bronze Star for service in The Battle of the Bulge. He resumed his writing career and died at the young age of thirty-four. Primarily in the late forties, he wrote sixteen mystery stories for the pulps. Two of those appeared in Black Mask in 1946. “Beer-Bottle Polka” introduced tough PI Tim Skeat in the September issue, and he made a return appearance in November with “The Brooklyn Eye.” All of his other mystery stories were one-offs, without a recurring character.

Skeat gets a phone call from Detective Lieutenant Angonides, telling him to come to the crime scene, where a dead body has been found. The stiff had been tied to a bed and seriously tortured with a broken beer bottle. It ain’t pretty. One of Skeats’ business cards had been found in the deceased’s hat band, prompting the call. Skeat tells him the man was a nut who visited his office, tried to sell him a secret, and was sent packing.

Angonides doesn’t like that answer. He has Skeat taken down to the station. And when he still doesn’t like that answer, down into the basement. First he sweats Skeat with a hot spotlight. And when that doesn’t work, he punches him over and over, right below a rib. Then moves about six inches to the side and repeats the process. Skeat isn’t a suspect in the killing. Angonides is just convinced he knows more than he’s telling. So he works him over. Skeat doesn’t change his story and is beaten into unconsciousness. And told not to bother filing a complaint. He takes his undeserved beating and heads to a Turkish bath for treatment, and falls asleep there.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Norbert Davis’ Don’t You Cry for Me’

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Norbert Davis’ Don’t You Cry for Me’

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Davis_Don'tCry“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

On my Hardboiled Mount Rushmore, it’s Dashiell Hammett, Frederick Nebel, and then Norbert Davis. The fourth spot is a bit fluid, though the Jo Gar series often has Raoul Whitfield in that fourth spot. But today, we’re going to look at a Davis short story.

Davis was in law school at Stanford when he wrote his first story and sent it to Joe ‘Cap’ Shaw, the legendary editor of Black Mask. It was accepted, and by the time he graduated law school, he was successfully writing for the pulps. In fact, he was doing so well, he never sat for the bar, and spent the rest of his life as a writer, moving from the pulps to the higher-paying slicks. Sadly, took his own life at only the age of 40.

I’ve already written an essay on his Ben Shaley stories, which constituted two of the five Davis tales Shaw printed in Black Mask under his watch. After Shaw left, Davis appeared in Black Mask eight more times. I’m working on what I hope will be THE definitive essay on his Max Latin stories. I absolutely love that five-story series. They’re fantastic.

Between May 1942 and May 1943, Black Mask ran three stories featuring John Collins. Collins was a piano player who had done some investigation work on the side in Europe before World War II. “Don’t You Cry for Me” was the first of the three stories.
Picking Iron (trivia) – In May, 1942, Give the Devil His Due” ran in Dime Detective.

Of course, America was drawn into World War II on December 7, 1941.The story blurb for this one reads, “The brawny piano-player had had his run-ins with the ghoulish Gestapo in the beer halls of Europe, but when he promised Myra Martin’s mother to find the girl in the Mecca of the movie-struck, he ran foul of a plot as fantastic as any Hitler pipe-dream.” Pulp magazines used bombast long before Donald Trump did.

“John Collins was playing the Beale Street Blues and playing it soft and sad because that was the way he felt. The notes dripped through the dimness of the room like molasses and provided an appropriate accompaniment to his thoughts. He had a hangover.”

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: A Hardboiled August on TCM

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: A Hardboiled August on TCM

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Bogart_TwoCarrollsEDITEDHopefully you’re used to my monthly look at some hardboiled/noir coming up for the month over at TCM. August is a little different. There is no Star of the Month. Instead a different person is featured every night for a ‘Summer under the Stars.’ I’ll include the star of the day, as it’s almost a day-long tribute to that star. As usual, the month features some hardboiled and noir:

SATURDAY AUGUST 1 (Barbara Stanwyck)

4:00 PM – The Two Mrs. Carrolls
This is a creepy Humphrey Bogart movie, with Stanwyck as his second wife. It also features Alexis Smith, who had a key role in the underrated Conflict. Nigel Bruce, Basil Rathbone’s Dr. Watson, plays a bit of a doofus (that was a real stretch for him). I find all the scenes with Bogart’s daughter annoying. Worth seeing once, but not in my top half of Bogart flicks.

10:00 PM – Double Indemnity
This was just on back in June. One of the greatest noirs of them all, with Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson all terrific. Great movie. Great novel.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 2

6:00 AM – Winchester ‘73
Since I’m the one writing this post, I add in movies from other genres that I think are good to watch. This is a different kind of western from director Anthony Mann, starring James Stewart, Shelly Winters, and noir star Dan Duryea. I don’t list this in my Westerns Top 10, but it’s a good one in the field.

MONDAY, AUGUST 3 (Rita Hayworth)

8:00 PM – The Lady from Shanghai
Orson Welles directed, wrote the screenplay, and costarred in this Hayworth vehicle.

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