The Consolations of Junk Art, Part II: The Incredible Hulk Television Series

"Mr. McGee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." – Dr. David Banner.

We continue this glimpse at the deep and satisfying consolations of junk art with a look at one of Your Correspondent’s favorite television shows as a boy, The Incredible Hulk (1978-1982).  And yes, I was once a child.

If the criteria for good junk art is that it provides some of the comforts and consolations found in high art, then, believe it or not, The Incredible Hulk fills the bill.  I had not seen it since its initial run, and seldom thought of it since.  However, when I spied a boxed set of the entire series for next-to-no money, the nostalgic impulse was too great and I succumbed.

Let me insert here my feelings, in general, on films and television shows adapted from comic books:  Your Correspondent could happily go to his grave without seeing another one.  Superhero films seem to support the entire film industry right now, crowding out films for adults, films of taste and subtlety and films that are, at least, different.  An orgy of CGI-generated destruction is not an orgy I wish to attend, thank you very much.

However, The Incredible Hulk television show dates back to a time that did not have the crutch of special effects to lean upon, and depended instead on story and character.  I opened the boxed set with a bit of trepidation: very often I have returned to boyhood favorites only to find that the memory was better than the actuality.

Oddly enough, with The Hulk, both were true.  The series is both cheesier than I remembered, and, in ways, more profound than I could have hoped.

For those of you unfamiliar with Hulk-dom, let’s recap the opening narration of the series:  Dr. David Banner: physician; scientist. Searching for a way to tap into the hidden strengths that all humans have. Then an accidental overdose of gamma radiation alters his body chemistry. And now when David Banner grows angry or outraged, a startling metamorphosis occurs. The creature is driven by rage and pursued by an investigative reporter.  The creature is wanted for a murder he didn't commit. David Banner is believed to be dead, and he must let the world think that he is dead, until he can find a way to control the raging spirit that dwells within him.

So, what we have is Les Misérables told as an episodic science fiction television show.  There is no reason in the world for this thing to work, but it does against all expectations.

Let’s look for a moment at the junk component.  The Hulk was not only a creation of its time, but a mirror of the obsessions of the 1970s.  There were episodes set in discos, amongst truckers and CB radio enthusiasts, in kung-fu schools and there were even digressions in ghetto-chick; tropes included bio feedback, ESP and mind-reading, pop psychology and past-life regression.  But even moving away from the preoccupations of a fairly tacky decade, the writing on The Hulk was too often doughy and simplistic even by network television standards, the problems too rote and elementary, and the resolutions too pat and easy.

And yet.  And yet…

There is something real and … emotionally moving going on in The Incredible Hulk.  Let’s start with the protagonist, Dr. David Banner (played with real sympathy and sweetness by Bill Bixby).  Banner experiments with gamma radiation after losing his lover in a car accident.  His researches lead him to the conclusion that some people in moments of extreme stress or anger find remarkable physical strength … and that those energies start at a cellular level.  Racked by guilt – why did he not have these resources of strength when he needed it? – he tried to duplicate the cellular variations on himself through exposure to gamma radiation.  The tests backfire, and now, in moments of stress, he mutates into a gigantic, green monster (Lou Ferrigno). 

In short, Banner is not a hero in the conventional sense, but someone haunted by the physical manifestations of his own shortcomings; he is tormented because he looked deep inside of himself and found himself wanting.

Every episode, Banner comes into the worlds of new people in new cities and new states, always seeking that elusive cure for his condition.  Because of his inherent decency and humanity, he is often with the underclass or downtrodden, using his considerable medical and scientific gifts to improve the lives of those around him.  And, with clockwork regularity, he leaves these new-found friends once his secret is out and his opportunity for a cure evaporates.  But the real tragedy of Banner is that he is a man running away from himself; the one thing no man can ever successfully do.

McGee (played with conviction by Jack Colvin), his nemesis, is not cardboard cutout, either.  Working for a cheap, tabloid newspaper (think the National Enquirer), McGee sees the Hulk as an opportunity out of the minor leagues and into the bigtime.  But, as the series progresses, the Hulk becomes both an obsession and a beacon.  An obsession because McGee will not let-go, even when in jeopardy of ruining his already shaky career, and a beacon because the Hulk comes to represent to McGee all that is marvelous and unexplained in the world.

Every episode ends with poor Banner once more hitchhiking to the strains of the “Lonely Man” theme by Joseph Harnell, a piano lament in a minor key.  But next week will be exactly the same, no matter how many people Banner meets, or how close he comes to finding a cure.  He will never unburden himself of his own weaknesses, his own fears, or of the monster he carries inside of himself.  It is a perfect existential tragedy.

The Incredible Hulk is junk but it is glorious junk because of the weight it bears – sometimes successfully, sometimes not so successfully.  It is not a comic book show, but a tragedy told in comic book tropes.  It is impossible to take in the whole series and not feel a sense of sadness, of sympathy or of empathy for the benighted Banner.

Yes, I will lose the respect of many of my readers, but The Incredible Hulk is not junk … and it may even be art.   Of a type.

The Consolations of Junk Art, Part I: Star Trek

“Was it not Gautier who used to write about la consolation des arts? I remember picking up a little vellum-covered book in your studio one day and chancing on that delightful phrase. Well, I am not like that young man you told me of when we were down at Marlow together, the young man who used to say that yellow satin could console one for all the miseries of life. I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle. Old brocades, green bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings, luxury, pomp—there is much to be got from all these.” --- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

"To the man who loves art for its own sake," remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph, "it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.”  -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Cooper Beeches (1892)

Two very different concepts on the curative power of art, written only one year apart.  However, recent events have led me to believe that it may be Sir Arthur and not Mr. Wilde who was closer to the mark.

Your Correspondent has recently been thinking of the pleasures of pop art versus those found in the Fine Arts, the proper subject of this blog.  Dealing with multiple responsibilities, I relaxed within the warm confines of some delightful junk art.  It has gotten me thinking that often, when tired, that it was not towards the highest, but, rather, towards the lowest that I went for succor and comfort.  Why, I wonder, would that be?

The reasons are multiple and, as is usual when considering art of any type, complex.  It would be too easy by half to say that junk art provides only expected sensations, and, consequently, comfort, pleasure and even a kind of solace.  Nor do I think that good junk art was created solely for the groundlings, who are unworthy (or unwilling) to interact with the higher branches of the fine arts.  No … I would argue that good junk art stimulates essential pleasure centers of the brain, pleasure centers that were meant to be stimulated, and that need that stimulus in order to remain healthy.

So, we have to agree when Sherlock Holmes says that art’s keenest pleasures are often to be derived in its least important and lowliest manifestations.  (It is important to remember here, too, that the Sherlock Holmes stories are junk art of the very highest pedigree.)

I have been enjoying a great deal of junk art over the past couple of weeks, and wanted to share both the delights and pitfalls to be found in them.  And how better than to start with that global phenomena, Star Trek.

For those readers who have not been living in a cave for nearly the last 50 years or so, Star Trek started as a science fiction thriller on network television in the 1960s.  It fairly limped along for three seasons until the network pulled the plug in search of something that would generate better ratings.

Normally, the result would’ve been that the vast majority of American viewers simply opened another beer and moved onto to some other program.  But Star Trek would not die.  It was saved once during its initial run by a letter campaign that ensured the final two seasons, and once it was off for good, it was kept alive in syndication, comic books, novels, fan fiction and on the convention circuit.

A decade after the last television episode saw the first, big-budget film adaptation, and the franchise has not stopped for breath since.  There have been 12 movie adaptations, and five later television series.  It does not seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

As with any huge entertainment franchise, there is much that is good and much that is bad in Star Trek.  Your correspondent has a soft spot for the original series, starring William Shatner and the late Leonard Nimoy, and likes Star Trek: The Next Generation a great deal.  But … it’s all still junk.

Though there will be calls for my head on a pike, the ugly truth is that when Star Trek is good, it’s pedigree junk, and when it’s bad, it’s nearly unwatchable.

What’s the good?  Well, Star Trek will often confront questions on the nature of the human condition … but only in the most surface and reassuring way.  Vindications of our simple humanity and calls for universal tolerance and progress are all good things.  And when these homilies are delivered by an actor with real gravitas (such as Patrick Stewart, who played the Shakespeare-quoting Captain Picard), they can sound wonderfully profound.  However, their profundity is of the Reader’s Digest sampler kind; propositions no one is really going take issue with, and never to be examined in any depth.

This often makes terrific television and compelling movies, but it is not art of a high order.  In short, Star Trek is an imitation classic – it is Shakespeare for those too tired, or uninterested, in the real thing.  But, unlike Shakespeare, any real profundity is brought to it by the viewer, and is not really inherent in the text.  But its deficiencies are not the point … Star Trek, in terms of high-minded themes translated into compelling drama still manages to get the job done.

What’s the bad?  Well … like many offerings that generate obsessive fan-bases, Star Trek is often its own worst enemy.  Too often plot, character development or even the underlying philosophy of the concept are driven by demands of an entrenched fan-base.  That kind of outward direction has killed greater modes of artistic expression, and for a franchise it can be the kiss of death.  (For an example of this, look at the disaster that is Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered Country.  Designed as the farewell film of the original cast, it is little more than a litany of shtick, none of which seems to make sense in context of the story.)

Another problem is that, with an enterprise like Star Trek (sorry), it is impossible not to come to the well too many times.  Though it is often reinvented with tweaks that give the appearance of freshness, the franchise is filled with tired blood and should be put out of its misery.

Wait … I hear you saying, isn’t the whole point of this the consolation of the arts?  Indeed it is.  Your correspondent admits that when he is tired, there are few things more comforting that an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Just listening to Stewart mouth the platitudes and homilies that Star Trek provides in great profusion can be a tremendous solace.  It is also a delight to know that someone, somewhere, believes that the race will continue to exist hundreds of years from now, and will even move out into the stars.  Finally, while Star Trek would never argue in favor of the perfectibility of the human race, it continues to underscore what is worthy, heroic and noble in our natures.

And that’s not junk.

HE WAS THAT MASKED MAN: PART II

Clayton Moore And The Great Horse Silver!

The following is the second part of our three-part interview with television Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore (1914-1999), who played part on television from 1949 to 1957;  I originally conducted this interview more than 15 years ago, when Moore released his autobiography, I Was That Masked Man (1996).  Since its initial magazine publication, the interview has been buried in my files.  Here is the second of three parts.

James Abbott

In fact you starred in one the of finest serials ever made, Perils of Nyoka.

Perils of Nyoka, with Kay Aldrige, directed by William Whitney.  That was a learning experience, I can tell you.  Nyoka helped me in my career a great deal; what with some of the stunt work I did on the picture and the good part, I got a lot of notice on the lot.  And the kids liked it.  People still come up to me today and mention that one... although they're now only kids at heart!

Did you do a lot of your own stunts for Nyoka?

I did most of them.  I did have an excellent stunt double, though, a man by the name of David Sharpe.  He was a well-known stunt double at the time, and we got to be the best of friends.  David was one of the people that I was closest to in Hollywood.  There wasn't anything he couldn't do!

 I also met stuntman Tom Steele on Nyoka.  Tom taught me a lot about horses, crouper mounts, running-start mounts, everything.  I used all of this when I became the Lone Ranger.

Would you say that many of your closest friends were the stunt people?

Actors and some of the stunt men.  I worked with dozens and dozens of actors and just as many stunt men.  I got real friendly with the stunt people because I thought they got to have a lot of the fun on these pictures, too.  I liked to do as much as I could myself, but when there was something I couldn't have done or shouldn't have done, the stunt people were always there.  They helped make us look good, and I was always grateful to them.  We all enjoyed our work together and had a great time back in the early days of the serial business.

Now you cut quite an impressive figure in the serials, particularly in Zorro...

Yes, I did The Ghost of Zorro.  I'll tell you something about that picture, I almost had a bad accident while making it.  In one chapter a door was set to explode.  They had a safe charge of dynamite planted, but they let it sit too long and it got stronger, which dynamite does.  When the charge went off the door got awfully close to my head, another inch and my head would've gone with it.  I also accidentally knocked-out my pal Tom Steele during a staged fight.  He was out for about 20 seconds.

Funny thing, I didn't know they had dubbed my voice when I was disguised as Zorro until I saw it a few years ago on video.  I don't know why, I did a lot of character parts and got to change my voice a lot when I played the Ranger in his disguises.  But that's not my voice as Zorro.

That was the picture that George W. Trendle and Fran Striker, the producer and writer of the The Lone Ranger radio show, saw that helped them consider me for the part of the Lone Ranger.

Tell us of that initial meeting with Trendle and Striker?

An agent named Antrim Short suggested me to Mr. Trendle and Mr. Striker when they were casting around for the part.  When they set up a meeting with me, I was nervous.  I hadn't prepared a monologue and I didn't know what they would expect of me.  We had a long conversation, we didn't even talk about the Ranger much.  But Mr. Trendle and Mr. Striker would look at one-another every now and then.  When the meeting was over, Mr. Trendle asked me if I would like the part of the Lone Ranger.  I looked him right in the eye and said, "Mr. Trendle, I am the Lone Ranger."  In the next instant, he said I had the job.

The Lone Ranger radio program had started in 1933.  Had you been a fan of the show?

It originated from WXYZ in Detroit!  I listened to the Lone Ranger radio show with my father, Thursday evenings at 7:30, I believe.  You know, that's going back quite a bit; I'm pushing 83, you know.

Did you have any idea how the Ranger would change your life?  Or was it just another part?

No, it was just another job after Republic Studios.  I didn't realize that it would develop into a phenomenon like the radio show.  Television was a very new medium... and it was pretty much an experiment for us.  We didn't know if it would last. I ended up making a 169 television episodes of The Lone Ranger, and two feature-length motion pictures!

Do you have particular memories of George W. Trendle?

Excellent producer and a real nice man to talk with.  He wanted things done his way, though.  He had approved all the scripts before we shot them, and he had a man on the set making sure that we said everything word-for-word, as written.  Now, when you had a writer like Fran Striker, the other man who created the Ranger along with Trendle, that wasn't all that hard.  But that doesn't mean it was always easy!  You couldn't play around with a line or try and make it work better for you.

Striker was terrific.  When he wrote the Ranger stories, it was like he was creating a classic American myth.  When the Ranger was on the scene, the ground shook.  And he was careful to keep the Ranger true to his code of ethics.  I think the reason the Lone Ranger is still remembered today is because of the conviction that George Trendle and Fran Striker held onto when they created him.

Could you tell us a little about the early days of the show?

We shot three episodes a week, one every two days.  We'd shoot eight to ten episodes at a time and then lay off for a week, a week and a half to let Fran and the other writers have the opportunity to create more shows.  It was a lot of work, believe me, but Jay and I enjoyed it.  As a matter of fact, I'd like to take a moment to talk about Jay Silverheels.

Please!

Jay was a wonderful friend.  He was born on the Six Nations Reservation up in Brantford, Canada.  When he was a little guy he came to the United States of America and made this country his home.  Jay was a great athlete and a fine actor who was very proud of the Indian people. 

We had actually appeared in a scene together in a film before The Lone Ranger.  You can see us both in a Gene Autry picture called The Cowboy and the Indians.  If you look close you can see me in the background while Jay plays his scene with Gene Autry.  It was only after we had done The Lone Ranger for a few years did we realize we had worked together before!

HE WAS THAT MASKED MAN: PART I

Clayton Moore -- AKA The Lone Ranger -- And His Fan Base

Welcome back to The Jade Sphinx – we took a short hiatus at the end of the summer and have returned for what is, I hope, the start of an interesting Fall Season.

First up, a special treat for Jade Sphinx readers – an interview with Clayton Moore (1914-1999), who played The Lone Ranger on television from 1949 to 1957;  I originally conducted this interview more than 15 years ago, when Moore released his autobiography, I Was That Masked Man (1996).  Since its initial magazine publication, the interview has been buried in my files.  Here is the first of three parts.

James Abbott

Actor Clayton Moore was forever changed by a part he played.

When offered the part of the Lone Ranger in 1949, television's first western program, to Moore it was just another heroic role, much like the heroes he had played in the classic Republic serials.

But it changed him.

After a brief hiatus from the part, he returned to it with a renewed appreciation.  He had remembered listening to The Lone Ranger with his father in his native Chicago, and as he began to explore who the Lone Ranger was and what he represented, he realized that the Lone Ranger was more than a character for an actor to play.  To Moore, the Ranger came to embody a way of living and thinking, of realizing the heroism inherent in every man.  And as he grew more and more into the role, the Lone Ranger became a larger part of his life.

Clayton Moore has succeeded in a life well-lived.  The line between this modest actor and the cowboy hero is a thin one:  Clayton Moore is the Lone Ranger.

 Moore has compiled his many adventures in his new autobiography, I Was That Masked Man, which he wrote with Frank Thompson.  Still energetic, unfailingly courteous and stalwart as ever, Mr. Moore has been making appearances at book signings throughout California.  Fans young and old meet him with hushed awe, only to be relaxed by Moore's easy-going charm. 

We honored to have caught up with him at a recent book signing. 

I understand that during your boyhood you wanted to be either a cowboy or a policeman?

Yes.  When I was a kid I was just in awe of men like Tom Mix and William S. Hart.  When my friends and I would go to the movies, it was Westerns that we wanted to see.  There was just something about it, riding the range and living in the West, that excited me.  After the movies we kids would play cowboys and Indians and I always wanted to play the hero.

I thought being a policeman would be the closest I would come to being a Western lawman... so I'm glad I grew up to become the Lone Ranger, because I really got to be both a cowboy and a policeman!

Tell us a little bit about your boyhood?

I had a real nice childhood with my family and my brothers.  My father was quite a hunter, liked duck hunting and geese hunting and pheasant hunting, so we were well brought up in all the stages of duck hunting and all the fun things like that when we were kids.  We lived in Chicago, but we went away every summer and that's where I got my love of the outdoors.

Were you a very athletic child?

Yes, yes.  I had a good athletic training in the old Illinois Athletic Club in Chicago.  One day I was doing some acrobatic work and Johnny Behr saw me.  He asked me if I wanted to try the trapeze and I found I had a real knack for it.  He thought we had the making of an act and we started working on that.

Was being an acrobat your first brush with show business?

Yes, that's correct.  We asked some friends to join us and we were called the Flying Behrs.  We played a lot in the Chicago area, and we even performed in the 1934 World's Fair.

When did you realize that acrobatics might not have been for you?

We started doing stunts an the trampoline as well.  I landed wrong during a workout and bounced off the side of the trampoline, hurting my knee.  Then I starting to think that acting might be safer.

What did you do next?

I did some modeling work with the Robert John Powers Agency in New York.  My older brother Sprague had been modeling for local newspapers and catalogues.  I modeled for a time in Chicago and then went to New York to get acting experience.  It was a fine way to make a living, but not what I wanted.  I didn't think I was doing what I wanted in New York so opted for California to fulfill my life's dream, to be a movie cowboy.  That's what I wanted to be!

I headed for Los Angeles in 1937 and soon got into some pictures.

Once you got to Hollywood you worked with people like Rowland V. Lee?

Rowland V. Lee directed the Son of Monte Cristo.  He was a very nice man to work with and an excellent director.  He stood up for his actors and helped them get a handle on their roles.  It was a very relaxed set and that was a fun picture to work on. 

You also worked with Bela Lugosi?

He and I worked together in Black Dragons.  I tell you, I had a good education at Monogram and Republic Studios working with people like that.  Lugosi seemed a little shy, he would stay in his dressing room most of the time.  I don't think he was stand-offish, just shy.  When the camera was on, though, he was letter perfect.  He had a way with dialogue that was special.  I never worked with anyone like him.

 All those serials and programmers were real work, they put you through the ropes and made an actor out of you.  I'm happy to say that some people considered me to be the King of the Serials, so I like to think that I made good!

More Clayton Moore Tomorrow!

The Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes Question

Jeremy Brett (1933-1995) has inherited the mantle of Sherlock Holmes from Basil Rathbone (1893-1967) – indeed, many who have never had the pleasure of seeing Rathbone’s definitive turn as the Great Detective now imagine Brett when mentally picturing Sherlock Holmes.  This is something of a shame.

The standard critical consensus on this is that Brett revitalized Holmes, that his characterization was the closest to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original conception, and that the episodes of Granada’s television series were the most faithful adaptations ever.

Well …. most of these perceptions are not quite true.

The Granda series did not revitalize interest in Sherlock Holmes; rather, the Granada television series is probably the culminating event in what was a decade-long revival of interest.  Throughout the 1970s, interest in Sherlock Holmes was nearly as high as it had been during Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s lifetime.  Holmes returned to bestseller lists with Nicholas Meyer’s novels The Seven Per-Cent Solution (1974) and The West End Horror (1976); in fact, Seven Per-Cent received a glossy film treatment by Herb Ross in 1976, starring a woefully miscast Nicol Williamson (born 1938) as Holmes and Robert Duval (born 1931) as Watson.  In addition, the Royal Shakespeare Society revived William Gillette’s play Sherlock Holmes, running for many years on Broadway with such actors as John Wood (1930-2011), John Neville (born 1925) and Robert Stephens (1931-1995) in the lead role, and Paul Giovanni’s Crucifer of Blood also opened on Broadway in 1978, starring a sterling Paxton Whitehead as the Great Detective.

So, when Granada launched its series in 1984, it was really riding the crest of an almost unprecedented decade-long renaissance for the character.

As for the series itself, it is also not exactly true that the series episodes – largely scripted by John Hawkesworth and Jeremy Paul – were particularly close to Conan Doyle’s stories.  To be sure the level of fidelity was higher than Rathbone’s anti-Nazi war-time excursions, but the series all too often tacked on endings found nowhere in Doyle, or added irrelevant digressions to pad running time.  Indeed, the most faithful adaptations of Doyle were committed not to television, but to radio in two excellent series of programs starring, alternately, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, and, Carleton Hobbs and Norman Shelley, as Holmes and Watson, respectively.

Which takes us, finally, to Brett.  Any dramatized Sherlock Holmes story passes or fails largely on the strength of the actors playing the parts of Holmes and Watson.  Brett was very lucky indeed in his Watsons.  For the first two seasons Watson was portrayed by David Burke (born 1934).  Burke’s Watson was not the boob he is often portrayed to be lesser films, but, rather a competent medico somewhat in awe of the Great Detective’s powers.  There was certainly nothing wrong with Burke’s performance, but it lacked warmth and that touch of complicity with the audience that makes a compelling Watson.  Watson is the stand-in for our selves and, as such, Burke perhaps looked a tad too much like the late Joseph Stalin for his characterization to be totally effective.

Burke was replaced after the second season for the rest of the series by the extremely talented Edward Hardwick (1932-2011).  Hardwick, son of actor Cedric Hardwick, was simply the finest screen Watson we have had: warm, intelligent, steady, comforting and capable.  He was an eminently watchable actor, and his recent passing is a great loss.

Which brings us, finally, to Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes.   If I seem reluctant to address his performance, it’s because I am.  His turn as Holmes has always left me deeply ambivalent – Brett was a beguiling, amusing and melodramatic presence, but he just wasn’t Sherlock Holmes to me.

In the first two seasons, it seemed as if Brett was determined to be the nastiest Holmes on film.  In The Adventure of the Dancing Men, one of the earliest episodes, Brett’s Holmes is rude and condescending to a client in ways never found in Doyle.  In The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle he bellows "I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies” in a manner more reminiscent of a possessed Linda Blair than Sherlock Holmes.  His boxing scene in The Solitary Cyclist is laughable, and some of his line readings in The Final Problem are simply bizarre.  His laugh is a strangled bark and he is too cool, too aloof, and too … reptilian.

None of these embellishments are particularly surprising when one keeps in mind Brett’s initial thoughts on the character – Jeremy Brett hated Sherlock Holmes.  In an interview with The Armchair Detective prior to the American debut of the series, Brett commented that Holmes was a dreadful man; indeed, he wouldn’t “even cross the street to meet him.”  This is hardly the Holmes of Doyle, who was capable of both great charm and great courtesy, whom Watson wrote of as one with a depth of “loyalty and love” and who had “a great heart as well as a great brain.”

However, after these first two years, something happened offstage that forever altered his performance as Holmes for the rest of the series run.  In 1985, Brett came to the United States to star in a Broadway revival of Frederick Lonsdale’s Aren’t We All?, also starring Claudette Colbert and Rex Harrison.  (Brett and Harrison worked together, of course, in the 1964 film version of My Fair Lady.)  While in the US Brett was on the receiving end of a torrential flood of love and admiration from Sherlock Holmes disciples.  He was applauded, feted and lionized – he was, after nearly 30 years of acting – a star with groupies.

This, I think, more than anything changed his Holmes.  The change is evident in his return to the series immediately after his US tour, and in the first episode (also his first with Edward Hardwick), The Adventure of the Empty House.  This new Holmes is warmer, funnier, and more affectionate.  Indeed, his badinage with Henry Baskerville in the two-part Hound of the Baskervilles is almost … playful. 

However, despite all the softening of the character, Brett’s Holmes was still too mannered, too bizarre, and too twitchy to be fully embraceable.  Brett was an actor with melodramatic tendencies too deeply pronounced for him to etch a characterization on a more approachable, human scale.  And his Holmes suffered from his excesses.  In addition, unfortunate illnesses and weight problems so altered Brett’s appearance throughout the remainder of the run that at times he looked like a dissipated Peter Lorre, and sometimes more like Mycroft rather than Sherlock Holmes.  His obesity at times seemed to amplify a somewhat natural effeminacy in his line readings, and the overall result near the end was dire.

Now for the many Brett fans out there who feel as if I have spat on an icon, I just want to underscore that I don’t think Brett was a bad actor.  He delivered many fine performances, for example, in the television versions of The Picture of Dorian Gray (a superb Basil Hallward) and An Ideal Husband (simply the best Lord Goring I have ever seen).  He is certainly fetching in My Fair Lady, and he was always a dependable television villain.  Nor was he a terrible Sherlock Holmes – for that, simply look to Charlton Heston, Christopher Lee, or Nicol Williamson – he simply was a poorly conceived one.

Around With Nero Wolfe

One of the many blessings of not having cable or access to broadcast television is that my (rare) viewings are dictated solely by my own tastes.  I have recently been watching the Nero Wolfe series with Timothy Hutton as Archie Goodwin and the late Maury Chaykin (1949-2010) as Nero Wolfe and have enjoyed it immensely.  AMC’s Nero Wolfe was wonderfully smart, stylish and funny.  No wonder it did not last more than two seasons (2001-2002).

A DVD boxed set of the series can be found on Amazon, or, more affordably, on EBay.  I was lucky to find mine in a Barnes and Noble sales bin at half price, and could not have spent the money better.

Detective fiction has been a lifetime guilty pleasure, and I have been reading Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books with great satisfaction for over 30 years.  I’ve always had a rude picture of Archie in my mind – mostly of a hard boiled detective with a fast mouth.  However, Hutton has managed to sponge away nearly 30 years of envisioning and replaced the picture in my mind’s eye with himself.  I will never be able to see Archie in any other light again.

Chaykin is good as Wolfe (perhaps too emotional and somewhat sloppy for my taste), but Hutton is a revelation.  He plays Archie less like a tough guy and more like a 1930s sharpster.  He is less Bogart and more Lee Tracey.  He’s raffish, rakish and jaunty.  He doesn’t walk, he saunters.  His hat is cocked and his mouth is smirked.  He’s the quintessential New York wiseass between the World Wars – a vanished American everyman who is equal to every occasion.  He has smarts, savvy and his eye on the payoff. 

Archie, as conceived by Stout, is too much a comic character to exclusively be a tough guy (though toughness is one of his attributes).  That’s why Archie on film as a hardboiled dick doesn’t work; but, as a classic period smartass, Hutton is letter perfect.  Hutton’s Archie is a fast-talking American dandy, with a sense of style, sexiness and moxie.  Too bad the series didn’t last longer!

The series closely adheres to the original stories – each episode is an adaptation of a Rex Stout story.  And though the Nero Wolfe books are thematically and structurally securely fixed as part of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, they have always, to this reader, also stood apart from it.

Stout’s singularity in the field rests first in language. Few of the Golden Age writers were stylists, but Rex Stout (1886-1975) was a unique voice.  (Novelist Bill De Andrea used to say that the classic Stout sentence was: “Wolfe drank beer.”)  People with no taste for mysteries at all can read them with great satisfaction. Indeed, it's not surprising that P G Wodehouse was a great admirer. Like Jeeves and Wooster, the tale itself is only part of the pleasure -- most of the satisfaction is in the telling.  And, like Wodehouse, Stout had deftly captured an idealized national idiom -- his is a distinctly urban American voice at the height of the American Century.  Reading Stout is to savor a distillation of a national type that typified an era.  Stout is the music of the American idiom as Wodehouse is to the English.   

Another key factor in the success of the books is the Wolfe-Archie ménage. The brownstone and its routines is so completely conceived that it ranks with Conan Doyle's Baker Street as a place so fully realized, that it is a character in and of itself.  It becomes, in a way, our home as well, a refuge that delights, protects and nourishes us.  Once inside Wolfe’s brownstone, we invest in it all of the positive emotions we associate with ‘home.' And, because Wolfe guards this haven so zealously, it acts as an anchor for us --- a place of certainty in a changing and dangerous world. 

Unlike Dorothy Sayers, Stout was not an ambitious novelist. However, like Sayers, he wrote fully realized characters. Though they don't change throughout the series, Wolfe and Archie are drawn with a warmth and reality that elevate the books above mere mysteries.  The love-hate relationship between the two (one wag called it the struggle of two iron-willed co-dependents), their interactions, their mutual insults and antagonisms hiding affection, are the engines which drive the stories.

For all of his flamboyance, Wolfe never descends to simple caricature.  This is a problem with many characters found in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction – most of them become cartoons before overlong.  But Wolfe, with his weight and regimented life hiding some deeper mystery (some deeper tragedy?) is very real.

Finally, we come to Archie Goodwin. The real genius of the books is Stout's creation of Archie. Stout found a deep and rich vein of comedy in the books through Archie's amused, wry and cynical take on Wolfe and the world around him. He walks on the balls of his feet on the sunny side of the street -- hat cocked and dressed to the nines. And for all his cynicism, Archie is all heart.

AMC’s Nero Wolfe was a program with a flamboyant color scheme and high style.  Well, with their love of language and clever artfulness, the same can be said of the Rex Stout novels on which they are based.  The mystery novels of Rex Stout, and the Nero Wolfe series based upon them, are a tonic that is highly recommended.