Brian Moore's Forgotten First Feature: Montreal and Scattered Thoughts on a Film I've Now Seen

It sure been a hard, hard winter, my feet been draggin' 'cross the ground. And so I hibernate, sleepily absorbing what I can of the world outside. Last weekend it was Intent to Kill, the screen adaptation of Brian Moore's disowned thriller of the same title, sent my way by Noah Stewart of Noah's Archives.

In January, I wrote a bit about the film, the first of six features based on Brian Moore novels, suggesting that screenwriter Jimmy Sangster had been quite faithful to the original. Back then I had nothing to go on but the trailer.

Turns out I was right, though the opening sequence is incongruous. We begin with an ambulance racing along what was then Dorchester Boulevard. Destination: Dorval Airport.

Once there it picks up Juan Menda (Herbert Lom), president of an unnamed South American country, who hopes that Montreal brain surgeons will save his life. The shots that follow – which have nothing whatsoever to do with the book – capture a good deal of a city that is more than half a century gone.

At one point the camera swings past one of my old student apartments, but I won't trouble you with things sentimental. Look! There on the left! Those are McGill's Roddick Gates!

As in Jésus de Montréal – The Greatest Canadian Story Ever Told – the ambulance takes a false route. In this film it ends up at the Montreal General Hospital, which serves as a stand in for the fictitious Canadian Neurological Institute.

Three men intend to kill in Intent to Kill, but they aren't the only villains. In book and film selfish wives betray spouses. Margaret McLaurin (Catherine Boyle), pressures her doctor husband Robert (Richard Todd) to abandon his practice for a position in London working for one of her many paramours.

"I can't stand it here. I loath it. I hate Canada!"

Femme fatale Carla Menda (Lisa Gastoni), the president's beautiful wife, sees the desperate attempt to save her husband as an opportunity to sleep with an old flame who is now ambassador to Canada. Though they never meet, Carla and Margaret have something more than their adulterous ways in common:

"I hate this country. It's so cold."

The cheating wives can't stand the winter and hate Montreal. Margaret refers to the city as a "Siberian wasteland", as her haunted husband Robert McLaurin walks the streets trying to clear his thoughts.

The man even walks to work.

Here young Dr Robert passes the Windsor, the very hotel at which the assassins are staying.

The first of all the grand Canadian hotels, the Windsor closed its doors when I was a teenager. I have my doubts that its bar was as depicted in the film.

That's a young Jackie Collins at right in one of her few screen roles.

Most of the interiors were shot in London, and the exteriors in Montreal. I'm left wondering about this scene in which Finch (Warren Stevens), one of the hired killers, stops to make a phone call.

It's beautifully filmed – as you'd expect in a movie directed by Jack Cardiff – but is something not a bit off? Montreal's Strand was on St. Catherine Street, which seems awfully narrow here. I don't remember the theatre at all, probably because by the time I was old enough to go to the movies it had been transformed into a porn cinema called Pigalle. The building was torn down in 1973 to make way for the Centre Capitol.

I like to think that Intent to Kill showed there – sometime between Rodan and Use the Back Door.

A warning: Jack Cardiff's Intent to Kill is not to be confused with the straight-to-video 1992 Traci Lords vehicle of the same name.

Related posts:

Murderers Move in on Montreal… Again

Brian Moore's Forgotten First Feature:
Speculation and Scattered Thoughts on a Film I've Never Seen
Selling Intent to Kill… Tueurs à gages, really

A Dozen Duddys

Who's the dishevelled kid with the map? Why it's Duddel, Max Kravitz's boy. You know him – he's Simcha's eynikl. At least that's how British illustrator Bernard Blatch imagined him on the jacket of the 1959 André Deutsch first edition of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Did Coca-Cola and 7 Up pay for product placement?

After Anne Shirley, I don't think there's a character in Canadian literature that has been drawn, painted, photographed and filmed quite so often as the lead in Richler's breakthrough work. And why not? Duddy is so large that Richler himself couldn't confine him to one novel.

Sixty-five years later, the Blatch cover remains the best, though I have a real soft spot for the 1964 British Penguin that belonged to my father.

Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964

The Brits do Duddy best, but their fellow Europeans fail. Just look at De Leejaren van Duddy Kravitz, the 2000 Dutch translation, which casts the boychick as a Weimar Germany cabaret performer.

Amsterdam: Muntinga, 2000

The German, Die Lehrjahre des Duddy Kravitz, places our hero somewhere in Europe, far from Montreal and the Laurentians.

Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag, 2007

We don't actually see Duddy on the cover of L'apprendistato di Duddy Kravitz, the Italian translation, but it would appear he's manning the cash at an American liquor store.

Milan: Adelphi, 2010

What follow are seven more also rans:

New York: Ballantine, 1974

Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974

Toronto: Penguin, 1987

Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart,  2001

Toronto: Penguin, 2005

New York: Paperback Library, 1964

"A writer of whom Canadians may be proud."
And I am!
Gee, thanks, Saturday Review.

Related posts:

Much Ado About Anne

Picturing Harriet Marwood

Covering Memoirs of Montparnasse

Recycling Richard Rohmer

Separation Two
Richard Rohmer
Markham, ON: PaperJacks, 1981

March has come in like a lion, but those of us committed to reading Richard Rohmer in '14 continue unfazed. We're now six books into the man's oeuvre. Quite an achievement, I think you'll agree, but not nearly so impressive as it sounds. Rohmer has a habit of repeating himself, going over the same facts and past events as if aware that the reader wasn't paying much attention the first time around. Sometimes it's figures about natural gas reserves, pipeline capacity or technical details about the C-130 Hercules, but mostly it's an just a summary of his previous novel.

The first fifth of Exxoneration is a revisionist retelling of Ultimatum. Rohmer does something similar in Separation, before tacking on the final chapter of Exodus/UK.

More lifted filler follows.

With Separation Two, however, Rohmer takes repetition and recycling to a level not seen since the days of Thomas P. Kelley.

This is no sequel to Separation, Rohmer's 1976 bestseller, but a reissue sandwiched between four short chapters about Alberta separatism and an oil man's attempt to assassinate the prime minister. It's a shaky union, made all the more so by haphazard editing.

In the original, a severe economic crisis prompts the UK to ask whether Canada will accept millions of British immigrants. Quebec threatens to separate if Ottawa agrees; Alberta and BC threaten to separate if it does not. There's also lots of superfluous stuff about North Sea oil reserves, off-shore platforms, pipelines, along with an entirely irrelevant four-page UK/US energy agreement copied from Exodus/UK.

In Separation Two, Alberta is “prepared to take the British immigrants”, but doesn't really care much either way. The prospect of several hundred thousand economic refugees flooding into the province? Please. What  concerns Albertans are oil profits and "the budget that asshole in Ottawa threw at us".

The thing about that asshole, Prime Minister Joe Roussel (read: Pierre Trudeau), is that he's stuck repeating everything he said in Separation, things that simply don't fit Separation Two, like when he tells a crowd amassed on Parliament Hill: “British Columbia and Alberta have notified the federal government that if we do not take the British immigrants those provinces will succeed.”

What?

When?

Why in the original book, of course. The threat comes in a fleeting scene with the BC premier, a minor character that does not appear in Separation Two.

See, it's not the asshole's fault, it's the author and editor.

It seems that Separation Two was born out of disappointing mass market sales of Separation. As is so often the case in his fiction, the Americans are at fault. Sandra Martin got a reluctant Rohmer to discuss his rewrite in the 13 June 1981 Globe & Mail:

According to Rohmer, someone at Bantam in New York who knew nothing about Canada and less about art, designed the cover and wrote the copy on the back. Then the book was launched in Canada "without promotion" even though a television film of the book was in the works. The paperback was "a disaster." "It died and when it went out of print about a year ago, the rights reverted to me." In the meantime, Rohmer had moved to General Publishing, which wanted to re-release Separation in their PaperJacks line. Rohmer agreed, but suggested the book should be updated. And that's how Separation II [sic], which Rohmer suggests is "the same book yet different," came about.

Okay, a few quick observations:

• As a  teenager I owned that Bantam (Bantam/Seal, actually) copy of Separation. I remember it as being far superior to previous Rohmer covers in that it was something more than 72-point type against a grey or white background.
• I very much doubt the unnamed New York-based artist who designed the cover also wrote the back copy.
• Rohmer dodged a bullet in not having a tie-in edition to that gawdawful made-for-TV flick.
• Oh, for the days in which a three-year mass market run was considered "a disaster."

What I really want to address is the idea that Separation Two is "the same book yet different". No argument there, but why give it a different title? A novelist revisiting a work is not without precedent – hell, Dickens changed the ending to Great Expectations – but I can't help but think that PaperJacks was trying to pull a fast one. It really does stink. Nowhere in the cover copy is there so much as a hint that Separation Two is just Separation with a few dozen pages added. In fact, both bibliography and copyright page labour to give the impression that Separation is something altogether different.

Whatever does this mean for Ultimatum 2?

Update: Turns out my memory of the Bantam/Seal edition was spot on. The cover is by Paul Lehr, an American artist remembered primarily for his work on science fiction titles. I see no evidence that he wrote cover copy.  

Note: Much of this post is consists of observations I first made on the Reading Richard Rohmer blog. I've learned from the master.

Object and Access: A cheaply produced mass market paperback, most public library copies fell apart long ago. There are plenty of used copies listed for sale online. I've yet to find evidence of a second printing, so all are first editions, right?

Related posts:

Richard Rohmer Recycles (Again)
Kelley Pulls a Fast One

Freedom to Read Week: Selected Salacious Filth Found in a Toronto Controller's Dresser Drawer

David A. Balfour
1889 - 1956
RIP

The joke that is Rob Ford isn't funny anymore, right? We all know where he's heading, the only real question is whether he'll be taking anyone with him. Torontonians, take extra care as you cross at the intersection, a black Cadillac Escalade may be just around the corner. 

No, not that funny at all. That's where Ford breaks with the buffoons of the city's past, my favourite being Controller David Balfour. If the name seems familiar, it may be that you've once strolled through Toronto's David A. Balfour Park.*

Balfour was no friend of parks, once calling for the removal of all flower beds, but his real foe was reds. He saw them everywhere, pressuring both Queen's Park and Ottawa to round up anyone he considered a communist leader. This included aldermen and Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, who once dared speak in his city. Reds taught children to spit on the cross, claimed Balfour, adding that Bathurst United Church was a centre of communism. A Catholic, the controller fought Ontario Attorney-General Leslie Blackwell's move to  regulate bingo operators.

When not protecting children from those who would teach them to spit, he was working to shield their eyes and those of their parents from "salacious books" being circulated by lending libraries. Balfour's obsessive focus on "immoral literature" provided many column inches for Globe & Mail City Hall reporter Frank Tumpane. The six on the right come from the 22 March 1947 edition.

Balfour was a great collector of the material he sought to ban, encouraging others in the battle to send filth his way. "I stick them in the top drawer of my dresser," he told council. "I'm ashamed of them."

The controller was short on titles, amassing a lengthy list that he was never  willing to share. However, over the years he did mention five titles, one of which was Jan Peel's The Bed and the Blonde (Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949). I don't have a copy in the top drawer of my dresser, so can't provide a cover image. Here are the rest:

Forever Amber
Kathleen Winsor
New York: Macmillan, 1944

Kitty
Rosamond Marshall
Toronto: Collins White Circle,  1944

Duchess Hotspur
Rosamond Marshall
Toronto: Collins White Circle, 1947

The Flesh is Willing
James Clayford
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

A fin de la semaine bonus:

The Globe & Mail, 30 September 1949

* David Balfour is, of course, also the name of the central character in Robert Lewis Stevenson's Kidnapped, which was published just three years before the controller's birth. I'm not certain that this wasn't just a coincidence.

Freedom to Read Week: Condemned by Coren

How Do You Spell Abducted?
Cherylyn Stacey
Red Deer, AB: Red Deer College Press, 1996

Newspaper columnists don't always write their headlines, but I think Michael Coren had something to do with this one:

TAXES FUND OFFENSIVE CHILDREN'S BOOK ABOUT ABUSIVE FATHER:
Suddenly your dad is no longer a man to be loved or trusted

Published in the 31 July 1996 edition of the Financial Post, the column that followed lit amassing gas beneath the seat of Alberta backbencher Julius Yankowsky, who called for the book to be banned and its publisher's funding to be pulled. The MLA aped the columnist, repeating Coren's assertion that it was "hate literature", all the while acknowledging that he hadn't actually read the thing. After all, How Do You Spell Abducted? is 135 pages long, and some of the words have eight letters. Just look at that title!

A few months later in Books in Canada, Coren reported that the controversy he'd started over Do You Spell Abducted? had been "so much fun" – his words, not mine… as are these:

It begins with bad old Dad, divorced from good old Mum, forcing his way into his ex-wife's bedroom and screaming at her until she weeps. He then kidnaps the kids and they are so terrified they think he might kill them all and then commit suicide.

Well, no.

Dad never forces his way into any room, least of all his ex-wife's bedroom. Mum does indeed weep, which has been known to happen in divorces. Dad leaves with the kids on what is meant to be a vacation, but it soon becomes clear that he has no intention of returning. That stuff about the kids being "so terrified they think he might kill them all and then commit suicide" was fabricated by Coren; it isn't in the book.

Michael Coren is currently employed by the Sun News Network.

Not to be outdone or ignored, in the 19 August 1996 Western Report an anonymous reporter bravely worked to fan dying embers with the claim that "the fictional father threatened to kill or prostitute his progeny". It's a lie, plain and simple, but then the late magazine was never tied to the truth. More crap follows:

Her book features three other men: a crabby oldster, a fat and stupid state trooper and a good Samaritan who has been unjustly denied legal access to his own children.

There is no "crabby oldster" in the novel. The state trooper, girth never mentioned, is pretty sharp. The good Samaritan, named Dusty Andover, is a very fine and generous gentleman. He has never been denied access, legal or otherwise, to his children, though there is estrangement. Dusty's adult offspring – no sexes mentioned – begrudge his having spent their inheritances in fighting their mother's cancer.

How Do You Spell Abducted? is a rotten title, but the book isn't half bad. The characters, particularly the father, are well drawn. The plot is believable, disturbingly so, though the resolution is forced and fantastical.

I can say these things because, you see, I've read the book. I have Michael Coren to thank for bringing it to my attention.

Object: An unattractive trade-size paperback. The cover illustration by Jeff Hitch depicts a scene that does not feature in the novel.

Access:

It will be forgotten before we can say 'bleeding-heart neurotic'.

— Michael Coren, Books in Canada, Oct 1996

Found in most of our larger public libraries. Used copies are cheap, but I encourage anyone considering purchase to buy it new. Yep, How Do You Spell Abducted? is still available. Setting It Right, Michael Coren's book from the same year is long out of print.