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Fowl Play
2 hours ago
17 March 2014
16 March 2014
The Erotic Mordecai Richler
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| Son of a Smaller Hero Mordecai Richler New York: Paperback Library, 1968 |
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14 March 2014
Selling Intent to Kill… Tueurs à gages, really
A few final words about Jack Cardiff's Intent to Kill. Blame 20th Century Fox; its poster for the French release fairly demands comment.
But what to make of "La lutte sans merci de 'SCOTLAND YARD' contra les TUEURES A GAGES"?
Scotland Yard doesn't figure in the film. Why would it? Not one scene takes place off the Island of Montreal. "La lutte sans merci" is limited to one man, Det Sgt O'Brien of the RCMP, played by Montrealer Paul Carpenter. He doesn't even appear until the second half of the film, when he's assigned to guard the intended target. O'Brien spends most of his time making smalltalk at the nurses' station.
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| "Do the Mounties always get their man, like they say?" "Well, they got me." |
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| "I'm Detective O'Brien, sir… RCMP." |
O'Brien does indeed get his man, in the shoulder, just as the other assassins move in.
Not one of them carries a rifle, as they do in the French poster. They don't wear hats, either, which leads me to wonder if it was O'Brien's suit that had the French recast him as a member of Scotland Yard.
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| "You don't look like a Mountie." "I left my horse outside." |
That's it. You'll hear no more from me about Intent to Kill. Promise.
Tueurs à gages, on the other hand…
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10 March 2014
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.
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| "I can't stand it here. I loath it. I hate Canada!" |
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| "I hate this country. It's so cold." |
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.
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.
07 March 2014
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.
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| Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964 |
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| Amsterdam: Muntinga, 2000 |
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| Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag, 2007 |
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| Milan: Adelphi, 2010 |
What follow are seven more also rans:
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| New York: Ballantine, 1974 |
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| Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974 |
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| Toronto: Penguin, 1987 |
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| Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989 |
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| Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2001 |
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| Toronto: Penguin, 2005 |
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| New York: Paperback Library, 1964 |
"A writer of whom Canadians may be proud."
And I am!
Gee, thanks, Saturday Review.
And I am!
Gee, thanks, Saturday Review.
03 March 2014
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.
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."
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?
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01 March 2014
Freedom to Read Week: Selected Salacious Filth Found in a Toronto Controller's Dresser Drawer
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| 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.*
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:
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| Forever Amber Kathleen Winsor New York: Macmillan, 1944 |
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| Kitty Rosamond Marshall Toronto: Collins White Circle, 1944 |
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| Duchess Hotspur Rosamond Marshall Toronto: Collins White Circle, 1947 |
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| The Flesh is Willing James Clayford Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949 |
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| 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.
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