HAVING WONDERFUL CRIME: Like, Write On, Rice!

(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 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.

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!

I WAKE UP SCREAMING: Obsession, You are My Obsession….

Victor Mature, Betty Grable, and Carole Landis had all been in movies together in various combinations (mostly musicals) but the suspenseful 1941 murder mystery I Wake up Screaming (IWuS) was the first film noir all three of them starred in. Indeed, on the DVD’s commentary track, film historian Eddie Muller dubbed it “proto-noir,” since it was in fact 20th Century-Fox’s first film noir. Maybe that’s why IWuS still feels fresh today; everyone in it and everything about it brims with verve and brio, as if all concerned were eager to start filming.

The great Steve Fisher’s original 1941 novel was set in Hollywood, but Darryl F. Zanuck had apparently put the kibosh on Hollywood exposés, so screenwriter Dwight Taylor transplanted this “wrong man” tale of love, murder, and obsession to New York City. I must admit that as a native New Yorker, I loved the idea of relocating the story to Manhattan and environs, with the glamour of Broadway, supper clubs and Big Apple-style brassiness. I just think of IWuS as the East Coast version of the story, while Fisher’s version is the West Coast version.  Fair warning to those who haven’t read the novel but want to: go out of your way to find the original version, because Fisher’s updated 1960 edition feels unstuck in time, and not in a good way. Fisher (or perhaps his publisher?) tried to shoehorn in then-modern references, with mixed results.

Iron bars do not a prison make - but they sure feel like it!

IWuS’s plot starts more like Pygmalion (or My Fair Lady if you prefer musicals) than Fisher’s pulse-pounding crime fiction.  It starts in a Manhattan police station, with “the bulls” sweating our beleaguered yet determined hero, promoter Frankie Christopher (Team Bartilucci fave Victor Mature!). In flashbacks, we learn how Frankie and his friends, Robin Ray (Alan Mowbray), a veteran actor, and Larry Evans (Allyn Joslyn), a newspaper columnist (ah, the newspaper column, the granddaddy of the blog! But I digress...), grabbed a bite at a Times Square eatery one night and ended up betting they could transform their tart-tongued but beautiful waitress, Vicky Lynn (the incandescent Landis), from a hash-slinger to a headliner by putting her name in ads, newspapers, and magazines, and plastering her lovely kisser all over town. Vicky’s more practical sister Jill (Betty Grable) is skeptical, but supportive nevertheless.

If you woke to see Ed Cornell in your pad, wouldn't you scream?

The starmaking scheme works all too well:  dazzled by her own success, Vicky snares a Hollywood screen test and contract right under her shocked benefactors’ noses, only to be murdered on the eve of her Tinseltown departure.  Jill finds Frankie standing over Vicky’s body, swearing he didn’t kill her, he just found her that way. Hotshot Police Inspector Ed Cornell (Laird Cregar) insists that Frankie’s lying.  Fifteen-year veteran Cornell has never been wrong, and he’s obsessed with making an example out of hapless Frankie.  But does justice alone explain Cornell’s unwavering, obsessive zeal, or does he have a hidden agenda?

Boxing is nothing compared to Frankie and Cornell's battle of wits!

The cat and mouse game is afoot between Frankie, hell-bent on proving his innocence, and Cornell,
a smoothly sinister behemoth of a man who’s ready, willing, and able to go to any lengths to railroad Frankie. Undeterred by the lack of a search warrant, Cornell even manages to sneak into Frankie’s bedroom to watch him while he sleeps (“Someday you’re gonna talk in your sleep, and when that day comes, I wanna be around.”), doing his damndest to wear Frankie down with smilingly delivered threats and manipulation. With wily Cornell’s festering resentment of Frankie, you can’t tell what he’ll pull next. Always a formidable, menacing presence, Cregar rocks in the role.  His silky voice and charming smile somehow make him even scarier; no wonder IWuS helped to make him a sought-after character actor of stage and screen. Victor Mature’s Frankie is a great match for Cregar’s Cornell, with his outer charm and inner toughness. Always an appealing presence, Mature was a better actor than he got credit for; people often underestimate his talent and screen presence because he always makes it look so easy. Mature was a hottie, too; no wonder Cornell sneeringly calls Frankie “Handsome Harry!” Elisha Cook Jr. is fine as Harry Williams, the oddball switchboard operator and original suspect.  Fun Fact on film historian Eddie Muller’s commentary track: Cook filmed his role as Wilmer in The Maltese Falcon for John Huston at the same time he was filming IWuS for (H.) Bruce Humberstone. It’s a shame that both Landis and Cregar died so young, though: suicide for Landis and crash-diet-induced heart failure for Cregar. But their performances in IWuS are unforgettable.

The future Mr. & Mrs. Botticelli

Getting back to our plot, things heat up as Jill and Frankie acknowledge what sharp Vicky had already realized:  they’ve fallen in love, and they’re eager to protect each other. When the plucky Grable’s wholesome sexiness meets Mature’s playful yet virile allure, it’s Chemistry City! It’s so cute and typical of the era to see Jill get all starry-eyed when Frankie admits he wants to marry her.  It’s even cuter when Frankie
reveals his original surname as Jill dreamily sighs, “Mrs. Botticelli.”  Still, Vicky’s whirlwind trajectory from waitress to glamour girl to murder victim plunges Jill into a world of murder, terror, and obsession, propelling her to flee with the man she loves, dogged by Cornell at every turn. Taylor’s screenplay tightens Fisher’s sprawling novel almost to the point of claustrophobia (this time, it is in a good way!), with sharp, witty dialogue and comedy relief balancing the nerve-racking tension. The dialogue is snappy, suspenseful, and poignant in all the right places.  Loved that “key” exchange scene early on!  Edward Cronjager’s lush, expressionistic black-and-white photography is a thing of shadowy beauty, used especially well in Cregar’s early scenes as combinations of heavy shadows and bright interrogation lights hide him from view.

Even with studio sets, IWuS evokes early 1940s NYC right up to the rooftops. When Frankie shows Jill his old East Side neighborhood, it’s fun as both a getting-to-know-you sequence and a mini-travelogue of the non-touristy places where native New Yorkers go. This continues when the lovers become fugitives and Frankie shows Jill where to hide in the big city, including the library and a 24-hour grindhouse. Even the swimming pool scene has that spirit; sure, it’s there primarily to show off sex symbols Mature and Grable in their swimsuits (with today’s athletic types being so buff and ripped that you could cut yourself if you touched them, it’s interesting and refreshing to see what kind of physiques were considered hot back in the 1940s), but it reminded me of the city’s neighborhood pools at their best. One bit that’s ironic in retrospect, considering IWuS came out before the U.S. entered World War 2:  when Larry spots Frankie and Jill dancing at a nightclub soon after Vicky’s murder, he angrily calls in a blind item about them for his column, snapping, “Scrap the stuff about the Japanese spy with the Kodak and run this!”

Apparent nods to Steve Fisher’s pulp roots:

1. Frankie takes Jill to The Pegasus Club, possibly a shout-out to the novel’s narrator/writer hero, nicknamed “Pegasus,” a.k.a. “Peg.”
2. During a Cornell/Frankie confrontation, a newsstand features Black Mask Magazine. Incidentally, this scene gets my vote for most resourceful use of a Tootsie Roll.
3. Finally, according to Muller’s DVD commentary, dogged Detective Ed Cornell was named after Fisher’s pal and fellow pulpster Cornell Woolrich. Skinny, sickly Woolrich looked nothing like big, beefy Cregar—but it’s the thought that counts! 

I like the quirky use of music here, too; you might never listen to “Over the Rainbow” quite the same way ever again.  Fans of vintage movie music will notice that the opening credits music, an Alfred Newman piece known as “Manhattan Street Scene,” is the same theme used in a few years later in the 1946 thriller The Dark Corner (which I must blog about sometime, as it’s one of my faves; but again, I digress...).  When Jill brings Frankie home to show him an incriminating letter, listen carefully: in the background, “Over the Rainbow” and “Manhattan Street Scene” cross-pollinate into a sinister new theme, courtesy of music arranger Cyril Mockridge.

Ironically, although Mature and Joslyn each have scenes where they awaken with a start, nobody in I Wake up Screaming ever actually wakes up screaming!  How can you wake up to find a huge, imposing cop like Cregar’s Cornell staring at you and not scream?  And hey, if you’re a completist like I am, you might want to check out the 1953 remake, Vicki, though it struck me as a pale imitation. Here’s a link to my IMDb review, if you’re interested:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046515/usercomments-13

Also, dig this deleted scene with Betty Grable warbling “Daddy,” pre-Tex Avery!