{"id":22605,"date":"2019-03-16T00:01:01","date_gmt":"2019-03-16T06:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=22605"},"modified":"2019-03-13T23:39:40","modified_gmt":"2019-03-14T05:39:40","slug":"22605-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/22605-2\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nero Wolfe<\/em> was an\nadaptation of Rex Stout’s novel, The\nDoorbell Rang<\/em> starring Thayer David as Nero Wolfe. It was supposed to be a\npilot for a Nero Wolfe TV Series. However, David’s untimely death meant the\nseries didn’t go forward and though the telefilm was filmed in 1977, it wasn\u2019t\nbroadcast until 1979 and has rarely been replayed since then. It was released\non DVD along with the 1981 Nero Wolfe TV series starring William Conrad (which\nwe’ll be discussing next week.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the plot of The\nDoorbell Rang<\/em>, a wealthy realtor named Me. Bruner (Anne Baxter) turns to\nWolfe to get the FBI to stop harassing her after she bought hundreds of copies\nof a book critical of the FBI and sent it to many important people. Wolfe is\nreluctant to take the case but Mrs. Bruner offers way too much money for him to\nturn down. In short order, Wolfe and Archie (Tom Mason) are targeted by the FBI\nwho begin spying on them and try to get their licenses pulled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

David was just magnificent as Wolfe. I actually might prefer his take over Maury Chaykin’s in 2001’s \u00a0 A Nero Wolfe Mystery<\/em>. He manages to capture all of Wolfe’s ego and eccentricity. The adaptor gave him \u00a0Wolfean dialogue and he absolutely nails every line. His take on Wolfe is quite a bit less shouty than Chaykin\u2019s and it feels closer to the book.\u00a0 The one thing that David is knocked for is not being big enough to play Wolfe, but that I\u2019m willing to cut him some slack on. I don\u2019t think the main goal of a casting director should be to get an exact lookalike. In addition, David had actually been bigger earlier in his career with health problems including cancer that would ultimately contribute to his fatal heart attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tom Mason was very good as Archie. He had the banter and the\noverall mischievous nature of the character down perfectly. He plays off David\nwell, and I really like the way they portray the nature of the relationship\nbetween Archie and Wolfe. The films open with Archie trying to badger Wolfe\ninto taking a case as they\u2019re running out of money and then back-pedals and\ndoesn\u2019t want Wolfe to take a case involving the FBI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the cast is pretty solid. Anne Baxter brings a\nbig dose of charm and starpower to the role of Mrs.  Bruner. \nBiff McGuire has one big scene as Inspector Cramer and a couple smaller\nscenes he appears in, but he absolutely nails the role, particularly in his big\nscene. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only casting decision that was really odd was Charles\nHorvath as Orrie Cather. Cather was the youngest of three detectives Wolfe\nhired frequently in the novels. Horvath was older than Thayer David, and like\nDavid passed away before the film aired. However, Orrie\u2019s part in the novel is\nso minor that it\u2019s not a huge deal. In fact, IMDB didn\u2019t even catch that\nHorvath was playing Cather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film is ostensibly set in 1965, rather than the present day 1977 because Fritz does reference J. Edgar Hoover and the film maintains the book\u2019s ending scene, which would be quite impossible in 1977 as Hoover was dead in 1977. However, there\u2019s little obvious evidence of an effort to make the film look like it\u2019s set in 1965. The cars, for example, appear to be more modern models. However, for the most part, the men and women in the movie wear professional outfits and stay away from anything that screamed 1970s, so the era remained ambiguous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond that, the film stays true to the spirit of the book\nwith most key events occurring just as Stout wrote them in terms of who\ncommitted the murder, Wolfe\u2019s plan for dealing with the FBI, and the iconic\nending. There are quite a few details changed such as the location of the murder,\nwhat Wolfe does while he\u2019s out of the Brownstone, a couple of scenes in Wolfe\u2019s\noffice at the end are condensed into one, etc, but the essentials of the story\nare still the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slightly more significantly, the film makes subtle changes\nthat have Wolfe and Cramer working closer together than in the book. In addition,\nWolfe is very friendly with Mrs. Bruner and has dinner with her in the kitchen\nof the brownstone after the case is solved, maintaining a charming , and almost\nflirtatious line of conversation. That\u2019s a bit out of character for Wolfe, who\u2019s\nnotoriously cool towards women. Though, that may also be a by-product of the\ncharacter being played by Anne Baxter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most all the changes made for the TV movie either were\nharmless or served to make for a better viewing experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only moments I thought were bad was a time or two when\nsomeone prompted to Wolfe to quote back a piece of his own dialogue that he\u2019d\nonce said. It was a tad indulgent, but ultimately forgivable in the grand scheme\nof the film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, this was a fine movie and I think it would have made\na very good television series had it been picked up. It\u2019s a fair debate whether\nthis film was  as good or better than A Nero Wolfe Mystery\u2019s <\/em>adapation of the\nsame story and I may write an article comparing the two some time in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For now, it\u2019s fair to say Nero Wolfe <\/em>stands on it own merit as a well-directed, well-acted\nfilm that\u2019s  a must-watch for any Nero\nWolfe fan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ratings: Very Satisfactory\/4.5<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nero Wolfe was an adaptation of Rex Stout’s novel, The Doorbell Rang starring Thayer David as Nero Wolfe. It was supposed to be a pilot for a Nero Wolfe TV Series. However, David’s untimely death meant the series didn’t go forward and though the telefilm was filmed in 1977, it wasn\u2019t broadcast until 1979 and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podcast"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-5SB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22605"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22607,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22605\/revisions\/22607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}