Golden Age of Hollywood Book Club discussion

No I mean that I saw an advertisement for a *brand new* Perry Mason played by some contemporary schlep, likely in a cable series or something. Everything glossy and new and re-done.

It was to marvel at. The character goes back to the 1930s, as you point out.

A buddy of mine is actually one of the world's experts on the author.

Raymond Burr and Fred MacMurray have a lot in common. They should have put them in an aging buddy cop show in the 70's.

Spencer wrote: "Raymond Burr and Fred MacMurray have a lot in common. They should have put them in an aging buddy cop show in the 70's."

Either talk to me or talk to my partner. And you don't wanna talk to my partner.

Looks like a tv series, takes place sometime before WWII from what i could tell.

The guy playing perry mason was in a pretty good spy series a few years ago.

I'll stick with the old tv series with Burr and the Ricardo Cortez film. I wonder how close this new series (or whatever it is) is going to follow the style of the books or the style of the Burr series where there really wasn't any action except in the courtroom.

Doubledf99.99 wrote: "The guy playing perry mason was in a pretty good spy series a few years ago."

Do you know the guy's name?

Jill wrote: "Doubledf99.99 wrote: "The guy playing perry mason was in a pretty good spy series a few years ago."

Do you know the guy's name?"

I knew there was something I was forgetting, his name is Matthew Rhys.
He was in The Americans which ran from 2013-2018, about a Russian sleeper cell in DC, the first episode was great. and the rest of the series was well played out. Very tense. Margo Martindale was superb as the couples Russian handler.
He played Daniel Ellsberg in the movie The Post.

Did you figure out if it is a movie or a series?

The ad flashed by me going at speed. Just a glimpse. But I'm betting its a cable series though; that's where all the production is these days. Such a serialized product would never get a studio release these days.

Perry Mason is a HBO miniseries. Takes place in 1931, also co-staring John Lithgow, so far wiki is showing 8 episodes. Takes place in LA.

Sounds like good quality. The same way Timothy Hutton and that heavyset actor, did Rex Stout's "Nero Wolfe" a while back. Glad to hear Lithgow is still active.

What amazes me is the insatiable appetite for media in this country. 24 hours nonstop every single day. Producers will go back to a show decades old --to a courtroom drama of all things --to fill the need. Aren't "diabolical locked-room whodunits" exhausted yet?

Or is this an attempt to tap into nostalgia for a great TV series of the past? Okay, but how big can that audience be?

The man who played Nero Wolfe was one of my favorite actors altho' not that well known. His name was Maury Chaykin. He was Canadian and won Canada's equivalent of the Oscar for his wonderful film Whale Music. His picture is my screen saver on the computer. Here he is as Wolfe.

I've got a good one! I was looking up an actor, and next to his picture was another actor named Thomas Jackson, but they had a picture of Stonewall Jackson (Thomas J. Jackson!) Wonder if he had a SAG card? :)

Aha.

Back to Nero Wolfe for a moment --Jill, that certainly is devout fanship for a particular actor.

I'm not sure who my 'ideal' might be, to play Nero Wolfe. I've never seen it done in a way that satisfies me.

Sidney Greenstreet plays him on radio to fine effect; his voice is braggadoccio enough to more than fit the character. Easily lends itself to images of muttonchop sideburns and corpulent jowls.

But somehow Nero Wolfe just never intrigues me no matter how good the production or how apt the actors. Even Greenstreet can't save it. Something about the whole concept just doesn't click with me. I wish that it did.

I am a Nero Wolfe fanatic, have read and own all the books and the dvds of the series which lasted two years. When I saw Chaykin in the role, I was blown away. He was absolutely perfect. He intrigued me so I started finding his film work, some fair but mostly excellent. He was extremely versatile and sadly, died much too young.

Greenstreet used his trademark chuckle in the radio series which, for me, ruined his performance of Wolfe who never chuckled. I really like Greenstreet but just didn't think, since it was radio and you couldn't see the character, that they necessarily should have picked him just because he physically resembled Wolfe.

What you say about Greenstreet is fair.

As I said, I've never had a completely satisfying Nero Wolfe experience. The 'Archie' character appeals to me more (Gerald Mohr, that is, as well as Harry Bartel and Timothy Hutton).

But I'm glad to hear enthusiastic views on all this, from someone who is a hardcore fan. Maybe I can learn something from you on this matter.

My 'mental image' of Wolfe is someone like Laird Craigar I suppose. Larger-than-life.

p.s. I was surprised to discover last year, that Sidney Greenstreet was not actually so big and burly as I always perceived him. I thought he was enormous. Turns out not to be quite so.

The hook of the Nero Wolfe mystery books is the interaction between Archie and Mr. Wolfe. The stories weren't always particularly strong but the dialogue was superb....snappy and often humorous. Timothy Hutton was also a great pick for Archie in the series. And of course, Gerald Mohr, was one of the great voices on radio.

Wasn't Greenstreet really short?

Speaking of Gerald Mohr....I wonder why he never made a big splash in film?. He was fairly good looking and would have made a great crook.

I don't know either. He got his start in the Mercury Theater, discovered by Welles. It should have been the high road from there on out.

p.s. there's several series/characters which although I respect them, they've nonetheless never raised my interest above a 'mild' regard

Ellery Queen
Philo Vance
Nick Carter
Perry Mason
Michael Shayne
Nero Wolfe
Miss Marple
The Thin Man

An example of a series I do find intriguing:
'Cool and Lam' by Erle Stanley Gardner

This is one where the situation is so dynamic that anything might happen in any story, at any time. That's what I like. Here, the gentleman-detective's 'associate' / sidekick, is not loyal to him, he a police plant!

Philo Vance was huge in the 1920/early 30s and then people got tired of his elitism and smarty pants ways. VanDine, the author was pretty much a hack.

I love Agatha Christie but am not impressed with boring old Miss Marple.

Ellery Queen was a Philo Vance wanna-be in the beginning but the author(s) changed his style and the series stayed popular.

I loved the original Thin Man film with William Powell and Myrna Loy but have never read any of the books. The follow-up films, as is usually the case, were much weaker.

Never read Michael Shane or Nick Carter. But I did like some of the "B" Shayne films with Lloyd Nolan

I'm of 'like mind' with this even-tempered assessment.

Times used to be, that 'hack' writers were called out as such and no one got offended; not even the hacks themselves. Now it sounds like some kind of slur. But traditionally, hacks had a place in society and no one was overly-sensitive about it. They served a purpose.

'Thin Man' --of course I admire the movies; but writing-wise it was the worst episode of Hammett's career, when he was in 'high society'.

Agreed on hack writers. Another one was Edgar Wallace, a British mystery writer who wrote more books than you can count and they sold like hotcakes but they were not very good.

I hate to say this as it might get rotten tomatoes thrown at me, but I think that James Patterson is the biggest hack in modern times...he doesn't even write half the books that carry his name.

I certainly know Edgar Wallace. The man behind 'King Kong'! He can't have been all bad when he can produce an idea like that.

I've also read his, 'The Four Just Men' and it was riveting enough as far as it goes. Maybe not enough for a series it later became, but it was ingenious the first time around.

Anyway Wallace came from a long line of pulp thriller authors which began circa Jules Verne in France. Can't censure them too much; those were very early days for all the prose we enjoy today.

p.s. Patterson and his ilk can't hardly be any worse than Robert Ludlum in the latter half of his career. He probably started all this 'automated plots' and repetitiveness

Too true. Do you think Stephen King writes all of his books?

That's a shrewd question. I honestly don't know.

If he does, I don't know when he has time to sleep or go to the bathroom!!

"I like a man who speaks freely" --Kaspar Gutman

At last! An academic paper which reinforces what I've always maintained.

All the flouncing dilettantes and "cineastes" mistakenly insist on regarding film noir as an aesthetic style; when that is merely an effect. The cause of film noir is unrelated to the effects.

Instead, noir was a production category. Studios enforced budget constrictions which inspired producers to devise new techniques. That's the long and the short of it.

https://tinyurl.com/yadotztl

As the author points out, documentation is alarmingly slim on this aspect, hence the reason why all the damn ivory-tower types pose and preen themselves with the 'stylistic lexicon of noir' when it's utter drivel. Such discussions proliferate among superficial artsy-types who don't think enough about production.

I'm pretty fond of both the Thin Man books and movies. I kinda liked seeing the Powell/Loy relationship mature. And Astra was always great. Great early Jimmy Stewart role, too.

brushless shaving cream!

I forced myself to read a Patterson novel when I was in jail for a DUI. That is just shit. Somebody like Ian Fleming towers over that idiot.

I don't think Patterson has written his own books for years. I wouldn't be caught dead reading one.

Groan. Just spoke with a customer service representative over the phone ...and she didn't know what 'Sicily' is.

She didn't know what Sicily is? Well, some people are geographically-challenged. One of the smartest women I know, once admitted she didn't know the difference between Idaho and Iowa.

I'm prepared to believe that someone might not know exactly where two states in the Union might lay. But I'm willing to bet she had heard both the state's names before; probably knew they were somewhere in the USA and probably knew they were US states.

This CSR I spoke with professed to have never heard the word before; and had no idea that it was even a place.

Over the past few years I've noted this same behavior with regard to the island of Greenland.

I will have to admit that with the constantly changing names in Africa and the Far East, that I have to think twice before I can place them. But otherwise I know my basic geography.

The Robert Taylor Thread!

No, we won't be having such a discussion. But it strikes me as odd we haven't ever mentioned him around here.

Monty, post-accident


I think it made him more likeable and a better actor

This overview (see below) is simply astounding, I had always thought Welles' Mercury Theater was just "parodying" the bombastic newsreels of the day, (in the preface to 'Citizen Kane').

"Time ...marches on!!!"

But this specific type of newsreel is one I am shocked to find myself unfamiliar with. Maybe I'd heard of it --heard of it too often? --so as to never have given it any direct attention? Anyway: 'The March of Time' --of course! And it was serious business.

Tale a gander at the famous actors this newsreel juggernaut deployed in order to successfully imitate the voices of famous personages of the day. Woah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mar...

Question, why was Tarzan's pet chimpanzee called, 'cheetah'? What's the hidden logic behind this? Chimpanzees have nothing to do with cheetahs that I'm aware of.

Good question but somtimes there's no rhyme or reason to names. People and animals can have crazy names just because someone liked it.

H'mmm. May be. But if there was no original rhyme or reason which made sense to anybody, why did they let it stand for so long? Why did no one question it?

I'm not sure I agree 100% with the underlying premise of randomness. Our mental processes usually follow some logical association. A thing is usually either 'like' some other thing, or one thing 'causes' another. This looms large in our choices; complete randomness is almost impossible. Whatever the process was in this case, it's just a level or two down from being logic which is exposed to us. Chimpanzees and cheetahs are both found in Africa, after all. I wonder what mental leap someone made. Was it Burroughs himself?

Since Burroughs did not have a chimp in his books, the movie people were the ones who used the name Cheeta (no H), and therefore doesn't seem to refer to a cheetah.

Those are two excellent clues

Feliks wrote: "This overview (see below) is simply astounding, I had always thought Welles' Mercury Theater was just "parodying" the bombastic newsreels of the day, (in the preface to 'Citizen Kane').

I have seen those before and they seem so bombastic now. People went to the movies at least once a week in those days and I guess they wanted to see what they were hearing about on the radio. The narrator, Westbrook Van Vorhees (was that his real name?) narrated with that deep voice. A little bit of history.

Re; Cheeta. There is no logic to what Hollywood might do. Maybe they thought that the noise chimpanzees make sometime when excited sounded like Cheeta to them, so let's call him Cheeta. Who knows why Hollywood did what it did in those days. At least they didn't call him Rover!

Bette Davis in, 'Mr. Skeffington'. I've never seen it. Any good? Most of the plot, sounds like it matches ole Bette to a 'T'.