Leon Errol Series: THE JITTERS (1938)

The Leon Errol Salute Series: Number Three

THE JITTERS (1938 RKO Short) Starring Leon Errol, Vivian Tobin, Richard Lane, Alphonse Martel, Jack Rice.  Written by Leslie Goodwins and Charles E. Roberts.  Directed by Leslie Goodwins.

The introduction to our Leon Errol series is at this link.


The tables have turned!  For once, Leon Errol is wondering where his wife (Tobin) was last night.  Her answer: she was practicing for the finals of a dance contest with temperamental instructor Maurice (Martel) at The Ambassador.  Leon, who doesn't jitterbug, is jealous, and becomes even moreso when he's sent out to have dinner alone.  Understandably lacking much of an appetite for steak, Mr. Errol opts for liquid nourishment instead, and his waiter (Rice) joins him. 

It's Rice's alcohol-fueled suggestion to join 'em and then beat 'em that inspires tipsy Leon.  Fortified by a couple of hours' worth of doubles (he started with three), Errol wobbles into The Ambassador, intending to give his perceived rival a punch in the nose.  After staggering down the wide staircase to the amusement of several patrons, Leon Errol finds himself mistaken for instructor Maurice just prior to the scheduled introductory class on the titular dance.

Well, hey, Cab Calloway did sing that whiskey, wine and gin in your jug would have you ready to jitterbug.....

THE JITTERS is cited by many as the best of Errol's 98 shorts for RKO Radio Pictures.    The disagreement with his wife gives us a few spoonerisms ("You can't drag our good game in the nutter!") from a sober Leon.  Veteran Errol watchers will find another layer of humor in watching the boozing carouser act like such a fuddy duddy, and even newcomers can see the overindulgence coming once he's left to his own devices for dinner.

What follows is an entire second reel showcasing Errol's still-considerable skill at physical comedy.  Certainly one of the best on film for one of the century's most famous drunk acts.  Dean Martin and Foster Brooks could compete with Errol's slurred vocalization, but an intoxicated and ambulatory Leon was simply untouchable.

Leon wobbles on his cane while he's standing still, so you can imagine the sight of him walking down the studio staircase.  With his broken, dangling cigarette remaining unsmoked throughout, Errol also does his take on the classic "mirror" routine before "instructing" a class full of dedicated women who vainly try to follow his increasingly shaky swayings in the climactic scene for two hilarious minutes.  The ladies are way too sober to have much of a chance, but they all try gamely.  It's one of the funniest sequences that I have ever seen in any short subject.


THE JITTERS is cited by many as the very best of Leon Errol's 98 shorts for RKO Radio Pictures.  If it isn't, it certainly can't be far from the top spot: preserving a lengthy version of one of his finest Ziegfeld routines for posterity and giving it an inspired setting.   IMO the best possible introduction to Mr. Errol's work--if you can find it.  (**** out of four)

I apologize for the poor qualify of the screencaps; as you can see we really, really need this one remastered and easier to find.

MAVERICK Mondays: "The Day They Hanged Bret Maverick" (1958)

MAVERICK Mondays: Number 21








MAVERICK: "The Day They Hanged Bret Maverick" (1958 ABC/Warner Brothers TV) Starring James Garner as Bret Maverick, Whitney Blake as Molly Clifford, Ray Teal as Sheriff Tucker, Jay Novello as Oliver Poole, Robert Griffin as the Mayor, Burt Mustin as Henry, John Cliff as Cliff Sharp.   Written and Directed by Douglas Heyes.



Bret Maverick rides into Elbow Bend, New Mexico shortly after a mysterious gunman robs a Wells Fargo office of $40,000 in nearby Hallelujah.  The criminal kills the clerk as he rides off, then plants his gun, hat and a few small bills from the robbery in Bret's hotel room.  Maverick soon finds himself framed for the robbery and convicted on testimony from three eyewitnesses.  Bret's facing the gallows--but while Sheriff Tucker has his man, he doesn't have most of the stolen money, and the gambler's reticence in revealing its "hiding place" gives Maverick an ace in the hole.

Well, that and Tucker's greed.  Taking on coroner Poole as a third partner, the Sheriff strikes a deal with the tight-lipped gambler: he'll fake the hanging and allow Maverick to slip out of town in exchange for revealing the booty's location only to the two of them.  While Poole oversees the burial of the empty coffin, Bret escapes from his captor.  The two accomplices surely can't tell the townspeople the truth, and shortly after they arrive back in Hallelujah, Maverick's widow arrives to visit her husband's grave.

Douglas Heyes opened MAVERICK's second season with Bret's biggest pickle yet, and the elder Maverick sibling gets to show off his deductive skills away from the poker table.  The Day They Hanged Bret Maverick commences with a lengthy and largely wordless sequence (the only line, spoken by the Sheriff: "Any strangers ride into town tonight?") that ends with Bret behind bars and facing his final evening on earth. 

Bret takes that one opening from the dishonest Sheriff (ever-dependable Ray Teal) and escapes.  Knowing that Tucker and Poole are compromised allows Bret to return to Hallelujah in disguise in this segment's funniest scene--as his "shorter, less handsome'" twin brother.  Turns out that's a good thing, since Maverick learns that in death he's also taken on all of Cliff Sharp's crimes along with his identity.   "Bret Maverick" is now reduced to a murderer's alias, so clearing his name isn't just a desire--it's now a necessity.

Heyes' ingeniously plotted script gives Bret plenty of opportunities to adjust his tactics to changing game conditions.  Each new revelation makes tracking down the $40,000 that much more imperative: lest Bret spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, facing a hanging just about anywhere he goes if his "true identity" is discovered.  Mrs. Sharp mistakes him for a lawman, and in fact Bret basically is, having to play undercover detective in order to find the man who framed him and the money stolen by that man.  By the time all is said and done, Maverick's ability to read people has saved his life twice and taken him to the money that eluded the "real" law men.

The professional gambler having higher morals than the upstanding citizens?  It's a satirical well often mined by MAVERICK, and seldom more ironically than in The Day They Hanged Bret Maverick.  In one of Heyes' best bits of business, a betting pool emerges in Hallelujah's saloon on whether their doomed scapegoat will reveal the location of the loot before his last breath--with nary a voice in opposition.   The Sheriff also reveals that is heavenly Hallelujah's first court-sanctioned execution. implying that lynchings weren't uncommon before.  So much for there being "a little bit of good in the worst of us", as the Mayor says repeatedly.

As he often does, Bret Maverick gets to point out their hypocrisy in the end: it not for the greedy, corrupt officials who are now behind bars, an innocent man would have been hanged.  The Day They Hanged Bret Maverick ends with the Sheriff in jail for setting an innocent man free, and Molly Sharp is facing trial despite the fact that Cliff Sharp is dead and the money is returned, eliminating all possible charges.  "Now what's going to happen?" is Coroner Poole's frequent question, and whatever does apparently won't be dictated by any logic.  Hallelujah is no place for a poker player.  Little wonder Bret, Bart and the former's mustachioed twin all avoided it in future segments.

HOW'D BRET DO AT POKER?

No poker for Bret, though he plays solitaire in his jail cell and cuts cards once with the "widow" later.  Perhaps it's a good thing that Bret didn't make it to the table in the opener of MAVERICK's sophomore season, given the way his luck is going: a coin flip with brother Bart started him on his path to Hallelujah in the first place.  He doesn't start "running good" again until he wins the cut with Molly Sharp at the dinner table.

HOW MANY TIMES DOES BRET GET A GUN PULLED ON HIM?

Twelve, with nine of those being the posse from Elbow Bend that rouses him out of bed in his hotel room.  Not sure if that's a record; something new to start tracking?

NAGGING QUESTIONS:

Two stand out.  How did Bret fire seven shots without reloading at the farmhouse?  And, how did he get his hat back before he located Cliff Sharp?

WISDOM FROM PAPPY?

"There's more than one way to please a lady."  Not the wittiest Pappyism, nor the most profound.  But it certainly fits.  Bret's charm is a great equalizer against Cliff's combination of money and menace.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

Those two nagging questions aside, MAVERICK was a finely tuned machine at the outset of its sophomore season.  As was often the case with Heyes, his script stands up to repeat viewings, with many lines becoming funnier the second or third time around.  A solid tone-setter for not only this show's finest year, but one of the best ever for any scripted series.  (***1/2 out of four)


MAVERICK airs Saturday mornings at 9 A.M. Central on MeTV.

Television Review: GET CHRISTIE LOVE! "Pawn Ticket for Murder" (1974)

GET CHRISTIE LOVE!: "Pawn Ticket for Murder" (Universal/ABC-TV: Original Air Date 10/2/74)  Starring Teresa Graves as Detective Christie Love, Charles Cioffi as Captain Reardon, Andy Romano as Joe Caruso, Dennis Rucker as Belmont.  Guest Stars: Quinn Redeker as Lester Wheeler, Scott Brady as Sergeant Gus Marker, Dick O'Neill as Alex Dawson, Sid Haig as Nick Varga, Kenneth Tobey as Charlie Red, John Steadman (uncredited) as Tex Crandall, Richard Stahl as the Maitre D', George Ives as Butler, Al Stevenson as Max, William Bramley as Bartender, John Elerick as Policeman. Written by Joseph Polizzi.  Directed by Mark Warren.

Series overview for Get Christie Love! HERE 


Homeless wino Crandall is looking for a warm place to sleep it off and settles in the alley behind Dawson's pawn shop.  Unfortunately he ends up fatally stabbed as an accidental earwitness to the bookmaking business Dawson is fronting for the well connected Lester Wheeler.  After the derelict's body is found on skid row, his homicide is delegated to Detective Love by old-school Sergeant Gus Marker.  Legendary within the L.A.P.D. and more than a little sexist, Marker feels that the seemingly open-and-shut case is a perfect way to keep the "little girl" to "out of trouble". 

Postmortem lividity indicates that Tex was moved after death, his stab wound matches an expensive large Bowie knife and his body shows no signs of asphalt marks, pointing to a crime much less routine than Marker believes.  Dismissive of Christie's theories and preoccupied with his ongoing investigation of Wheeler's gambling ring, the Sergeant gives Love full authority to follow up on her intuition--not knowing that Tex's killing can be tied to the shady businessman he's targeting.

GET CHRISTIE LOVE! would soon become too sanitized for its own good, but Pawn Ticket for Murder is a solid example of David L. Wolper's original conception of the series.  Savvy and hard working, Detective Love mostly solves her cases through good old fashioned legwork.  However, this early installment (the fourth to air) doesn't skimp on the action, with Christie forced into a shootout with the same cleaner who murdered Tex while she's interviewing the late derelict's best friend.  (In keeping with Graves' desire not to have Christie kill anyone onscreen, the hitman is still alive after he's shot, and was apparently hit by fire from Love's backup.)

Further bite is provided as Detective Love deals with discrimination based on gender and race in Pawn Ticket for Murder.   She brushes off the former from Marker with a few curt remarks initially.  When the Wheeler connection is discovered, the Sarge tries to pull rank and take over Christie's case--a definite no-go, Sugar!  Christie's pushback is inspired, actually using The Legend's sexism against him ("stealing cases from a woman!") to force the 50/50 partnership that she should have had all along.  

With good practical reason.  The script by Polizzi (Downbeat for a Dead Man) neatly sets up several situations for Love to infiltrate locales (the neighborhood bar, pawnshop, bookmaking operation) that her youth and femininity make her welcome in.  Sergeant Marker would stick out like a sore thumb.  For that matter, so would Reardon.

Graves and Stahl

But our heroine doesn't blend in everywhere, and Christie's opportunity to be conspicuous is the best scene of the installment.  GET CHRISTIE LOVE! was mostly colorblind, even when the Detective ended up in a small town (Highway to Murder).  But entering Wheeler's orbit requires gaining access to him during his downtime--at a clearly restricted (just not heavy-handedly stated as such) country club.  The bigoted maitre'd (superbly cast Richard Stahl) mistakes the Detective for the help, barely manages to stop himself before revealing the club's unspoken policy, and struggles mightily to keep his cool while Christie trolls him politely but mercilessly.  Subtle and hilarious, a perfectly executed scene by Stahl, Graves and director Mark Warren.

Not everything goes down as smoothly.  Hit man Nick Varga (the opening scene's stabber) observes Love probing the crime scene from a window and later witnesses her interrogations of the bartender and Charlie Red.  So shouldn't a savvy crook like Wheeler be especially suspicious that an African-American female seeking him out at that country club (or just showing up at the pawn shop, for that matter) just might be the investigating officer working undercover?  

Those nagging questions notwithstanding, Pawn Ticket for Murder mostly holds up until its finale.  A pit is far too conveniently located (making the planned 'accident' even more questionable than it already is--a bulldozer?) and Christie is left way too vulnerable to sniper fire before disappearing into the warehouse.  Seems uncomfortably like a set-up, but there's nothing nefarious going on internally--Detective Love has won the respect of her most hard boiled colleague long before she helps Marker nab his quarry of two years.  The Sergeant even sends roses in appreciation when all is said and done. 

The ubiquitous Sid Haig is largely wasted in his one-dimensional role as the fearsome henchman, but Kenneth Tobey (later seen in The Big Rematch) is effective as the victim's friend Charlie Red.  In keeping with everything else we see, Detective Love is the clear winner in the interrogation room: Red is much more responsive to Christie's compassion than Marker's forcefulness. 

*

---

For some reason, John Steadman (THE LONGEST YARD, CHEECH AND CHONG'S NEXT MOVIE) is uncredited as Tex Crandall.

ONE LUMP, OR MORE?

Just one, for Mr. Wheeler at his country club.  No martial arts, either, making this installment one that can do without the obligatory for the most part.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

Detective Love is mistaken for the mail girl inside her own department and "the help" outside of it.  She promptly solves the murder she was assigned and cracks a two year case that LAPD's top men had no answers for.  Christie efficiently helps the unit's Vice Squad with a major tip and handles prejudgments of all types with professionalism and charm.  The series would soon become way too tame for its own good, and the payoff scene really sputters, but prior to that letdown Graves converts several opportunities to elevate the material.  I went back and forth between two and a half and three stars on this installment, which despite its flaws comes closer than most to realizing the original conception of the show's heroine.    (*** out of four)