This is my entry in the 12th Annual Favourite TV Show Blogathon hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts.
I love Sherlock Holmes, but second only to him is my love of Nero Wolfe.
Nero Wolfe was the creation of one Rex Stout, whose first published Nero Wolfe story was Fer-de-Lance, published way back in 1934. It wasn't his first novel ever, however. He had about 9 novels under his belt before the introduction of his legacy character. But it is a sure bet that when you mention the name Rex Stout, the first thing that will come to mind of the average bibliophile will be "Oh, yeah! He wrote those Nero Wolfe stories!"
Over the years after Wolfe appeared on the scene, there were numerous attempts to bring him into the audio and visual world. The first two attempts were in the realm of Hollywood films. Meet Nero Wolfe and The League of Frightened Men were films released in the late 30's. Then came several attempts to bring him into the home via radio programs (in the days when was radio did what TV does today).
In 1977, a pilot was created for TV, featuring Thayer David as the portly detective, but it was abandoned before it could get off the ground because David passed away shortly after it was filmed. However, a couple of years later, another attempt was made to create a TV show, this time with William Conrad as Wolfe, along with Lee Horsley as his legman, Archie Goodwin. Unfortunately that only aired for one season.
The detective was essentially on hiatus until 2000, when a producer managed to secure the rights to film another series. This series would end up lasting for two seasons and featured Maury Chaykin as Wolfe and Timothy Hutton as Archie. In my opinion this series was the best in it's portrayal of Wolfe, taking great pains to stick to the original source material. (Each episode was based on an actual story or novel written by Stout).
Both the Conrad and the Chaykin efforts got their start in their respective series with an adaptation of the Stout novel The Golden Spiders. This entry in the canon featured Wolfe out of his normal milieu, in that his "client" wasn't a rich person who could pay his exorbitant fees, but a young neighborhood boy for whom Wolfe gradually got involved because of his own sense of obligation.
It is not a spoiler, since it is primary to the story, but in the novel the young boy is killed, and since Wolfe had served the boy some cookies and a coke at his dinner table it was an affront to his personal dedication to decorum to find the killer and bring him (or her) to justice.
First I want to tell the basic story as it appeared in print in The Golden Spiders novel by Rex Stout. I will later describe the similarities and any differences in each production. The Golden Spiders was first published in 1953.
The story begins with Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin sitting down to dinner. Fritz brings in the dish and Wolfe stops, distracted by the smell. He queries Fritz on the alteration of the recipe he was expecting, because Fritz had decided, on his own, to try to do it different from the normal way he had made it before. Wolfe decides to admonish Fritz and have it taken away, instead opting for some eggs and toast. But Archie throws a little gas on Wolfe's ire by saying he will sample the fare.
During this minor kerfuffle, there is a ringing of the doorbell. This further irks Wolfe, not only because he has not scheduled a meeting with anyone, but he has never conducted business during meals. When Archie goes to the door he finds, not the expected adult who would normally be the cause of intrusion, but a neighborhood kid, Pete Drossos.
Pete has a case for Wolfe. During his duties as a street window wiper he encountered a woman in a fancy car, wearing spider earrings. The woman mouthed a message to Pete; "Help! Get a cop!" but the male passenger made her drive off. Pete thinks there might be some kind of trouble and maybe a reward in it, since the car was a high end Cadillac and thus meant she was probably rich, and wants to split it 50/50 with Wolfe if he will help.
Wolfe has Archie check out the car description, along with the license plate that Pete had jotted down. It turns out that the same car was described as having killed Matthew Birch, an agent with INS (the Immigration and. Naturalization Service). Initially Wolfe comes to the conclusion that Birch may have been the male passenger.
The next day, the car is identified in the death of Pete on the street who had been going about his window wiping job. This in itself is an affront to Wolfe because the boy had been basically a guest in Wolfe's house. The police, in the person of a police sergeant, comes to inquire about Wolfe's ad searching for the driver of the car that Pete saw the woman in, and informs Wolfe of the boy's death.
Not long after they receive the news of Pete's death, his mother shows up and gives Wolfe his life savings, $4.30, and tells Wolfe that Pete's last request was that mom give the money to Wolfe and ask him to get the guy who ran him over. But Wolfe does not want to get involved, that is until a very obstinate Archie berates him and demands that he at least try to find the woman in the golden spider earrings.
Laura Fromm, a wealthy widow, shows up claiming to be said woman, but Wolfe determines she is lying. She eventually admits she was not the driver, but she thinks she knows who was. But she asks for a day to verify her suspicions. She leaves Wolfe a retainer, mostly to help her avoid being implicated in the crime. However, Laura also turns up dead, having been pushed out the window of her apartment. . There were several people at a party who were the last to see Laura alive, at a dinner party, prior to her death. Now Wolfe is strong in his conviction to get to the bottom of the crimes. And his main suspects are those people she was last seen with.
Among the people at the party were Jean Estey, Laura's secretary, Dennis Horan, an attorney who was there with his wife, and Angela Wright. All were involved in a charity that helped displaced persons (immigrants). Wolfe puts his regular associate detectives, Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather, on various angles to investigate, and Archie poses as himself, but as a less than scrupulous associate of his employer, in that he proposes to each of the suspects that he has information about the private meeting between Fromm and Wolfe that each would be interested in, but will only sell it at a price.
There are some subtle goings on in the meantime. Saul poses as an immigrant who needs help but is approached by a suspicious man who tries to blackmail him. Fred follows two hoodlums and ends up being exposed as an associate of Wolfe and is tortured. Archie and Orrie rescue Fred and take the two hoodlums back to Wolfe's place. Saul recognizes one of the hoodlums as the guy who tried to blackmail him and exposes him as a small time gambler "Lips" Egan. It turns out that Egan's lawyer is Horan, one of the friends last seen with Laura Fromm, but he is not so willing to own up to knowing who Egan is.
As typical in a Wolfe mystery, Wolfe invites all of the suspects to his office and with the presence of Inspector Cramer, exposes the culprit. It turns out that Fromm's secretary, Jean, was running a scam operation that blackmailed potential immigrants into paying money for a quick transition to citizenship. Fromm had discovered the scam, as had Birch, so that's why they were killed. Pete was just a kid in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he could have easily identified Jean as the woman driving the car, and maybe Birch as the passenger.
Nero Wolfe The Golden Spiders (air date Jan. 16, 1981):
Cast members:
The 1981 version of the story diverges quite often from the original source novel. In the first place, Archie is not dining with Wolfe as he has a date, but after he plays his prank with Wolfe and Wolfe decides to call his bluff, he is forced to forgo the date and take notes.
The second thing is the boy is not killed. Chalk this one up to late 70's / early 80's sensibilities. You couldn't exactly have a kid die, even if it was after the family hour block of night time TV programming.
What stays the same is the appearance of Pete's mother who gives Wolfe the money Pete had (which, this being 1980 instead of 1953, is actually a bit more than the $4.30 from the novel), and gives him the message that Pete asked Wolfe to find out who ran him over. And Laura Fromm does show up. And she is indeed exposed as a fraud.
Of course, it goes without saying, that any of the subplot involving attempts to remove Pete from the land of the living after the accident are not a part of the original novel, including a scene where a hit man from New York who had been hired by someone as yet unknown in the timeline of the story. The same hitman tried to take Archie out of the picture by wiring his car to explode. Needless to say, there was not hitman in the original novel.
Being that this novel had to be condensed to accommodate the 50 minute running time, there were several subplots that had to be left by the wayside. For one, most of the scenes involving the small time hoodlums were left by the curb. And those that were included had to leave out the characters of Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather. Saul Panzer filled in most of those other two roles in his own story line with the undercover operation he was conducting.
At least they didn't change the ultimate reveal of the criminal murderer. But one other point, one that might disturb people who insist on their favorite characters being consistent with the ones in print, is the fact that Nero Wolfe, who almost NEVER left the house, and when he did it was almost always in the company of his legman Archie, leaves to visit the boy in the hospital. Although we don't actually see him in the hospital, it is implied that he WAS there.
This particular episode, being ostensibly a translation to film of a bona fide story in the Nero Wolfe canon, is a little frustrating for someone, like me, who objects to changes in the story. The TV version only bears some resemblance to the original novel, and there are enough alterations that, while entertaining in it's own right, come off more like one of those older radio shows: i.e. based on the characters of Rex Stout's creation, but not entirely consistent.
The series only lasted one season, and of the 14 episodes in the run, 6 of them were original stories (that is, not based on any specific story in the canon. Of the remaing 12 stories, all of them ostensibly based on Stout
Nero Wolfe The Golden Spiders (air date Mar. 5, 2000):
Cast members:
The best part of this and some of the other episodes in the series was that they had decided at the outset to keep the episodes firmly entrenched in the 1940's. You won't see a cell phone or a computer, or for that matter, a car on the road that is not a 40's or earlier model.
The stories that Rex Stout wrote ran from the 30's into the 70's, and although the other kept them more or less current with the times, they never aged. So in 1934, Archie was about 30 and Nero was about 50, and in 1975, Archie was about 30 and Nero was about 50. Same with the TV series.
The interesting facts to pint out are: Since this was basically just a one-off film with as yet no plans to develop a series, you may notice a few things. For one, the character of Saul Panzer was played by Saul Rubinek, but when the series moved forward, Rubinek was cast as Archie's newspaper contact, Lon Cohen, and the Panzer role was taken over by Conrad Dunn.
Most of the TV series actors, other than the ones playing main characters are not here. Did you know the TV series was basically run as a touring company type of show? Meaning many actors were recycled into various roles throughout the series, much like a traveling Shakespeare touring company, also referred to elsewhere as an "ensemble cast".
As stated earlier in this post, one of the things I admire about this episode is that the producers didn't shy away from pointing out that the young boy Pete Drossos was killed. Apparently 20 years since the 1981 TV show, they thought the audience could handle such a drastic event. To be honest, I really couldn't find ANY drastic changes to the script. Those few that did occur are so minimal that only a nit-picker could grouse about them.
As I stated in a previous blog entry on the overall series, The Big Bad Wolfe, this series is well worth checking out.
Until next time, drive safely folks.
Quiggy
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