A Jolly Bad Fellow aka They All Died Laughing - 1964 film review

C.E. Vulliamy wrote his crime fiction in two phases. First came the Anthony Rolls books in the Golden Age - two of them have appeared as British Library Crime Classics. And then, for a dozen years from 1952, he wrote a further set of novels. Francis Iles was, I think, his principal inspiration, but his writing had a distinct flavour of its own.

That 1952 novel was Don Among the Dead Men. Twelve years after it appeared it was made into a film with an equally punning title, A Jolly Bad Fellow. It's a black comedy directed by the accomplished Don Chaffey, and although it wasn't a box office success, it still remains very watchable today, because of the range of talents which contributed to its making, not least the principal scriptwriter, Robert Hamer, who is best remembered for the wonderful Kind Hearts and Coronets. The jaunty soundtrack was written by the great John Barry. And the cast is terrific.

The setting is an august university, Ockham. Professor Bowles-Ottery (Leo McKern) is a chemistry don with a taste for publicity that irritates his collegues. Conversely, their prudishness irritates him. He's married to an actress (Maxine Audley) and has an extremely glamorous lab assistant called Delia (Janet Munro). Whilst working in the lab alongside a junior assistant (Dinsdale Landen) he comes across a poison which causes lab mice to dance manically before expiring. Soon he is putting the poison to work as a means of disposing of people who make a nuisance of themselves, while embarking on a dangerous dalliance with Delia.

The lead actors perform with gusto and the supporting cast is distinguished. To name but a few, we see: Dennis Price, Miles Malleson, Leonard Rossiter (a very small part, alas), Alan Wheatley, John Sharp, Ralph Michael, Mervyn Johns, Duncan Macrae, and George Benson. I found the film to be really good escapist entertainment.

Long before his days as Rumpole, McKern gives a performance of great verve. Incidentally, I was sorry when I researched the cast to discover that Janet Munro died, after a period of alcoholism, at the age of 38. She was well-known for her exceptional good looks, but like her rival in this film Maxine Audley, she had a compelling screen presence and a great deal of acting ability.

 

 

Three Black and White British Crime Films

The Talking Pictures TV channel has given me the chance to watch a fascinating mix of older films, including some old crime movies that until recently were highly obscure. Naturally, the quality varies. Some of the films are "quota quickies", short films produced to make sure that a statutory requirement supposed to foster the British film industry was met. As with so many protectionist measures, it wasn't really a great idea, and it didn't last too long. Some "quota quickies" were poor, others surprisingly good.

Body Vanished, is a very short film from 1939, whose title gives you a clear idea of the storyline. It's a light comedy thriller, with Anthony Hulme cast as a police inspector, whose holiday with a journalist chum is rudely interrupted by a report of a murder. The crime scene is a country house, but the corpse cannot be found. Not at all a bad movie.

Hulme also stars - in more than one role - in a shortish film set in Britain in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Mysterious Mr Nicholson.. A solicitor sends a young female employee out with a will - a rich client has decided to disinherit his wastrel nephew. Alas, by the time she arrives, the client has been murdered. I'm afraid this is a pretty feeble film - at one point, the scriptwriter seemed to give up the unequal struggle, so we're treated to a long scene in a music hall, with a performing dog act that has no relevance to the story. The big twist came as no surprise at all.

Much better is a later film, Girl in the Picture, from 1957, directed by the very competent Don Chaffey. Donald Houston stars as a journalist investigating a cold case - the murder of a policeman. A photograph which shows a girl waving to the driver of a car believed to be that used by the killer, on the very day of the murder, leads him to pursue an ill-assorted pair of villains. There's not a lot of mystery in this one, but the pace is good, and Houston makes the most of his part.

Michael Gilbert

I’ve mentioned Michael Gilbert a few times in this blog, and one of his titles is my ‘forgotten book’ this coming Friday. He’s a writer whom I came across in my teens. My parents liked his books and encouraged me to read him.

They had an ulterior motive, actually. The biographical note in the Gilbert books that Hodder published in those days explained that Gilbert combined a career as a solicitor with his crime writing. He achieved a good deal of success in both fields (he was Raymond Chandler’s solicitor in England, incidentally and a good friend of the great man). At this time my parents were unnerved by my stated ambition to become a crime writer, and naturally wanted me to have a ‘proper job’. When I proved resistant to this, they pointed to Michael Gilbert as an example of someone who wore both hats.

Duly persuaded, I studied law and ultimately became a solicitor. I remained a firm fan of Michael Gilbert’s books and during the 1980s, I persuaded a legal magazine to allow me to write an article about his work. This gave me the chance to interview a man who was something of a hero. I talked to him at length on the telephone and found him as urbane and likeable as his books. He was, too, remarkably and genuinely modest, a man who had spent most of his career in a world where solicitors were not allowed to advertise and in grave trouble if they did so surreptitiously.

After that, we spoke again on various occasions. He encouraged my own writing and was kind enough to provide an extremely positive quote for Eve of Destruction (something he seldom, if ever, did for other writers, and something of which I am rather proud). In later years he allowed me to reprint some of his classic short stories for CWA anthologies and shared with me his disappointment at the lack of critical attention given to The Queen against Karl Mullen, one of his last books, and quite splendid. The pity was that, by the time the novel came out, Michael Gilbert was no longer truly fashionable. Even Hodder, to whom he had long been faithful, dropped him. He had won much acclaim, including the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger, but he is associated primarily with the post-war era, in which his most famous whodunit, Smallbone Deceased, is set. Yet he wrote with great accomplishment for half a century.

One other thing about Michael Gilbert. He had a great deal of insight into the crime genre in all its forms. As well as many novels and countless short stories, he wrote with success for both tv and stage, and Death in Captivity , Danger Within, was enjoyably filmed by Don Chaffey. He was a friend and admirer of Cyril Hare, and edited a posthumous collection of Hare’s best short stories. He wrote intelligently about the work of other writers, and thereby introduced me to such notable authors as Henry Wade and Christianna Brand.

Oh, and he and his wife found time to produce seven children, one of whom also became a successful writer. Quite a man.