JDC on TV

[Fantasio]

First, let's introduce myself, as I'm new to this forum (but not new to the Internet!): I'm from Italy, and I'm a classic mysteries reader since 1974. I remember how it all started: in Italy there's a peculiar magazine (perhaps some of you have heard of: i Gialli Mondadori) that only prints detective stories, since 1929 (!), and during summer of 1974 they decided to reprint the first novels of many famous authors, among them Agatha Christie (and so I read "The misterious affair at Styles") and John Dickson Carr ("It walks by night", of course).
I had never heard of JDC before, but this author, with his impossible crimes and locked rooms, immediately caught my interest, and since then I've read about 25 novels of his, including all the best (and many of the worst). I'm now reading "costant suicides", one of the best I'm still missing, at least according to Grobius' poll.

I also know a lot of Christie's, Queen, and some Stout, but do not dislike modern authors such as Deaver, which I find more "classical" than "hard-boiled", and, above all, clever and skilled: he's capable of writing on locked rooms, and his main detective (Rhyme) is a very interesting character.

Now, back to subject. What most of you (if not all of you) don't know is that italian TV broadcasted 4 TV movies, soon after Carr's death, adapted from some of his best novels: "The burning court" (9/79), "Fire, burn!" (10/79), "Till death do us part" (3/82), "The Judas window" (3/82).
I remember having watched the last two, and I think they were not bad, as italian TV, unlike now, used to make very good TV movies until mid '80s. Unfortunately I can't remember much else, as I watched these movies only once and then, and they can't be found anywhere in VHS/Dvd/DivX and so on: it's likely that Merrivale was plaied by Adolfo Celi (a very good actor, almost perfect for the part: he was 60 then), but I don't know who plaied Fell. Alberto Lupo, another good actor of ours (was once the equivalent of Richard Chamberlain) plaied the fortune teller in "Till death do us part".
My only hope lies on digital broadcasting of old TV shows/movies and so on: for example, something can be found on "www.raiclick.it" (among the old TV series there's a famous one on Nero Wolfe, dating back to 1970), but only some of the most famous are available by now.
Hope never dies ... will it be true?

[Dave]

Great stuff Fantasio, thanks for sharing. I would think that most of these older shows are sitting around somewhere collecting dust. I'm sure they are not shown these days because there is not a perceived interest, but you never know. Maybe one of these days there will be a renewed interest in these types of shows and they will re-air them.

[Fantasio]

Originally Posted by Dave

Maybe one of these days there will be a renewed interest in these types of shows and they will re-air them.

Thanks Dave. I only hope to live enough!
By the way, if you want to know how Adolfo Celi (who probably plaied Merrivale) looked like, you can see a good photograph at http://xoomer.virgilio.it/omen/MENU/CELIMENU.htm
He was a "big" guy, not really fat, but certainly not a thin man. He's also famous because in the '60s he plaied Largo, the movie villain in Thunderball - you should easily remember.

[Wooda H. McNiven]

Greetings all.

It's been a long time since I posted but as some of you know, JDC was my grandfather. My sister and I are in the beginning stages of putting together a production proposal and package to adapt one of JDC's works. The goal being to get a pilot put together for "Mystery Theater" or some other like venue on TV.

My question I pose to all of you, which of the JDC detectives do you believe would translate best to the screen? I have always thought the Bencolin series were highly cinematic but my sister is of the mind that English detectives are more popular these days with an American audience. Certainly Mystery Theater has been top heavy in recent years with English mysteries and characters but I seem to recall they wanted to change that. Anyway, a little market research is never a bad thing to do so please let me know what you think and feel free to contact me offline at my e-mail address if you want to as well (its public on this board).

Thank you
Wooda

[shyster]

Wooda, eh? As I recall, that is an old family name for you.

Nice to see these things hanging on. My grandfather was named Vilas Wilhelm Franz so, in honor of the man, we named our son Peter.

(Not as far off as you'd think. For some reason, grandpop preferred to be called Pete. Confused me for years when I was a small child, because I was under the illusion that I had some mysterious remote uber-patriarchal figure somewhere in addition to My Grandpa Pete.)

To get back to the topic...I am preternaturally fond of Merrivale, Fell, and even March (who, I believe, was once played by Boris Karloff), but I think the American fondness for English detectives may be overestimated. At the very least, there is something of a surfeit.

I should think Bencolin, with his air of diablerie, should go over smashingly. (And I do not say that simply because he is my favorite Carr detective, which he is.)

Cinematically, the Grand Guignol atmosphere would be something different and if a period Paris could be essayed instead of a period rural England for once, it would be a refreshing change. (It occurs to me with regret that Fritz Lang could have done something magnificently outre with Henri Bencolin. Pity that such an option was never picked up in the thirties or forties.)

That being said, I will merely conclude appropriately with my best wishes for a reasonably macabre Halloween.

[Dave]

Wooda, I wish you all the luck in this project. I would love to see a JDC story on a Mystery Theater type of venue.

I've always thought that Fell would make the easiest transition from book to screen. He seems to have "aged" better and I belive he would find a more sympathetic audience today. The Problem of the Green Capsule would hook an audience and leave them clamoring for more! I think most would not find Merrivale's antics funny today and while Bencolin would make a great screen detective there is comparatively little material to draw upon with only five Bencolin novels published.

The best of luck with this and please do keep us updated.

[shyster]

Personally, I find Merrivale very funny--but I expect you're right. (My problem is a refusal to become politically correct. I suspect that HM telling kids that cigarettes are bad for them and then handing out cigars instead would not go over...)

There is a limited amount of Bencolin as compared to Fell, although maybe it should be pointed out that there were also some short stories. (They were very early efforts but, I thought, readable. I believe they were collected along with some radio scripts and other material in "The Door To Doom".)

Also must note that there weren't a whole lot of Sayers novels, but she seems to have done well in the serial TV line. Such an apporach, as opposed to a regular series, doesn't really eat up material in the same way.

[Wooda H. McNiven]

Dave, Shyster,

Thank you for the feedback. I'm keeping track of it all and I will definately keep this board informed if there is anything interesting to report.

Wooda

[Patrick Gore]

I agree with Dave's analysis. Fell has a large eccentric personality and his cases are numerous. Seems the obvious choice for a series. Bencolin would be a mistake. Shyster admires his "diablerie," but in fact I think he is characterized more by an enigmatic and shadowy quality that would be difficult to dramatize. Like Dupin. And like Dupin he has very few cases -- fewer than half as many as Peter Wimsey, by the way, Shyster, especially if we are counting short stories.

PS: Shyster: are you truly "preternaturally" fond of Fell? As in supernaturally fond of him, fond of him with a fondness that transcends the bounds of nature? How exceedingly precious of you.

[shyster]

Well, "preternaturally" is a nice word, and I've been using it for a long time.

Still, your critique did give me to wonder if I were not commmitting an adverbial faux pas. Just to check, I went to my Oxford English Dictionary. The OED gives synonyms such as unusually or excessively. More than would be normally expected, but not in an otherworldly degree. Which is about what I thought.

I'd say you're reading a little more into the word than is there, but I thank you for the condign insult and apologize for having a vocabulary.

Otherwise, I stand by my word. I enjoy reading the Bencolin tales, but if I were going to have a beer, I can think of few people I'd care to split a can with than Fell. The old begger is preternaturally (there's that word again) lovable.

[shyster]

Oh yeah, before Mr. G. thinks to give me hell for it, "beggar".

It is a typographical error. Oops.

[Patrick Gore]

Ah so basically you were using the OED as a thesaurus instead of a dictionary. Tsk tsk. What makes the OED so valuable is that it provides not only synonyms but definitions and (best of all) quotations to see how a word has actually been used over time.

The reason the words "preternaturally" and "excessively" both exist is because they aren't interchangeable. I look up "preternaturally" in the OED and I find "In a preternatural manner"; I look up "preternatural" and discover "That is out of the ordinary course of nature; beyond, surpassing, or differing from what is natural" as well as "supernatural." And then the quotations! "A preternaturall, or supernaturall ominous worke of God." "Mrs. Transome..seemed to hear and see what they said and did with preternatural acuteness."

"Preternaturally" is a wonderful word but it doesn't benefit from being used clumsily. The diction your posts employ is showy, even meretricious, and like many people who use words to impress, you don't betray much sensitivity to shades and gradations of meaning.

I'll let your "apology" for "having a vocabulary" (as though I do not) pass.

[Wooda H. McNiven]

I've been re-reviewing some of the threads on this forum and it seems to me in selecting one of JDC's works for adaptation, an added bonus to help differentiate the proposed adaptation (from any others up for consideration) is to select one that is not only a genuinely puzzling whodunnit (a given for any mystery) and a good howdunnit (a given for JDC) but one that is also genuinely creepy (perhaps even horrific) as well.

For the record, I admit it, I have always been a fan of "good" skin crawl flicks (e.g. any Val Lewton produced film, The Sixth Sense, House on Haunted Hill (Robert Wise version) and even some of those old American International, Hammer and Amicus films that always seemed to have Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and older actors at the time of thier production such as Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone and Peter Lorre {some Carr connections there!})

Given these criteria.... any nominations?

Wooda

PS: So far old Gideon seems to be the preferred adaptable detective in my consultations with others to date.

[Patrick Gore]

My recommendation for whodunnit & howdunnit combined with creepy atmosphere & filmability would be He Who Whispers or The Case of the Constant Suicides. Though I'd hate to see these great novels become casualties of inexperience. Perhaps the screenwriters could warm up with a lesser but still good Fell novel like Hag's Nook or The Mad Hatter Mystery?

Then again, Peril at End House and Styles, the first two of the full-length David Suchet Poirot adaptations, turned out to be among the best of that series. But I believe the formula was first tested and refined in a number of shorter episodes.

[Wooda H. McNiven]

Patrick,

One of the reasons so few JDC stories were adapted to screen during his lifetime was because he loathed the drastic changes Hollywood made to most adapted works in any genre. Because of this, he simply refused to sell. As a humorous aside (and according to family lore) my grandmother sold one of his stories without him knowing it in order to finance my mother's wedding (I believe this story was The Gentleman from Paris, the adaptation of which Doug Greene discusses in "The Man Who Explained Miracles").

The point is, my sister and I intend to adapt the story (whatever it is) in a manner that is faithful to the original. Each of us has some screenwriting experience and upon an acceptable draft to us, we will then hire a seasoned professional to mold it into a finished and polished product. Each of us has friends and contacts in the professional production communities. Furthermore, we intend to maintain as much creative control as possible as we also intend to be the ones arranging the financing. We will do our level best to ensure this isn't a casualty.

Wooda