The late author Rex Stout, creator of Nero Wolfe, despised television. Since his passing in the mid-70's, Stout's classic sleuth has been adapted for television on a number of occasions.
Paramount acquired the rights first, and mounted a TV-movie, with character actor Thayer David as Wolfe, and Tom Mason as Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's trusted operative. However, ABC sat on the film for 2 years before it finally aired as an overnight offering in December 1979. By then, David had passed on himself, and the fact that the film was kept on the shelf for so long killed any chance of a possible series, although Paramount would do just that, 14 months after the movie aired. NBC, as previously reported, took a chance on Wolfe, with William Conrad, fresh from Cannon, in the title role.
The film aired earlier today on the Decades channel, which might just be the only cabler that has the gumption to run it. Burke's Law creator Frank Gilroy adapted & directed Stout's novel, The Doorbell Rang, and made the mistake of trying to remold Wolfe in the manner of his own sleuth, Amos Burke. You'll see what I mean.
David effected a serviceable mimic of Sydney Greenstreet, who starred as Wolfe on radio, but Gilroy's preference to make Wolfe more like Burke, or any other romantic sleuth, wasn't the brightest of ideas.
Rating: C.
Very, very, very belatedly:
ReplyDelete- First off, Frank Gilroy's connection with the original Burke's Law ended when Four Star and Dick Powell paid him for the "Julie Greer" teleplay.
Gilroy wrote that show with the 50-something Dick Powell in mind as the lead; when Powell and Aaron Spelling decided to fast-track the property into a series, they decided to make the character younger and a bit "hipper" -their first announced choice was Jackie Cooper.
Ultimately, they went with Gene Barry, who was allowed to tweak Amos Burke his own way - but by this time Frank Gilroy had long since left the property behind.
In fact, Gilroy spent the better part of the decade suing Four Star over the exact wording of his "created by" credit, and how much he would be paid for it (eventually, Gilroy got the credit and not as much money as he was trying for).
- Skip ahead to the '70s and the Nero Wolfe pilot:
Frank Gilroy signed on to this project after Paramount TV had assured him that they'd locked in Orson Welles to play Wolfe (except that they hadn't, but that's another story ...)
ABC made the pilot buy conditional on getting the right actor to play Wolfe (didn't need to be A Name, but had to be affordable).
After seeing "...just about every corpulent middle-aged actor available ...", Gilroy and his producer Emmett Lavery met and signed up Thayer David, and proceeded to film the pilot, which then went to ABC's shelf, there to languish until after David's death - and that's another story ...
The above is cribbed from Frank Gilroy's 1993 memoir, I Wake Up Screening!, as is the following:
Suffice to say that Thayer David's is acknowledged as the best portrayal of Wolfe by the Nero Wolfe fan club*, who show the film repeatedly."
*This refers to The Wolfe Pack, of which I've been a dues-paying member for nearly 20 years (I can attest that this was the consensus of the Pack, until Maury Chaykin took the role in 2000).
I can also attest that having read the novel and seen the movie in close conjunction over the years, that there is nothing remotely Amos Burke-like in Thayer David's portrayal of Nero Wolfe, or in Frank Gilroy's writing of the character (when I first saw the movie, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Gilroy had used much of Rex Stout's dialog verbatim).
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Would Stout have approved of this pilot?
ReplyDeleteSince you've apparently forgotten ...
ReplyDeleteRex Stout didn't approve of TELEVISION - in any way, shape, or form.
After the 1959 CBS pilot, Stout routinely turned down every single offer that any TV or film producer made; John McAleer's biography has a small list of some of the stars who were proposed for a Wolfe show, but Stout was adamant.
What happened after his death - we know those stories ...