Edward G. Robinson Gets His Man

The coming reissue of  James Benson Nablo's The Long November has had me watching the films made from his stories. There were four in all, shot between 1953 and 1958, starring big names like Mickey Rooney, Edward G. Robinson and Victor Mature. Pretty impressive for someone who died six or so years after his arrival in Hollywood, don't you think?

Writing here four years ago, I described A Bullet for Joey, the second film made from a Nablo story as "god-awful". I haven't changed my mind. Still, I enjoy the movie, if only because it takes place in Montreal. A Bullet for Joey wasn't filmed in the city but at the RKO-Pathé Studios in California's Culver City. Lazy director Lewis Allen is content with stock footage, beginning with this establishing shot taken from Mount Royal.

…then blows it by cutting to an apartment building unlike any I've seen in Canada, outside of Vancouver.

We'll learn later that this is not an apartment building at all but a hotel… in a residential area… without signage… or a doorman.

Nuclear scientist Dr Carl Macklin, played by George Dolenz (Mickey's dad), emerges to greet a monkey and organ grinder.

Then he exchanges pleasantries with the friendly neighbour RCMP officer, in ill-fitting, faux-uniform.

The organ grinder will kill the officer as the monkey watches.

Enter Edward G. Robinson as Raoul Leduc, the RCMP inspector tasked with finding the murderer.

Note the portrait of Queen Elizabeth and the two maps of Canada. Allen may have been lazy, but set designer Joseph Kish was busy as a beaver placing STOP/ARRET signs, RCMP coats of arms and maps wherever possible. There are a lot of maps.

You've got to give Robinson credit for not falling into the trap that claimed Laurence Olivier in 49th Parallel; the actor never even attempts a French Canadian accent. He sometimes falters – Quebec is "Kweebec" – but for the most part his is a reliable performance; I was most impressed by the actor's ability to deliver lines like this with straight face: "An organ grinder? That early in the morning?"

You can hardly blame Robinson for his mispronunciations; the only Canadian I recognize in the credits is Henri Letondal, and the two share no scenes. Who was gonna set Rocco right?

Letondal plays a farmer who is being used by a foreign cabal to get a gangster into the country.

"Welcome to Canada, and to freedom Mister Steiner."
"Mister Dooboys?"
"Dubois. Your sponsor."

That's George Raft as the gangster. He's been offered $100,000 to kidnap Macklin. Next thing you know it's old home week, with his crew descending on the Dubois farmhouse from Havana, Mexico City, Chicago and Los Angeles.

At this point the film loses focus with the would-be kidnappers posing as surveyors, factory workers and moonstruck lovers, all in an illogical effort to get close to the nuclear scientist. Although not shared with the audience, it appears that at some point the decision is made to steal the very project on which Macklin is working. This part of the movie is pretty boring, but pays off in one dynamite headline:

James Benson Nablo can't be blamed for this mess; it is his story, not his script. No Canadian would write dialogue like this:

     "Two mornings a week Mr Macklin teaches physics at McGill University. He dines either at the club or the hotel."
     "What kind of a club?"
     "The one to the faculty he belongs. After dinner he usually plays chess."
     "Chess?"
     "An intellectual game you wouldn't know about. When the weather is fine he plays golf – two or three afternoons a week. If it isn't, he goes up to Mount Royal to ski or skate."

Montrealers will find it funny.

Everyone will wonder why the movie features no character named Joey.

What Nablo himself thought about it all I haven't been able to discover.

Related posts:

The Mysterious Mister Nablo

Nablo in Hollywood

N is for Nablo News
The Last of James Benson Nablo?

N is for Nablo News

All kinds of activity here this past weekend in preparation of Friday's Gwethalyn Graham plaque dedication and Saturday's John Glassco event, but I somehow managed to slip in a bit of work relating  to James Benson Nablo. I can now report that The Long November, the Niagara Falls writer's only book, will be returning to print this coming spring as part of the Véhicule Press Ricochet Books series.

I could not be happier.

Set in Toronto, Chicago, Moreland Lakes (read: Kirkland Lake, Ontario), an unnamed Italian village and the author's hometown, The Long November is one of the most interesting novels of the post-war period. News Stand Library pitched it as "a tale of passion and virile drive". It's all that and more.

One of the unexpected pleasures of this exercise, this stroll through the neglected writing of our past, is that it has often brought contact with the children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces of the writers concerned. It was my good fortune that the daughter and grandson of James Benson Nablo spotted my posts on The Long November, the novel's paperback history and the author's career in Hollywood.

So it is that I spent an enjoyable few hours yesterday reading through five James Benson Nablo manuscripts on loan from Nancy Vichert, his daughter. As far as I've been able to determine, all are unpublished and have no connection with the stories that were adapted by Hollywood: Drive a Crooked Road, A Bullet for Joey, Raw Edge and China Doll.

After the success of The Long November – five editions in six years! – the native of Niagara Falls made his way to Hollywood. The duo-tang for one of the of the manuscripts features an address that places him within walking distance of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, not too far from Chateau Marmont:
 

8401 Ridpath Drive, Hollywood, CA
(cliquez pour agrandir)

James Benson Nablo's time in Tinseltown was not long, but he left his mark. Drive a Crooked Road, adapted by Blake Edwards and Richard Quine, was Columbia Pictures' great attempt to turn Mickey Rooney into an adult star. A Bullet for Joey places Edward G. Robinson and George Raft in Montreal as, respectively, a French Canadian detective and infamous gangster.

Nablo's talent was such that further adaptations appeared after his untimely death at the age forty-five.

I'm pleased to be involved with the return of The Long November. It's been more than a half-century. Long overdue.

Related posts:

The Mysterious Mister Nablo

Nablo in Hollywood

Nablo in Paperback

The 75-Year-Old Virgin and Others I Acquired

Published in 1935 by les Éditions du Quotidien, a first edition by one of the most important Canadian writers of the twentieth century. I bought Sébastien Pierre this year for ten dollars. A full 75 years after publication, its pages remained uncut. Three of the 23 illustrations featured are revealed here for the first time.

Such a sad commentary on the country's literature, and yet... and yet this same sorry situation enables souls like myself to amass a fairly nice collection of interesting and unusual Canadiana.

Case in point: Thomas P. Kelley's pseudonymous No Tears for Goldie (1950), which was purchased in February for a mere five dollars. No hits on Worldcat, absent from Abe, nothing at all at AddAll.

Rare, bizarre, but not really worth a read.

Of the obscurities reviewed here these past twelve months, the three I most recommend:

The Long November by James Benson Nablo

The Door Between by Neil H. Perrin

Gambling with Fire by David Montrose

These are not great works of literature, but they are engaging and very interesting. Each depicts a dark, disturbing and gritty Canada found in very few novels of their time.

Financially speaking, my best buy was a very nice first edition (my second) of Tender is the Night (sans dust jacket), which I found just last month for $9.50 in a Montreal bookstore. The year's favourite purchase, however, is of negligible commercial value: a 1926 edition of Anatole France's Under the Rose. I came across this at a library sale, flipped through a few pages, and happened to spot the name Peregrine Acland, a subject of ongoing research, stamped ever so discretely in the front free endpaper.

What luck!

Still no luck, I'm afraid, in tracking down Sexpo '69, that elusive novel of lesbian erotica set at Expo 67. Will I never find a copy?

Of course, I will.

A Happy New Year to all!

Nablo in Paperback

Not much more to say about the elusive Nablo, though these paperback covers of The Long November are worthy of mention. The first, published by News Stand Library in 1948, juxtaposes a "Vigorous, lusty; a tale of passion and virile drive" with "AN R.C.A.F. VETERAN'S SENSATIONAL NEW NOVEL", as if to say: "Before you label this as smut, the publisher would like to point out that this novel was written by one of our heroic servicemen."

The artwork is a touch better than most News Stand Library covers, but makes the whole thing look like some light-hearted, mildly risqué romp. And where in Canada do leaves begin falling in November?

News Stand Library's second cover, from 1949, isn't a whole lot better. Does it not look like Steffie Gibson is drowning? Poor little rich girl, caught in a whirlpool with tiny autumnal leaves floating above her beautiful visage.

Predictably, the finest of the lot belongs to the 1952 Signet edition. "Too Many Women - Too Little Time" might not be the most original of pitches, but the cover captures the novel's dark mood and does depict an actual scene.

This last beat-up cover was rescued a couple of decades back from a store's 25¢ bin. It was being rained on and, I'm betting, was within an hour or two of being tossed. Appropriate then, that today's James McIntyre poem was inspired by a neglected book happened upon while out for a stroll, its pages "scattered o'er the ground".

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

The volume concerned is The Posthumous Works of the Late George Menzies, Being a Collection of Poems, Sonnets, &c., &c., Written at Various Times When the Author was Connected with the Provincial Press. Published in 1850 by his widow, Harriet, it can't be bought for under two hundred dollars.

Related posts:

The Mysterious Mister Nablo

Nablo in Hollywood

Nablo in Hollywood

The only image I've been able to find of the Hollywood James Benson Nablo – and don't it look like crap. Blame attendees of the 1936 American Library Association's annual meeting and their enthusiastic endorsement of microfilm.

Published in the 11 May 1946 edition of the Globe and Mail, it has no article attached, so I can't begin to speculate as to why The Long November was never filmed. That said, is it not odd that the project is described as "the first motion picture attempted by Doyle-Nablo productions [emphasis mine]"? And don't the Doyles seem such an unhappy couple? Mrs Doyle looks to be scanning the room for the exit.

But co-producer Nablo is all smiles, as are the others around the table:

Brooke Burwell, who fits Nablo's description of Steffie Gibson to a tee, is a bit of a mystery woman. It appears she never made a film, and has not, to use another's terminology, "been traced".

Kenneth Roberts was a prolific writer, who had a number of forgettable films adapted from his equally forgettable historical novels.

Norman Reilly Raine was really an American, though he did work as a Toronto newspaperman, and later served in the Canadian army during the First World War. At the time this photo was taken, the 51-year-old would have been enjoying success for his adaptation of John Hersey's A Bell for Adamo (1945).

Raine's longtime flame, "Hollywood dancing star" Nova Dale, had one uncredited role as a chorus girl in 1951's Showboat. She died the following year, at the age of 31, several days after smashing up her car.

All this leads to Drive a Crooked Road (1954), which would be the first film based on a Nablo story. These nice, clear images from the trailer, point to a movie that is nowhere near as interesting as what is promised; evidence that promotion hasn't really changed all that much in the past half-century.

Finally, as part of the National Poetry Month promise, another James McIntyre poem. "Niagara Dry" recounts the day – 30 March 1848 – when both the Canadian Falls and its bland cousin ran dry. Nablo grew up just over a kilometre from the falls, practically across the street from where the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum stands. Culture.

NIAGARA DRY

It happened once in early spring,

While there did float great thick ice cakes,

That then a gale did quickly bring

Them all down from the upper lakes.

And Buffalo to Lake Erie,

Across the entrance to river,

It was a scene of icebergs dreary,

Those who saw it will remember ever.

The gale blew up lake and river,

And left Niagara almost dry,

This a lady did discover

As above the Falls she cast her eye.

Such scene it had been witnessed never,

Since Israelites crossed the Red Sea,

When they had resolved forever

From Pharaoh's bondage to flee.

Lady she resolved to venture,

Proudly carrying British flag,

Erected it in river's centre

In crevice of a rocky crag.

It seems like a romance by Bulwer,

How she captured Niagara,

But it was seen by Bishop Fuller,

Who did at sight of flag hurrah.

Ten thousand years may die away

Before another dry can tread,

In bottom of Niagara,

For she doth jealous guard her bed.

But ice her entrance did blockade,

And wind it kept the waters back,

So that a child could almost wade

Across the brink of cataract.

Related posts:

The Mysterious Mister Nablo

Nablo in Paperback

The Last of James Benson Nablo?

The Mysterious Mister Nablo

The Long November

James Benson Nablo

New York: Dutton, 1946

I'm going to step out on a limb here and state, with confidence, that this was one of the most popular Canadian novels published after the Second World War. Evidence? I can offer nothing more than its publishing history, which over six years included three Dutton printings, two News Stand Library editions and a very attractive Signet paperback. And yet, we remember nothing of James Benson Nablo; The Long November, his only novel, has been out of print for over five decades.

Nablo's narrator is Joe Mack, a wounded, unarmed Canadian soldier hiding from Nazis in a half-destroyed Italian home. Don't be fooled, this is not a war novel, but Horatio Alger's nightmare. As Joe waits out the enemy, he looks back on his 34 years, playing particular attention to his efforts to make something of himself. It isn't that Joe cares so much about money, rather he sees it as a means of winning the love of his life, beautiful blonde Steffie Gibson. Like Duddy Kravitz, who would follow, Joe realizes his riches by "borrowing" the last bit of money he needs to achieve his dream – and, as with Duddy, he loses the girl as a result.

The Long November is a rough book, told in a style that resembles tough guy film noir narration; only Nablo uses words that would not pass the Hays Code. In a 1949 letter to Jack McClelland, Earle Birney provides a list: "Jesus Christ, Christ Almighty, By Jesus, for Christ's sake, goddamit, Bugger all, sonofabitch, suck-holing, stumblebum, crap, shacked up, quickie, a lay, shove it up your keister, tired of being screwed-without-being-kissed." May I add that in one of his many moments of self-recrimination Joe describes his work as "of much use as a tit on a spinster"? Writing in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, John D. Paulus complained: "If this is modern 'realistic writing,' this reviewer will take vanilla."

And I'll take Rocky Road.

Nearly everything that's been written about Nablo is found on the book's dust jacket. Other references to the author are precious and few. In Imagining Canadian Literature, editor Sam Solecki provides nothing more than a fleeting footnote, referring to "J.V. Nablo [sic] (b. 1910)", an author who has not "been traced". Nablo was indeed born in 1910, making him exactly the same age as his protagonist. Here the future author is recorded in the 1911 census, as the daughter of George and Margery Nablo of 8 Centre Street in Niagara Falls.

I've found little else, though I can say that he never published another book. It seems Nablo left the world of letters for a life in film. In 1954, his short story "The Wheel Man" was adapted by a young Blake Edwards as Drive a Crooked Road. The flick has Mickey Rooney as an honest auto mechanic who finds himself driving the getaway car in a bank robbery. Blame it on a dame.

The god-awful A Bullet for Joey (1955) followed. Of the films made from Nablo's stories, it's by far the most interesting. Why? Well, for one it stars Edward G. Robinson as a French Canadian RCMP detective named Raoul Leduc. Need more? It's a Cold War thriller set in Montreal, and features George Raft as an American mobster who is hired by the Reds to kidnap a nuclear scientist. Who can resist?

A Bullet for Joey was followed by a forgotten western, Raw Edge (1956), which starred Vancouver beauty Yvonne de Carlo (née Peggy Middleton). One wonders whether Nablo lived to see it; industry reports from the autumn of 1956 refer to "the late James Benson Nablo".

The writer's executor seems to have had a busy time of it, selling options for Nablo stories like "Morning Star", which was to have been James Cagney's directorial debut. In the end, there was only one more film: a Victor Mature vehicle entitled China Doll (1958). Its release coincided with a "novelization by Edgar Jean Bracco of a screenplay by Kitty Buhler". Published as a 35¢ Berkley paperback, it makes no mention of James Benson Nablo.

Object: A fairly slim hardcover in green cloth with light brown lettering. What makes the book interesting is that Dutton changed covers for the second and third printings – both in March 1946 – replacing the battlefield landscape with an image of Steffie Gibson looking like a well-covered streetwalker.

Access: Fourteen copies are held in Canadian public and university libraries. It seems that the uncommon first edition exists only in rotten condition. The best copy currently listed online is a bargain at C$30; others lack dust jackets or are ex-library. Decent copies of the News Stand and Signet editions can be had for under C$10. I've yet to come across the 1957 Double Flame paperback.

Related posts:

Nablo in Hollywood

Nablo in Paperback

Edward G. Robinson Gets His Man

The Long November in Late August
The Last of James Benson Nablo?