Dashiell Hammett | June's Boy

Movie night!

Tonight’s opus gruesome is Two Sharp Knives.

This is a 1950’s made-for-TV dramatization of a story by Dashiell Hammett.

Aha!

That’s why I watched it. How bad could something written by the author of The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon be?

Well…

It was part of the Westinghouse Studio series. Westinghouse’s slogan at the time was; “You can be sure if it’s Westinghouse”.

Sure of what? You certainly couldn’t be sure of a quality piece of entertainment.

No.

No sir.

However there were points of interest;

A very young Abe Vigoda plays a very young cop. I’m stunned that such a thing was ever possible as a very young Abe Vigoda.
The commercials for Westinghouse washers and dryers feature a Westinghouse store owner inviting you to bring your dirty clothes to his store for a free demonstration. Now there’s a gig.

I came away thinking (to paraphrase George Kaufman); Westinghouse should close the studio and keep the store open late at night.

I cringe-watched this…so you don’t have to…you can owe me.

Movie Night!

Didja ever play the mental game of planning the guest list for an ideal imaginary dinner party? I do it all the time. Most of the time I include Nick and Nora Charles from The Thin Man.

If Nick and Nora are among your guests, you’ll feel secure in the success of your dinner party as long as the bar is amply provisioned and a stylish cocktail shaker is at hand. You know there’ll be no awkward gaps in the table chatter and there could quite possibly be some fascinating party-crashers named “Rainbow” Benny, “Face” Morgan, or “Spider” Webb.

Warning: there could also be gun-play.

Throw in some weepy drunks, a befuddled police detective or two, a crooked bookkeeper, a murderous jockey, an inscrutable Asian, a socialite grande dame with sleepy siblings, a bitter rejected lover, a gardener with or without his mustache, and you’ve got a shindig that Anita Madden would’ve coveted.

They could even bring their dog. Our Chloe would ecstatically ramble through the house with their Asta. The pups could swap tips on expanding their respective households’ dominance which is already near total.

I could watch “Thin Man” movies forever.