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The Best Movies You’ve Never Heard Of: “The Woman Chaser” (1999)

June 7, 2014 Doug Krentzlin Leave a comment

“The Best Movies You’ve Never Heard Of” is a series of articles devoted to little-known movies of exceptional quality that dedicated film buffs may be aware of, but have somehow fallen through the cracks of the general public’s awareness.

The primordial ooze that the genre we now know as film noir emerged from was the pulp magazine fiction of the 1920s and 30s and the subsequent novels by writers like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Cornell Woolrich. In fact, the creation of the film noir genre was an accidental result of then-screenwriter John Huston’s decision to do a meticulously faithful adaptation of Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, which had already been filmed twice before (both badly), as his directorial debut. Because it retained Hammett’s uncompromising vision of the criminal world and the people who inhabited it on both sides of the law (a reflection of Hammett’s first-hand experiences as a Pinkerton detective), Huston’s 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon seemed breathtakingly new and the film’s success at the box office inspired other studios to try their hand at adapting pulp novels.

The works of the aforementioned writers were particularly popular with filmmakers because their relatively linear narratives made them easily adaptable to the film medium. The works of a later generation of pulp writers from the 40s and 50s were far more difficult to adapt to a visual medium because their first-person narratives took place mainly in the heads of their protagonists and, more often than not, these narrators were psychotics and madmen. The writers that fall into this second category include Dorothy B. Hughes, Jim Thompson, and Charles Willeford. As Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) proves, in the hands of a genuinely inspired filmmaker, it is possible to translate material like this into visual terms. Another filmmaker who managed to pull off this challenge was independent director Robinson Devor in his criminally little-known 1999 adaptation of Willeford’s 1960 novel The Woman Chaser.

After premiering at the 1999 New York Film Festival, and subsequently screening at other showcase festivals such as Sundance and South by Southwest, The Woman Chaser opened to mixed reviews, had a limited distribution, and also turned up on cable via The Sundance Channel and Showtime and on VHS. Then The Woman Chaser pretty much vanished off the face of the earth, not even receiving a DVD release. Just recently, however, thanks to that new-fangled thingamabob known as on-line streaming, Sundance Institute’s Artist Services has been able to make The Woman Chaser available for viewing on iTunes (as of May 20), and also on Netflix or netflix amerika, Hulu, and Amazon Prime (starting on June 15), giving this underrated little gem a well-deserved second chance.

Willeford was a World War II veteran-turned-writer whose work had been filmed twice before, Monte Hellman’s Cockfighter (1974) and George Armitage’s Miami Blues (1990, based on the first of Willeford’s Hoke Moseley novels). Both of these films have much to recommend them, but neither came as close to capturing Willeford’s style as Devor’s The Woman Chaser. As quoted in an on-line article by Jesse Sublett, Willeford’s widow Betsy concisely articulated what makes Devor’s film stand out from the other film versions of her husband’s work: “I like it best of the three adaptations. It’s uncommercial, the way the book was, and has the courage of its outrageousness.” As Huston did with Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, Devor wrote the screenplay himself, observing scrupulous fidelity to his source, faithfully duplicated the novel’s story structure scene-for-scene, and taking all of the dialogue almost verbatim from the book. Devor also retained the novel’s original setting and period, Los Angeles circa 1960.

Devor had only one previous film, Angelyne (1995), a documentary about actress and model Angyline Angelyne, under his belt when he decided to make his “real” filmmaking debut with an adaptation of The Woman Chaser. In an interview with Dan Lybarger for Nitrate On-Line, Devor recounted how he obtained a second-hand copy of Willeford’s novel from a couple who sold old mystery and crime books out of their home in Redondo Beach and later filmed his adaptation on weekends while retaining his day job as a vice president of a Los Angeles PR firm. Devor’s first choice for the leading role, Richard Hudson, was Jason Patric, but when Patric wasn’t available, he gladly went with Patrick Warburton because, as he put it, “I knew that we would never get anyone closer with physique and comic delivery than this guy.”

Richard Hudson, the main character and first-person narrator of The Woman Chaser, is, like the protagonist of Willeford’s first novel High Priest of California, a sociopathic used car dealer. A representative of a San Francisco repo tycoon known professionally as “Honest Hal,” Richard has returned to his home town of Los Angeles in order to start an Honest Hal franchise there. He selects a rundown used car lot near the Capitol Building, which towers over the background, and quickly scams the lot’s owner (Eugene Roche) into forking the business over to him. Richard then hires an ex-Army sergeant named Bill Harris (Ron Morgan) to be his manager and adds three burnouts to the staff as salesmen. One sweltering August day without any sales happening, Richard has an inspiration and takes it to Bill in the air-conditioned trailer that serves as the lot’s office.

Richard: “Lift the phone, Cool One, and call a costume company.”

Bill: “Any company in particular?”

Richard: “One that sells Santa Claus suits, complete with beards.”

Bill: “What sizes?”

Richard: The sizes worn by Evans, Cartwell, and Jody-boy, our three star salesmen.”

Bill: “You shouldn’t do it, Chief. It’s the middle of August. Those guys will melt out there.”

Richard: (angrily) “It’s the first day of August and they’ll wear the suits every damned day until I tell them to take them off!” (lowering his voice) “What is more unusual than Santa Claus selling used cars in August?”

Bill: “You’ve got me for the moment.”

Richard: “Nothing! Honest Hal is now Santa Claus in the middle of summer, bringing the good people of the City of Angels goodies in the form of repos. Your repos. Now, get the suits and get our buddy boys into them. Take a half-page in The Times and write some decent copy for a change. I don’t want those repos on the lot by Saturday!” (pause) “Oh, by the way, Cool One, you will inform our white-bearded salesmen that the Santy Claus suits are your idea.”

Richard takes advantage of relocating to LA to reconnect with his mother (Lynette Bennett), a retired ballerina who lives in a decaying mansion straight out of Sunset Boulevard with Richard’s stepfather Leo (Paul Malevich), an ex-film director, and Leo’s teenage daughter Laura (Emily Newman). At his mother’s invitation, Richard moves into the former servants’ quarters above the garage. Like most sociopaths, Richard has a heightened opinion of himself and regards his customers and just about every other member of society as “feebs” who live boringly ordinary lives. One night, Richard has a horrifying epiphany: his life is just as pointless as those of all the people he looks down upon. Sitting alone in his car and weeping to himself, he decides that he must “create something. Anything.”

An avid moviegoer, Richard believes that the one form of art that he’s capable of is filmmaking; he’ll write and direct his very own movie. Richard dreams up a story he titles The Man Who Got Away and writes a one-paragraph synopsis of it: “A truck-driver driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles runs over and kills a child. He tries to get away. He doesn’t.” Richard then takes his idea to Leo, who works out the minimum budget required to make the film. Richard is convinced that he and Leo can raise half of the amount needed. (Richard will embezzle his share from Honest Hal and Leo will hock the valuable painting that is his sole leftover from his glory days.) He begs Leo to contact “The Man” (Ernie Vincent), the head of Leo’s former studio Mammoth Pictures, and see if he’ll put up the other half. After reading Richard’s screenplay, The Man greenlights the project and offers the studio’s resources in lieu of cash to make the picture.

Working on a limited budget and schedule that doesn’t allow for any retakes, Richard completes his movie. But after watching the first cut, he becomes dissatisfied with his creation and decides to edit it down to a length he believes necessary to maintain the film’s tension. By the time Richard and Ruggerio (Max Kerstein), the editor assigned to him by the studio, finish pruning the film to the point Richard wants, they have a movie that runs only 63 minutes. That’s when Ruggerio breaks the bad news to Richard.

Ruggerio: “With the sound effects and the music dubbed in, it will be a little masterpiece and I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. Unfortunately, we have to put twenty-seven more minutes of film. Three minutes can be taken in titling, but the other twenty-four will have to be plain old padding.”

Richard: “Can we pad twenty-four minutes and still maintain the pace I’ve set, the mood and so on?”

Ruggerio: “Nope. But there’s no choice.”

Richard: “Why is that?”

Ruggerio: “You know that as well as I do, Mr. Hudson. A movie is ninety minutes long. Six full reels. That’s the business.”

Richard: “But unnecessary padding will ruin my movie.”

Ruggerio: “Not really. We can stretch the hell out of that chase down the highway. I’ve got stock stuff I haven’t even looked at yet, reel after reel. Scenic views, wild flowers, traffic jams, all kinds of stuff, and we can fit it in fine. I remember a western once where I stretched a desert chase out twenty-five minutes with long shots of different guys riding on horseback. Nobody knew the difference. People like chases.”

Richard: “The Man Who Got Away isn’t a western.”

Ruggerio: “Yeah, but he doesn’t really get away, either. It’s the same thing as a big chase—“

Richard: (shouting angrily) “Damn it, no! As far as I’m concerned, my movie will run as it is, twenty-seven minutes short! Period. I’m not going to ruin my movie because of some stupid ruling that it has to be ninety minutes long!” 1

Richard digs in his heels, insisting that adding unnecessary footage to his movie would be “like adding three more plates to the Last Supper or an extra wing on the Pentagon.” Unexpectedly, The Man doesn’t reject the movie outright as being too short. In fact, he and Leo have come up with an idea to salvage the film. When Richard learns what will be done with his “masterpiece” against his will, he explodes in rage, taking a perverse, self-destructive revenge on all those he believes have double-crossed him. (Re: the title, while Richard does his share of exploiting and abusing many of the female characters who are unfortunate enough to cross his path, it’s hardly the main focus of the story. Willeford’s original title for his book was The Director, but Newstand Library, the original publisher, thought that The Woman Chaser would be a more appropriately lurid title for a paperback pulp novel.)

Devor not only got the 1960 period details (costumes, cars, props, locations) down perfectly, but, aided by Kramer Morgenthau’s black-and-white widescreen cinematography, he also was successful in recreating the look of such low-budget independent films of the period as Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962). Also contributing to the period authenticity was Daniele Luppi’s music score, utilizing recordings by jazz artists of the time like Les Baxter, Chico O’Farrell, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Tito Puente, and Jimmy Smith.

Typical of Willeford’s work, much of his novel The Woman Chaser is set inside Richard Hudson’s psyche, with long, rambling soliloquies from Richard detailing how he observes the rest of the world, his patronizing contempt for everyone he comes in contact with, and his philosophy based on his belief that movies mirror real life. Devor retained many of these soliloquies and filmed them in ways that provide visual metaphors for Richard’s life-as-film outlook. Some of the monologues are done as voice-overs accompanying either the action or close-ups of Richard looking straight at the camera with the glare of a movie projector backlighting him from behind and bathing him in a halo-like glow. Other monologues consist of Richard in a dark room breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience directly with Richard’s head in the far background of the extreme left of the screen while the turning reels of a 16mm projector and its projected light frame Richard in the foreground.

Since the story is told entirely from Richard Hudson’s POV, Patrick Warburton appears in every single scene and he rises to the occasion by giving the performance of his career. (People who know Warburton mainly for his work in sitcoms like Seinfeld and Rules of Engagement will be in for a big surprise when they see The Woman Chaser.) The power in Warburton’s performance lies in his underplaying the role rather than going for the over-the-top approach that most actors take when playing maniacs. Warburton plays Richard as a ticking time-bomb waiting to go off, a passive-aggressive type just barely suppressing his inner rage and frustration while hiding behind a facade of macho hipness. In an interview with Jeffrey M. Anderson for the website Combustible Celluloid, Warburton gave his personal take on the character: “He’s just a brutish, self-serving ass. There’s something very boyish about Hudson. He’s dangerous and he scares you, but then there are times when he’s just like a pathetic little boy. Maybe that’s why you can empathize with him a little bit, ’cause you just see what a pathetic creature he is and how lost he is.”

For the rest of his cast, Devor went with non-experienced actors, deliberately avoiding professionals. As he explained to Lybarger: “To me, the ultimate failure in a lot of movies—and a lot of people will agree with me—is that a lot of the actors look like they’re in the 90s or 2000. They’re just too good-looking; they’re just too coifed. Their bodies are just too cut, and there are no flaws. That’s not the kind of look people had in the past, and it’s not appropriate for this project. My formula for this when I was casting—God love the actors; they’re wonderful, attractive people as contemporary human beings—but I wanted Hudson to be this kind of normal-looking guy surrounded by these grotesques. I wanted to stack the deck and to make his bullying almost more of a mismatch. I wanted to make Leo so unaggressive and so unthreatening that, when he ultimately betrays Richard, it’s very absurd. It’s difficult to find somebody. A lot of people would come in, and they’d be character actors playing [Leo] like a wacky intellectual. This non-actor [Paul Malevich] was a very down-to-earth sweet guy. He was a real person. He allowed us to film him in unflattering ways. There were very few self-conscious actors on the set, which was great.” Ironically, this paralleled the way Richard Hudson decides to cast his movie when Leo states that their marginal budget provides a pitifully low amount for the actors’ salaries. As Richard tells Leo in Willeford’s novel, “To do my movie, it has to be done with nobodies… If I can get actors nobody knows, they’ll believe in the characters as they see them on the screen.”

Although it played in a few key cities (New York, LA, Austin, San Francisco) in mid-2000, The Woman Chaser never received a general nationwide release. It didn’t help that many reviewers (including the New York Times’ Stephen Holder) dismissed it as “a film noir spoof,” which only shows how little most mainstream critics know about film noir. 2 (Despite an undercurrent of dark humor that runs throughout The Woman Chaser, it’s no “spoof,” it’s the real deal.) In the years since, The Woman Chaser has earned more respect and developed a cult following. In a Film Noir of the Week review, Kim Morgan (Sunset Gun) praised The Woman Chaser for being “faithful to its beautifully seedy genre while feeling like an entirely unique experience” and characterized it as “an arch, subversive film that remains, to the very last frame, weirdly understated.”

The jury’s still out on the merits of streaming vs. discs. (I personally share my World Cinema Paradise colleagues Stuart Galbraith IV and Stephen Bowie’s preference for the physical medium. If you own a movie on DVD or Blu-Ray, you don’t have to worry about the “streaming rights” expiring.) But steaming can atone for a multitude of sins if it brings a little-seen wonder like The Woman Chaser to a new audience. Think of it as The Film That Almost Got Away. But didn’t. (Now when the hell is this movie gonna get its long-overdue DVD and Blu-Ray release?)

[1] Actually, Willeford betrayed some unfamiliarity with the film industry here. Although they were becoming increasingly rare by the 1960s, there were still second-features being released with running times well below 90 minutes. For example, Harvey Hart’s Dark Intruder, a 59-minute long unsold pilot for a television horror series produced by Alfred Hitchcock’s Shamley Productions, was released by Universal Pictures as the bottom half of a double-bill with William Castle’s I Saw What You Did in July 1965. Also, a reel of 35mm film contained 10-minutes worth of footage, not 15-minutes, so a 90-minute film would be nine reels, not six. Nevertheless, Willeford’s fictional “90-minutes rule” was necessary for plot purposes and Devor made the right call to retain it as is. Nice in-joke: The Woman Chaser runs exactly 90-minutes.

[2] One of the reasons that it’s almost impossible to do an acceptable parody of film noir is that most great film noirs (such as The Maltese Falcon, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep, and Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil) contain a great deal of intentional humor and most attempts at spoofing the genre fail to be nearly as funny.

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The Best Movies You’ve Never Heard Of: “The Late Show” (1977)

January 22, 2014 Doug Krentzlin 3 Comments

In the late 1960s and early 70s, “film noir” was a term known only to dedicated classic cinema aficionados, and urban-based movie mysteries involving cynical, hard-boiled private detectives were considered relics of the past. (Two attempts to revive Raymond Chandler’s iconic detective hero Philip Marlowe, Marlowe, Paul Bogart’s 1969 film adaptation of The Little Sister, and Robert Altman’s 1973 adaptation of The Long Goodbye, both failed dismally at the box office.) But after Roman Polanski’s Chinatown proved to be a major financial winner for Paramount Pictures in the summer of 1974, private eye mysteries enjoyed a brief resurgence in movies (Dick Richards’ 1975 adaptation of Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely) and on television (City of Angels, The Rockford Files). “Film noir” was suddenly ‘in.”

Among the most interesting off-shoots of this subsequent revival were a trio of films released by Warner Brothers (none of which came anywhere close to repeating Chinatown’s business): Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975), which, like Altman’s The Long Goodbye, was a total deconstruction of the genre; Stuart Rosenberg’s The Drowning Pool (1975), a belated sequel to Harper (Jack Smight’s 1966 adaptation of Ross MacDonald’s The Moving Target); and, best of all, The Late Show (1977), written and directed by Robert Benton, best known at the time for co-writing the screenplays of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? (1972). (The Late Show was Benton’s first solo script.) But to imply that The Late Show was a kind of knock-off of Chinatown would be grossly unfair to a unique, one-of-a-kind film that lived up to its advertising tagline, “The nicest, warmest, funniest, and most touching movie you’ll ever see about blackmail, mystery, and murder.”

Although set contemporarily in the dreary, colorless Los Angeles of 1977, memories of the 1940s haunt The Late Show (a mood immeasurably enhanced by Ken Wannberg’s subtle, melancholy jazz score). Make no mistake, however; this is no nostalgia piece pining for lost times. The film’s main character, ex-gumshoe Ira Wells (beautifully played by Art Carney), has no desire to live in the past. With his bad leg and hearing aid, Wells simply wants to live out his final years in peaceful retirement, with perhaps an occasional day at the race track for diversion. (Benton based Wells on his own father, who preferred downing one glass of Alka-Seltzer after another rather than having his perforated ulcer operated on a second time.)

It’s worth noting that Robert Altman, who produced The Late Show and assigned Benton to direct it after buying his script, saw it as a kind of sequel to his own The Long Goodbye, complete with that film’s salt-and-pepper team of homicide detectives Dayton and Green (John S. Davis and Jerry Jones, respectively) putting in a reappearance (before winding up on the cutting room floor). In fact, Wells’ standard attire is identical to that worn by Elliott Gould’s Marlowe in the earlier film: black suit and tie with a white shirt. (In an interview connected with the release of The Late Show, Altman joked that he was going to keep remaking The Long Goodbye until he got it right.)

Fresh off of his Best Actor Oscar-winning turn in Paul Mazursky’s Harry and Tonto (1974), Carney gave an even better performance playing a role unlike any he’d ever done previously. Before his Oscar win, Carney was, of course, best known for playing the role of Ed Norton on Jackie Gleason’s seminal TV sitcom The Honeymooners. But, although he was a prestigiously versatile actor who felt equally at home doing comedy and drama, Carney had never been cast as a tough guy (or even a former tough guy) before. As Carney himself put it, “I’ve got the hearing problem… I’ve got the bum leg. I’ve got the paunch, the middle-age spread. I mean, I really brought my paunch to the part. I’ve got cataracts. And for the perforated ulcer, I’ve got my hiatal hernia… I mean, the character was well defined before we got started. I told Benton, ‘You’ve got the right guy.’” [1] (The way that Ira’s physical infirmaries make him particularly vulnerable is one of the film’s main sources of suspense.)

The other star of The Late Show was another brilliant, unique talent, Lily Tomlin, who had received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Altman’s Nashville (1975). Tomlin played Margo Sperling, a former Hollywood actress wannabe, burned-out “flower child,” and free-spirited kook already becoming a crazy cat lady. Margo barely makes ends meet by freelancing as a clothes designer and a manager for performing artists of dubious talent (sort of a hippie version of Woody Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose), in addition to periodically peddling some reefer. (“This grass was so great, I can’t tell you. There was so much resins in it, it made your lips stick together.”) As Margo, Tomlin gave arguably her finest film performance ever. (Both Carney and Tomlin should’ve won Oscars for The Late Show.)

Initially, there was some friction between Carney and Tomlin, due mainly to Altman and Benton allowing Tomlin free rein to ad-lib her way through scenes. According to fellow cast mate John Considine, “Art had a lot of trouble with Lily, because of her improvising.” Carney was an actor of the old school who believed in following a script to the letter and had problems in the past with actors who didn’t, most notably Gleason and Walter Matthau (his co-star in the original Broadway production of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple). Carney was eventually won over by Tomlin’s professionalism and Benton’s encouragement to improvise along with her.

The Late Show opens with a sepia-toned image of the 1940s version of Warner Brothers’ “shield” logo. Instead of Max Steiner’s familiar musical fanfare, however, we hear a nightclub audience applauding and a piano begins playing the first few notes of the movie’s theme song, a sultry torch number called “What Was,” composed by Wannberg with lyrics by Stephen Lerner, and sung by Bev Kelly.

But when the first shot fades in, the setting isn’t a nightclub; it’s Ira’s modest rented room (the song continues in the background). We see a typewriter on Ira’s desk (a piece of paper in the typewriter shows the first words of a manuscript: “NAKED GIRLS AND MACHINE GUNS, Memoirs of a real private detective by Ira Wells”) and, beside it, a framed photo of actress Martha Vickers (best known for her role as Carmen Sternwood in Howard Hawks’ 1946 adaptation of Chandler’s The Big Sleep). The camera then wanders around the room, taking in, among other things, old photos taped to a mirror (cleverly utilizing actual photos of Carney and Howard Duff in younger days) while the credits are superimposed over the shot. By the time the credits and the song are over, the camera settles behind Ira, sitting before his desk. Then a cut to a medium shot shows Ira perusing a newspaper, pencil in hand (obviously picking out his bets for his next visit to the track), while an old movie depicting a World War I dogfight blares on a portable black-and-white television set behind him.

There’s a knock on Ira’s door and, outside, Ira’s elderly landlady Mrs. Schmidt (Ruth Nelson, a founder of the Group Theatre) announces that he has a late-night visitor. Ira opens the door to reveal Mrs. Schmidt and his ex-partner, Harry Regan (Duff). Harry’s disheveled appearance automatically leads Ira to think he’s drunk (“They’re gonna have to put a night shift on Jack Daniel’s just to keep up with you.”), but when Harry opens his mouth to speak, the only thing that comes out is blood. Interrupting Mrs. Schmidt’s screams with an urgent plea to call for police and an ambulance, Ira leads Harry to his bed and sets him down. Prying away the raincoat that Harry’s clutching over his belly, it becomes immediately apparent by the bloodstain spreading across Harry’s shirt that he’s dying from a gunshot wound.

Harry: “It’s not as bad as the time in San Diego… Ira, got a deal for us…”

Ira: “Harry, who did it?”

Harry: “It’s chance for us to make a lotta dough…”

Ira: “Harry, you’re dyin’. Who did it? How did it happen?”

Harry: “Don’t worry, Ira. I’m cuttin’ you in. Fair deal. Just don’t try to throw a scare inta me. I won’t work. I’ll lay it all out for you. Just get me to a hospital…”

Ira: “God damn you, Harry! Lettin’ someone just walk up to you and drill you like that, point blank. Nobody can palm a .45. Jesus Christ! You never had the brains God gave a common dog!” (sadly) “Sorry you’re goin’ off, pal. You were real good company. The best.”

Harry: (starts to respond, then breaths his last)

Ira: “The very best.” (sighs)

The day of Harry’s funeral, Ira bids farewell to the mourners, then starts to head out of the cemetery. He’s stopped by an old acquaintance, Charlie Hatter (Bill Macy), an oily promoter, talent agent, and part-time bartender who’s the epitome of a bottom-feeding weasel. He introduces Ira to Margo. She wants to hire Ira to find her cat, Winston, who’s been kidnapped by a thug named Brian to whom she owes $500. (“So pay him!” Ira says exasperatedly.) When Margo gets bent out of shape by Ira’s indifference and offers him all of $25 for the job, Ira keeps his temper in check, tells Charlie that he appreciates his presence at Harry’s funeral, and that he should teach his friend “to show a little respect for her elders.” Then he stalks off to head for the track, with Margo waving a photo of Winston at him and wailing sorrowfully, “This little kitty’s just a little honey bun! Give this little cat a break!”

Later that day, Ira confronts Charlie at the shoeshine stand in the seedy building his office is in. “How long has it been since I’ve last seen you, Charlie? Close to a year, isn’t it?” Ira asks, “Somebody puts the freeze on Harry Regan, next thing I know, you show up at Harry’s funeral with some dolly, a song-and-dance about a stolen cat, and all that hot comedy.” Charlie tells Ira that Harry was the first shamus Margo hired to find her cat.

Next stop: Margo’s apartment in La Paloma. “Harry Regan was a pal of mine, close to twenty-four years. Whoever it was that killed him’s gonna be goddam sorry,” Ira declares. (Ira’s quest to find his partner’s killer deliberately echoes Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. The Late Show’s overtones of that uber-private eye saga don’t stop there.) Margo reveals that the catnapper’s full name is Brian Hemphill (“He’s this guy,” Margo says, “He’s really sort of a tuna.”), and that she used to “shlep” hot merchandise for Brian and his “partner” and wound up “borrowing” the last payment for said property. Ira sizes Margo up on the spot.

“Back in the 40s, this town was crawlin’ with dollies like you, good-lookin’ cokeheads, tryin’ their damndest to act tough as hell. I’ve got news for you: They did it better back then. This town doesn’t change. They just push the names around. Same dames, screwin’ up their lives, just the same way.”

Ira tells Margo that, the next time Brian calls, he wants her “to set up a meet,” and leaves it at that.

The “meet” goes disastrously. Charlie and Margo show up at Mrs. Schmidt’s house with bad news: Margo told Brian over the phone that Ira was “gunning for him,” and Brian is now on his way over, armed and dangerous. (“Brain’s not very evolved,” Margo explains, “In fact, he’s rather de-evolved.”) Ira immediately breaks out his old revolver and loads it. But, as Brian approaches the house, he’s confronted by another man, who shoots and kills him and takes off in a car. Ira goes outside to pursue the killer. He aims his gun at the fleeing car while turning down his hearing aid (a wonderful image). One of his shots punctures a rear tire, and the car crashes and bursts into flames, but the murderer still manages to escape on foot.

While awaiting the arrival of the police, Ira demands Charlie to hand over “whatever you took off the stiff.” (“Jesus, kid, you always were the best,” Charlie says admiringly, then adds to Margo, “Didn’t I say he was the best?”) The “whatever” turns out to be a small leather folder containing rare stamps. Ira immediately puts two and two together.

Ira: “The Whiting job.”

Margo: “What? Who?”

Ira: “About ten days ago, somewhere out in the valley.”

Margo: “Whiting? Who is that?”

Ira: “That Whiting had a stamp collection worth almost fifty grand.”

Margo: “Who is that? Who’s Whiting?”

Ira: “There’s a murder one tied to it, right?”

Margo: “Okay, don’t tell me. What do I care?”

Ira: (patiently, as if explaining to a child) “Two guys broke into a house out in the valley. They tied up Whiting and his wife and started to lift the stamps. Then something must’ve gone wrong because they beat up Whiting and killed his wife.”

Margo: “Oh, how disgusting! I don’t want to hear any more.”

After Ira threatens to turn him over to the cops, Charlie comes clean: While looking for Margo’s cat, Harry stumbled onto info about Brian and his partner pulling the Whiting robbery, and he and Charlie planned to turn them in and split the fifteen thousand dollar reward the insurance company was offering for the stamps. Obviously, someone involved with the crime found out what Harry was up to, so exit Harry.

From there, the trail leads Ira to Ronnie Birdwell (Eugene Roche), a slimy, porcine wheeler-dealer in stolen merchandise and black market goods whose descriptions of the hot products he fences sound like he memorized them from the Sears catalogue, and Birdwell’s sadistic but fastidious strong arm goon Lamar (John Considine). (In his Trailers From Hell commentary on The Late Show, screenwriter Josh Olson describes Lamar as “a gunsel in every sense of the word; look it up.”) Birdwell also has a faithless, promiscuous wife, Laura (Joanna Cassidy), who is obviously this film noir’s obligatory femme fatale.

As Ira’s investigation progresses, the dead bodies continue to pile up, (one corpse is discovered inside a refrigerator), and the intrigues and double-crosses he uncovers multiply. (On a positive note, Winston is recovered, alive and unharmed, but Margo is convinced that he’s been traumatized by his temporary stay with murderers.) All the while, the initial animosity between Ira and Margo develops into a genuine friendship based on their mutual admiration for each other’s ingenuity. They bond even closer after successfully eluding a couple of thugs who were pursuing them in a high-speed car chase.

Margo: “Ira, I feel so high. Just so incredibly high, I can’t even tell you. I feel like I’ve dropped acid, I mean, have you ever dropped acid?”

Ira: “Well, not in the last ten minutes.”

Margo: “You know, I get this feeling, I mean, do you know, can you see anything about me that’s different, I mean, like my expression, can you see a different kind of expression on my face?”

Ira: (deadpan) “You look higher.”

Margo: “I look high? Do I, right now? Well, I am high. I’m telling you, I am high.”

On a roll, Margo proposes getting herself a private investigator’s license so that she and Ira can go into business together.

Margo: “I feel like The Thin Man.”

Ira: “Who?”

Margo: “You know, Phyllis Kirk and Peter Lawford.” [2]

It seems that the apartment next to Margo’s is vacant, so she thinks that they can make it the office for their new detective agency. But, ever the loner, Ira shoots the idea down, and, in the film’s most poignant moment, Margo tries to hide her disappointment while struggling to keep from breaking down.

For the climactic scene, all of the suspects wind up in Margo’s apartment. (In the movie’s most stylish visual touch, the camera does a 360° turn around the apartment, starting with the open front door while the building’s ancient elevator is heard beginning its ascent, panning past the faces of those gathered there as they await Ira and Mrs. Birdwell’s arrival, and coming full circle with the elevator noise ceasing and Ira and Laura walking in through the door.) Per mystery movie tradition, Ira details all of the evidence and explains who did what to who, resulting in the guilty parties either ending up behind bars or joining Harry in the cemetery.

As for what happens to Ira and Margo afterwards, that question would’ve been answered in Benton’s proposed sequel (to be titled, of course, The Late Late Show), in which Ira moved into the vacant apartment next to Margo’s and they opened that detective agency she dreamt of. Certainly, the uniformly positive reviews The Late Show received (with raves from Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert, and Vincent Canby, among others) would seem to have justified continuing Ira and Margo’s adventures. But, unfortunately, Warner Bros. only half-heartedly promoted the film, and The Late Show quickly faded into undeserved obscurity. (According to Olson, there were only two other people in the theater when he saw in on its opening Friday night in Philadelphia.)

In 2004, Warner Home Video issued a bare bones single-disc DVD release of The Late Show, the only extras being the theatrical trailer and a brief 1977 television clip of Tomlin plugging the movie on Dinah Shore’s afternoon talk show Dinah! while surrounded by that day’s other guests, the Doobie Brothers. (The only real value of this clip is to serve as a reminder of how dead on the money the satirical series SCTV was when it skewered TV talk show banalities.) In reviews of the DVD, there have been some complaints of the print looking “grainy” and the colors being rather faded, but having seen The Late Show about half a dozen times in the theater during its first release, I can assure you that the movie has always looked like that. (In fact, graininess and muted colors were practically among Altman’s trademarks in his own films, so it’s safe to assume that these aspects of the film were deliberate.)

[1] Michael Seth Starr, Art Carney (Applause Theatre & Cinema Books: 2002)

[2] A reference to The Thin Man television series that ran for two seasons on NBC, starting in the fall of 1957, and later went into syndication. Margo was, after all, a child of the 50s.

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