Goodnight, My Love: A Made-for-TV Film Noir

The ABC Movie of the Week was unique among made-for-TV movie franchises in that its films spanned a wide variety of genres. It presented family dramas, thrillers, comedies, horror pictures, and even a kung fu movie. One of its most unusual efforts was Peter Hyams' homage to film noirs: Goodnight, My Love. Made in 1972, it's set in post-World War II Los Angeles and stars Richard Boone and Michael Dunn as a pair of gumshoes whose primary concern is the source of their next meal.Embed from Getty Images Richard Boone, Michael Dunn, and Barbara Bain.

Business starts looking up for Francis Hogan (Boone) and Arthur Boyle (Dunn) when the slinky Susan Lakely (Barbara Bain) saunters into their low-rent office. She wants the two private eyes to find her boyfriend, whom she claims has been missing for several days. Hogan is unenthusiastic about the case, but Boyle is hungry so they take the job.

Somehow, the boyfriend's disappearance is linked to a missing briefcase and a shady nightclub owner named Julius Limeway (Victor Buono). Limeway's henchman, Lakely's lies, and a couple of corpses muddle the clues as Hogan and Doyle try to uncover the truth--and get a decent dinner.

Richard Boone, who flashed plenty of charisma as Paladin in Have Gun--Will Travel, is surprisingly low-key as possibly the grumpiest detective in the history of cinema. It works, though, thanks to his castmates who elevate their game. Michael Dunn shines as Boone's witty sidekick, delivering his quips with style--even when he's not on camera. In one scene, when Susan expresses concern about Hogan's safety, the detective reassures her: "I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself." Offscreen, Dunn's sidekick adds: "I'm not so big."

Barbara Bain, who looks fabulous in the 1940s fashions, plays her femme fatale with a knowing wink, but never crosses the line into parody. The same applies to Victor Buono, who is ideally cast as the white suit-wearing villain who would have been played by Sidney Greenstreet once upon a time. Embed from Getty Images

I had the opportunity to interview Barbara Bain in 2019. When I asked her about Goodnight, My Love, she told me:

"I just loved doing that movie with Richard Boone and Michael Dunn. It was interesting to play this woman about whom we find out all kinds of things by the end. She's all 'poor me' in the beginning and not so 'poor me' by the end of it. I received extraordinary compliments about my performance. I spent some time with (director) Peter Hyams in the last year or two and we recalled making the film. Lee Strasberg (the famous acting teacher) said I was just wonderful. I can't even say it. I can't quote somebody else talking about me without being a little embarrassed. But after all these years, it was very nice to hear that from one's master teacher." Embed from Getty Images

For many years, it was hard to find a quality print of Goodnight, My Love. Fortunately, one of my Twitter friends (@CED_LD_Guy) has made it available on Rumble (a free streaming platform like YouTube). Click here to watch it.

Goodnight, My Love may not rank with the best of film noir, but it's an entertaining, well-made homage. It's also a great example of the kind of creative filmmaking that made the ABC Movie of the Week appointment television for those of us who grew it up in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Kirk Douglas is a Man Without a Star

Kirk Douglas as Dempsey.

Borden Chase penned some of the most important Westerns in film history, to include: Howard Hawks' Red River plus the Anthony Mann-James Stewart collaborations Winchester '73, Bend of the River, and The Far Country. He co-wrote the screenplay for Man Without a Star (1955), an engrossing Western that may not rank with the aforementioned films, but still remains a compelling "adult Western."

Kirk Douglas plays Dempsey Rae, a cowhand that keeps drifting further north as large ranches with their fences begin to dominate the Western landscapes. While stowing away on a train, he meets a young greenhorn (William Campbell), whom he later dubs the Texas Kid. After Dempsey rescues Texas from a probable hanging, the young man clings to the veteran cowboy. Dempsey eventually takes Texas under his wing and gets both of them a job at the Triangle Ranch.

Jeanne Crain as the new owner.

They settle in nicely until two events trigger a series of conflicts. First, one of the smaller ranchers decides to use barbed wire to preserve fresh grass for his herd. The mention of "barbed wire" gets Dempsey fired up (we learn why later) and he decides it's time to move on. His plans change, though, when he meets the Triangle's new owner: the beautiful Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain).

Although Man Without a Star was based on a 1952 novel by Dee Linford, it shares many similarities with Borden Chase's other Westerns. As in The Far Country, there are two strong female characters: Crain as the ambitious rancher and Claire Trevor as a brothel madam. However, the film's central relationship is between two men: Dempsey and Texas. That's a recurring element in all of the previously-mentioned Borden Chase Westerns (e.g., John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in Red River, James Stewart and Arthur Kennedy in Bend of the River, James Stewart and Walter Brennan in The Far Country, etc.).

Richard Boone, as a baddie, with Crain.

Indeed, one of the challenges in Man Without a Star is its brief 89 minute length leaves little time to explore relationships and themes. For example, once Reed Bowman shows up, the Texas Kid vanishes into the background for a large chunk of the film. Similarly, Reed is nowhere to be found in the film's closing scenes. Thematically, Chase and his fellow writers use the barbed wire fences as an analogy for the impending civilization of the West (much as Sergio Leone would later use trains in Once Upon a Time in the West). However, again, there is insufficient running time to explore this theme in any depth.

Claire Trevor and Kirk Douglas.

Screen veteran King Vidor directs with a sure hand and adds some nice humorous touches. My favorite is when Dempsey and the Triangle's foreman (Jay C. Flippen) are engaging in a pleasant breakfast conversation as Texas fights another ranch hand outside the bunkhouse. The camera never leaves the breakfast table as we hear the punches and grunts from the fisticuffs. Another funny scene is when Dempsey asks to see the new bathroom installed in the ranch house...imagine that...a bathroom in the house!

Man Without a Star was remade just 13 years later as A Man Called Gannon with Tony Franciosa in the Kirk Douglas role and Michael Sarrazin as his protege. It's a respectable Western, but lacks the verve and cast that makes Man Without a Star required viewing despite its limitations. It also doesn't have a catchy title song sung by Frankie Laine!

Cult Movie Theatre: I Bury the Living

This review is by guest blogger ClassicBecky from ClassicBecky's Brain Food.

Richard Boone in IBTL.

Have you ever been digging through a big barrel full of DVDs at Walmart and thought you found a gem...and the gem turns out to be cheap glass? A few years ago, I found a collection of DVDs with 85 science fiction movies. Frankly, I had forgotten my glasses that day, so I couldn’t read the tiny type required to list all 85 titles on the back of the DVD set. I figured, what could go wrong? Surely there would be a bunch of good ones in the group. That’s how I found the 1958 film I Bury The Living (IBTL), starring Richard Boone. It was one of three movies that even seemed like they might be good, the others being White Zombie, which I do like, and The Crawling Eye, which I thought sounded fun. The rest had names like Hercules vs. the Amazon Women and Clowns on Mars.  Pretty sad.

I really like Richard Boone, having suffered a huge crush on him when he played Paladin, the gentlemanly, very moral gunman on Have Gun--Will Travel on TV. That black and silver ensemble – what girl child could resist it? It was strange to see him in ordinary street clothes in IBTL, and he didn’t seem as tall without his black cowboy hat. However, he was still masculine, appealing, and a good actor. The movie also starred Theodore Bikel, a well-respected actor, and Robert Anderson,  a well-known character actor and Dad to Dennis the Menace.

Boone plays Robert Kraft, a businessman who has to take his turn amongst the big boys in town to run Immortal Hills, the town cemetery.  Bikel is Andy McKee, a Scottish cemetery groundsman who has 40 years in the business and is creepily attached to his graveyard. Anderson is Jess Jessup (his parents must have had no imagination), the town newspaperman who must be frantically looking for some kind of story…he is always at the cemetery.  Other members of the cast include recognizable character actors and a woman who plays Boone’s love interest. She is actress Peggy Maurer, whose only other claim to fame is the two-minute part of grown-up Wendy in 1960’s Peter Pan.

The real star of the show is The Map. I capitalize The Map because it is the centerpiece of the movie.  isual effects man Edward Vorkapich (who never did anything much else in the movie biz) designed The Map, and it is fairly creepy. It’s really big, and shows the topography of the cemetery. Big black lines, which are never explained as far as what they represent, are scrawled across the map, and look like weird Picasso-ish eyes. Throughout the movie, the map changes perspective, becomes brighter and the black lines bolder. It does so as Kraft goes quietly crazy. 

Bikel and Boone in front of The Map.

In his capacity as manager of the cemetery, it is Kraft’s job to keep track of the dead who are already buried there, and the pre-planners who are yet to come. Black pins are used to mark the already-present dead, and white pins to mark customers who have not yet arrived. The tension begins when Kraft, who apparently can’t tell black from white, keeps using black pins to mark the living. When he accidentally does this, the people die, like right away, pretty much dropping in their tracks from auto accidents, heart attacks and the like. Kraft begins to believe that he is causing the deaths. He becomes hyper-aware of McKee’s annoying singing and the sound of the chisel chipping away at the gravestones McKee is making. McKee, in the meantime, is of little help to Kraft’s mental state, and is just generally strange. The story, which has holes like swiss cheese, finally wraps up with a barely believable ending.

IBTL is directed by Albert Band, known for extremely B movies (my favorite title of his is Dracula’s Dog). The music, which is OK but not particularly good, was done by music editor Eve Newman, also known for her work on Roger Corman’s Poe movies. She also composed the score for TV’s Sky King, one of my favorites when I was a kid (“Out of the blue of the western sky comes … Sky King!”)  According to IMDb, most of the people involved in IBTL appear to be best known for this movie, which apparently wasn’t much of an asset to their curriculum vitae.

Turner Classic Movies did show IBTL on its underground movie schedule in 2007. Otherwise, I don’t know where you would find it except in the big barrel at Walmart. By the way, it didn’t really have 85 movies–just 30. Still, three good movies out of 30 is not a good bargain!

The poster is great, but whoever designed it must not have actually seen the movie.  A great “cry”?  Maybe from the audience who paid money to see it.  Otherwise, I didn’t hear a thing.

15 Greatest TV Characters of the 1960s: Paladin

Name: Paladin (technically a nickname, as explained in the episode "Genesis"; the character's real name is never revealed)

Portrayed by: Richard Boone

TV series: Have Gun--Will Travel (1957-63)

Occupation: A "knight without armor" according to the theme song; technically, a gunfighter for hire.

Lifestyle: When not working, he resides in high style in the Carlton Hotel in San Francisco. When on a job, it's often life on the dusty trail. Well-educated, a West Point graduate and former Army officer.

Family and Friends: Hey Boy, the hotel bellhop (replaced by Hey Girl for one season); Dr. Phyllis Thackeray (June Lockhart), who appears in two episodes and shares a mutual attraction with Paladin.

Trademarks: Business card advertising "Have gun--will travel;" chess knight emblem on his gun holster; dresses in all black when working; quotes famous literary works.

Classic quote: (On the knight used in chess)  "It's an attack piece, the most versatile on the board. It can move eight different ways, over barriers, and always unexpected."

Classic episodes: "The Return of Dr. Thackeray" (Paladin flirts some more with June Lockhart's character); "The Ballad of Oscar Wilde" (Paladin comes to the aid of the visiting playwright); "The Great Mojave Chase" (a camel comes in handy).

Into the West: Ethics and the Gunfighter in "Have Gun--Will Travel"

The 1960s were the Golden Age of the television Western with such classic series as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Rifleman, and Rawhide. In defining the "best" Western of the decade, one could easily argue the merits of a dozen or so series. However, when it comes to television's most memorable Western character of the 1960s, the answer is clearly Paladin from Have Gun--Will Travel.

A resident of the upscale Carlton Hotel in San Francisco, Paladin is a gentleman of refined tastes. He smokes only the finest imported cigars, wears expensive tailored suits, tips lavishly, and has a regular boxed seat at the opera house. No one knows exactly what he does for a living. In one episode, the desk clerk remarks:  "He must have investments all over the West. He's always going away on business trips."

Paladin's profession, of course, is as a gunfighter for hire. He selects his jobs carefully, usually by reading newspapers from throughout the region and honing in on situations that interest him. In "A Matter of Ethics," an episode from the first season, Paladin reads about a convicted murderer who fears he will be lynched before his trial. Paladin offers his services simply  by sending an envelope containing his business card (shown at right).

Paladin meets his prospective client Holgate (Harold J. Stone) aboard a train heading to Bender, Wyoming. Holgate, who's in the sheriff's custody, explains that the son of Max Bender--the man who founded the town--"caught a bullet" from him. For a fee of $200, Paladin agrees to ensure that Holgate is delivered safely to trial.

When they arrive in Bender, Paladin learns that the dead man's sister, Amy (a dark-haired Angie Dickinson), has been "stirring the pot" for a lynching. While he doesn't condone her actions, Paladin is sympathetic toward Amy: "She can't strap on a gun and fight this with her own hands."

By the end of the episode, guns have been fired and two people are dead. But, as is often the case with Have Gun--Will Travel, the outcome is unexpected and yet satisfying. Paladin honors his contract, gets paid, and maintains his code of ethics along the way. In one of the best scenes in the episode, Paladin explains his ethics by quoting two passages from Robert Browning--as the sheriff and Holgate gaze at him with perplexed expressions.

Richard Boone, who forged a solid if unspectacular screen career, is superb as Paladin. I can't imagine anyone else in the part...or really parts. Paladin is almost a man of dual personas: the gentleman dressed in white and the gunfighter garbed in black. They are one and the same person, of course. The gentleman gets tough in a few episodes and the gunfighter, as previously noted, quotes poetry and still smokes those fine cigars. It's like the black and white pieces on a chess board, one side of the game board mirroring the other. It's an appropriate analogy given the chess piece--the knight--inscribed on Paladin's card and holster.

"A Matter of Ethics"," written by series co-creator Sam Rolfe, is a strong outing in an outstanding TV series. In addition to Dickinson, it features a nice supporting turn by Strother Martin as an attorney that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. It's a good introduction to a great series. Start with it and you can look forward to even better episodes penned by the likes of Bruce Geller (the man behind Mission: Impossible) and Gene Roddenberry (who created some sci fi show that aired in the late 1960s).