(Apologies in advance for the photos not being quite as sharp as I'd hoped!)
With a novel based on the work of the funniest, zaniest, most surreal mystery
writer the comedy-thriller genre had ever known at that time, I would have been
more surprised if I
hadn’t enjoyed the 1945 film version of Craig Rice’s
novel
Having Wonderful Crime (HWC)! What’s more,
despite the masculine
nom de plume, Craig Rice was a woman; specifically,
she became the first female mystery novelist to make the cover of
Time
Magazine, plus she practically invented the screwball noir! Back in high
school at dear old St. Catharine Academy in the Bronx, I read and very much
enjoyed several of Rice’s books, especially the Malone stories I’d found in
mystery anthologies in our school library. After graduating from Fordham
University, I’d been prowling used bookstores to find Rice’s books. Even now,
with eBay making it easier to track down hard-to-find books, I’ve barely
scratched the surface, partly from rarity, partly from poverty. All I need is a
winning lottery ticket to actually afford all the vintage books I want!
But first, a
little background: Rice’s original stories and novels are set in 1940s Chicago
with her popular protagonist, Attorney-at-Law John J. Malone. These stories were
especially popular, with their lively blend of zaniness and surrealism. If
Dashiell Hammett’s
The Thin Man showed that marriage and murder-solving
was a match made in mystery fiction heaven, then consider the books showcasing
Malone and his friends to be screwball noir turned up to 11! Meet our
protagonists:
- Malone,
our lovable girl-chasing hero, renamed
Michael J. Malone for the film version of HWC.
(Apparently someone at RKO was fond of the letter M.) Malone is
played in HWC by Pat O’Brien (Knute Rockne
All-American; Crack-Up; Angels with Dirty Faces; Some Like it Hot);
-
Malone’s
breezy pal, the two-fisted (but only when necessary) press agent Jake
Justus, played by George Murphy (Broadway Melody of 1940; This is
The Army; Battleground);
-
Helene Brand,
Jake’s lovely, wealthy, eccentric sweetheart, who becomes Mrs. Justus in both
the novel and movie versions of HWC when the newlyweds break
the happy news to Malone early on—not that these lovebirds would ever let a little thing like a
honeymoon put the kibosh on their penchant for recreational sleuthing. The
new Mr. and Mrs. Justus are compulsive amateur gumshoes, always cooking up new murders to
solve! To borrow a line from Cary Grant in
To Catch a Thief,
these two just love “weird excitement!” Helene is played by the lively,
lovely, luminous Carole Landis, dubbed “The Ping Girl” by a press
agent who explained, “She makes you purr.” In happier days, Landis lent her
bubbly personality, talent, and beauty to such films as Team
Bartilucci favorite
I Wake Up Screaming;
My Gal Sal; Turnabout; Topper Returns; One Million B.C.; Four Jills in a
Jeep,
in which
co-writer Landis and her fellow actresses Kay Francis, Martha Raye, and
Mitzi Mayfair reenact their real-life USO tour during World War 2;
and The Powers Girl, a film close to Team Bartilucci’s heart because
our late mom and aunt were both John Robert Powers models back in the day!
(More about Landis and Murphy shortly.)
 |
Sweet, sassy Helene can
get on our case anytime! |
If you
thought
The Thin Man’s Nick and Nora Charles could put away liquor with
the greatest of ease, wait’ll you get a snootful of Malone, Jake, and Helene! In
Rice’s novels, when our trio wasn’t solving murders, they hung out at Joe the
Angel’s City Hall Bar, where they’d good-naturedly rib homicide cop Daniel von
Flanagan (he’d added the “von” so he wouldn’t seem like just another just
another Irish cop. Sorry, von Flanagan isn’t in the film version of
HWC).
According to
Tom & Enid Schantz of
Rue Morgue Press, “such antics eventually earned (Rice) the
unheard-of sum (for a mystery writer) of $46,000 a year by 1945.” Is it any
wonder Rice’s inimitable brand of daftness made her books smash hits, with her
kisser on the cover of
Time in the bargain?
That said,
Rice's life wasn't necessarily a bed of roses—or maybe it was, if you count all
the thorns. So many talented comedy writers and comedy novelists seem to have a
“sad clown” thing going on. Alas, Rice wasn’t immune. She was born Georgiana
Craig in 1908 to a wanna-be painter and a wanna-be sculptress, who named the
little girl Georgiana. Too bad her folks apparently didn’t wanna-be responsible,
loving parents; poor kid! To make a long, sad story a bit shorter, little
Georgiana was schlepped from pillar to post. Being unable to conceive a child of
their own, Craig’s half-sister Nan and her husband Elton were happy to adopt the
child, whose name officially became Georgiana Craig Rice. Still, even with all
her success in her adult life as an author, it seems Rice was never quite able
to get past the rejection she’d experienced during her childhood. Over time, her
life was further complicated by her chronic alcoholism (what is it about
renowned authors and substance abuse?!), glaucoma, deafness in one ear,
blindness in one eye, and possibly bipolar disorder. With everything Rice had to
contend with, I’m surprised she even made it to the age of 49! And yet with all
these obstacles in her way, somehow she managed to achieve success as a popular
author, blending nutzoid comedy and suspense like nobody's business!
 |
When you smile, the world smiles with you.
When Helene and Jake are the only ones smiling,
it
means you’d better get tea bags, because
they’re about to get Malone into hot
water! |
Rice’s novel
output (in every sense of the term) ranged from her 1939 novel
8 Faces
at 3, through her 1957 novel
My Kingdom for a Hearse,
published two weeks after her untimely death at the age of 49 from a fall
down the stairs. Several p
osthumous Craig Rice story
collections were completed by other authors and published: The Name is Malone
(1958); The People vs. Withers and Malone, a 1963 short
story collection completed by author Stuart Palmer, featuring his beloved
Hildegarde Withers
character; the short story collection
Murder, Mystery and Malone (2002);
and
The Pickled Poodles (1960) by Larry M. Harris, a continuation of the
John J. Malone series.
A number of
Craig Rice’s books were adapted for the big screen, and of course,
HWC
was among them! The trio of screenwriters include:
- Howard
J. Green (I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang; Morning Glory;
Reveille with Beverly);
- Parke
Levy (My Friend Irma and its sequel, My Friend Irma Goes West; TV’s
Many Happy Returns; Pete and Gladys; and December Bride);
- Stewart
Sterling, a.k.a. Prentice Winchell, popular and prolific pulp author of
the Gil Vine and Fire Marshal Pedley novels, as well as a producer of crime
fiction for radio and magazines. For the record, I am the proud owner of a 1954
book Sterling and Dev Collans co-authored, I Was a House Detective.
Admittedly,
HWC takes liberties with Rice’s plot, but the film’s
frantic and funny shenanigans nevertheless have that Craig Rice feeling (not to
be confused with that Barton Fink feeling), capturing the overall madcap air and
good-natured goofiness of Rice’s storytelling style. With its fleet-footed
70-minute running time, its sharp and snappy comedic timing, and its great cast,
I enjoyed
HWC all the way!
With composer
Leigh Harline’s sparkling score in the background, we first meet Helene onscreen
in media res, nervously holding a gun on an ominous thug (who looks and sounds like the guy running Florian's in
Murder, My Sweet, but he's not credited) as she talks to an
impatient desk sergeant who’s obviously used to Jake and Helene playing amateur
detective: “Please hurry, Sergeant, I’m biting my fingernails already, and you
know how hard it is to get a manicure these days!” Luckily, the long-suffering
Malone manages to save his friends’ bacon in the proverbial nick of time!
Slipping out
of their firearms and into a nearby theater once Malone points out he’d withheld
important evidence to crack their current case, our heroes have no sooner found
three on the aisle than it’s announced that the show won’t go on: it seems
someone’s misplaced the star attraction, The Great Movel (George Zucco from
My Favorite Blonde; Topper Returns; The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, as
Professor Moriarty;
The Mad Ghoul with
Lady on a Train’s David Bruce; and Team B’s fave,
After the Thin Man, as Dr. Adolph Kammer)! You’d think that since
Jake and Helene are on their honeymoon (heck, they seemed to be truly into each
other even without the homicide angle), they’d surely be more interested in, as
the song says, the “sweet mystery of life” rather than scampering around solving
other people’s murders. (Maybe it’s the lovebirds’ idea of foreplay? Hey,
whatever floats their collective boat!)
 |
With Chili Williams around,
everyone has spots before their eyes!
|
Jake and
Helene are spending their honeymoon at charming Lenhart Lodge, with Malone
aiming to take a separate room and check out the single girls, including a cutie with a
polka-dot wardrobe (model/actress Chili Williams, a nice bit of eye candy).
However, a fender-bender involving our merry trio changes everyone’s plans when
the hot young couple from The Great Movel’s act, French-accented Gilda Mayfair
(Lenore Aubert from
the Bob Hope/Dorothy Lamour comedy-thriller
They
Got Me Covered; Bud Abbott & Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein; and
Bud
Abbott & Lou Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff), and her hunky hottie,
Lance (Richard Martin, seen in
The Bamboo Blonde and such Westerns as
West of the Pecos with Robert Mitchum) find themselves in a trunk full of trouble, literally. Soon the exasperated
Malone and our kooky newlyweds find themselves embroiled in a murder mystery
involving the fussy hotel manager (Charles D. Brown from
The Killers; The
Grapes of Wrath; and Team B’s favorite among Brown’s roles, Norris the
butler in
The Big Sleep), the Lenhart
sisters, one of whom signs checks in vanishing ink (silent film actress Blanche
Ring); sleepwalking after practically each member of the cast unwittingly doses
Gilda with a sedative (The Great Movel sees a lawsuit in the Lenhart Lodge’s
future!); falling ladders; hairbreadth escapes; a lovely swimming champ (Anje
Behrens, better known as Gloria Holden of
Dracula’s Daughter; The Life
of Emile Zola; The Corsican Brothers) and speedy, snappy patter that makes
His Girl Friday sound tongue-tied!
 |
Poor tearful Helene! It’s no laughing
matter when you're cornered by a killer. |
 |
Yikes!
Has The Great Movel
played his final matinee? |
Not to be a
downer, but it’s such a shame that Craig Rice and Carole Landis both ended up
being “sad clowns” who died too young. Landis had so much charm, beauty, and
screen presence, yet somehow her career began to flounder in the mid-1940s. Only
29 years old, Landis had already been married and divorced twice, and her third
marriage was already going down for the last time. She had an adulterous
romance with Rex Harrison, who was apparently was also about to end their
relationship. What happened? Did poor Landis have emotional problems in addition
to the health issues with malaria and pneumonia she’d been battling since her
days of entertaining the troops during World War 2? Whatever contributed to
Landis’ downward spiral, it all tragically ended for her in July of 1948, when
she left a suicide note and took a lethal overdose of Seconal; Rex Harrison
reportedly found her body. Landis’ pallbearers included
HWC
co-star Pat O’Brien, actor Cesar Romero, director Eddie Sutherland, actor
Willard Parker
(A Slight Case of Murder; Kiss Me Kate); and Carole’s
close friend and personal make-up man William Nye. Aw, man! It’s times like that
that I wish I had a time machine and could help folks like Landis to get their
lives turned around live in joy and triumph. Incidentally, author Jacqueline
Susann based tragic character Jennifer North partly on Landis in her best-seller
Valley of the Dolls.
As for Rice,
The April Robin Murders was her final novel after her
fatal fall. In fact, the novel was only two-thirds finished at the time of
Rice’s death, so the rest was completed by the great Ed McBain,
a.k.a.
Evan Hunter, author of the
87th Precinct novel series and screenwriter of
Alfred Hitchcock’s movie adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's
The Birds, among other triumphs. I
remember reading and enjoying
The April Robin Murders years ago and
finding it quite entertaining, with a nice balance of comedy and sentiment.
Several posthumous Craig Rice story collections were completed by other authors
and published:
The Name is Malone (1958);
The People vs.
Withers and Malone, a 1963 short story collection completed by author Stuart
Palmer, featuring his beloved
Hildegarde Withers
character; the short story collection
Murder, Mystery and Malone (2002);
and
The Pickled Poodles (1960) by Larry M. Harris, a continuation of the
John J. Malone series.
 |
Sim
Sala Bim! Now you see
The Great Movel, now you don't! |
HWC
co-stars Pat O’Brien and George Murphy had much happier endings to their life
stories. O’Brien had a long career and lived to the ripe old age of 84. George
Murphy served as president of the Screen Actors Guild in the 1940s, and retired
from acting in 1952. He was eventually elected Senator of California in 1964 and
served for six years.
With so many Rice books and films I haven’t caught up with yet, I think it’s
time for a Craig Rice renaissance, in both books and films! Who’s with me?
 |
| We crown Helene the Queen of Screwball Noir! |
 |
I don't know about you guys, but
I'm a sucker for a romantic ending! |
