Of Montreal, Notes and Queries

Spring arrives, bringing a new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries. Number 89 – for those keeping count – this one is devoted to Montreal, the very finest city in all the Dominion.

There, I've said it. Again.

My column this time around is a modest introduction to the city's post-war pulp novels, ten in total, published between August 1949 and December 1953.* A remarkable, all too brief period, it saw the first two books by Brian Moore, the second by Ted Allan, and the debut, wet decline and soaked disappearance of Russell Teed, Montreal's greatest private dick. Regular readers will recognize the titles, all of which have been featured here these past five years:

The House on Craig Street
Ronald J. Cooke
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1949 

Love is a Long Shot
Alice K. Doherty [pseud. Ted Allan]
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street
Al Palmer
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

The Mayor of Côte St. Paul
Ronald J. Cooke
Toronto: Harlequin, 1950

Wreath for a Redhead
Brian Moore
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1951

The Crime on Cote des Neiges
David Montrose
     [pseud. Charles Ross Graham]
Toronto: Collins White Circle, 1951

The Executioners
Brian Moore
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1951

Flee the Night in Anger
Dan Keller [pseud. Louis Kaufman]
Toronto: Studio Publications, 1952

Murder Over Dorval
David Montrose
     [pseud. Charles Ross Graham]
Toronto: Collins White Circle, 1952

The Body on Mount Royal
David Montrose
     [pseud. Charles Ross Graham]
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1953







Other contributors to CNQ #89 include: Meaghan Acosta, Asa Boxer, Kate Beaton, Michel Carbert, Bill Coyle, Jesse Eckerlin, Trevor Ferguson, Elizabeth Gill, Mary Harman, Kasper Hartman, David Homel, Cory Lavender, David Mason, Donald McGrath, Leopold Plotek, Eliza Romano, Robin Sarah, Mark Sampson, Norn Sibum, Marko Sijan, JC Sutcliffe, Zachariah Wells, Kathleen Winter, and Caroline Zapata.

The country's very best magazine vendors are selling CNQ #89 for $7.95, but what you really want to do is take out a one-year subscription – available here – at twenty dollars. In so doing you will not only ensure that the magazine is brought directly to your door or post office box, but will also receive a subscriber-only collectable. This issue it's "Mountain Leaf" by Peter Van Toorn. Friends will be envious.

* I'm following the OED here: "popular or sensational writing that is regarded as being of poor quality". Letters of complaint should be sent to oed.uk [at] oup.com.

Alberta Gothic

"Cattle"

Winnifred Eaton

New York: A.L. Burt, [1925?]

294 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

The Homoerotic E.J. Pratt

Behind the Log
E.J. Pratt
Toronto: Macmillan, 1947

Related posts:

The Homoerotic A.E. van Vogt

Harlequin: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

The Pornographic Edna Jaques

The Erotic Brian Moore

The Erotic Mordecai Richler

Suggestive Harlequins: A Romantic Threesome

Selling From a Sea She'll Only Drag You Down

Thomas O'Hagan's 'The Maple and Shamrock'

Related posts:

A St. Patrick's Day Fragment

'Sleep On, O Hearts of Erin'

D'Arcy McGee's Query (with a response)

Dr. Drummond's Curious St. Partick's Day Poem

Thomas D'Arcy McGee's 'Home-sick Stanzas'

The Erotic Mordecai Richler

Son of a Smaller Hero
Mordecai Richler
New York: Paperback Library, 1968

Related posts:

The Pornographic Edna Jaques

The Erotic Brian Moore

The Homoerotic A.E. van Vogt

Harlequin: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Suggestive Harlequins: A Romantic Threesome

Selling From a Sea She'll Only Drag You Down

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.

Let's begin with the title, which is nearly identical to Tueur à gages, that given the French release of This Gun for Hire. I won't blame the powers at the time; Tueurs à gages is not only appropriate, but a more exciting title than Intention de tuer.

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.

"Do the Mounties always get their man, like they say?"
"Well, they got me."

This is not to say that O'Brien isn't effective. Screenwriter, Jimmy Sangster, may have been British, but he has the Mountie apprehend the hired killer in typically Canadian fashion.

"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.

"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…

Related posts:

Brian Moore's Forgotten First Feature:
Montreal and Scattered Thoughts on a Film I've Now Seen
Brian Moore's Forgotten First Feature:
Speculation and Scattered Thoughts on a Film I've Never Seen
Murderers Move in on Montreal… Again

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