O. Henry's Humor, Pathos, Drama And Irony: 'My Washington Times 'On Crime' Column On O. Henry's 101 Stories

 The Washington Times published my On Crime column on O. Henry’s 101 stories.

Every Christmas season, I watch about a dozen or so favorite holiday films. One of them is “O. Henry’s Full House.” The 1952 film offers five adaptations of O. Henry’s great short stories with Christmas themes. The film features fine directors for each story, such as Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, Henry King, and notable actors as Charles Laughton, Fred Allen, and Marilyn Monroe. Author John Steinbeck is the film’s narrator.

 

The film highlights O. Henry’s humor, drama, pathos, and irony. The stories presented in the film are “The Gift of the Magi,” “The Ransom of Red Chief,” “The Cop and the Anthem,” “The Last Leaf,” and my favorite, “The Clarion Call.” The story stars Dale Robinson as a cop who is indebted to a crook portrayed by Richard Widmark.

 

O. Henry, the pen name of William Sidney Porter, has many admirers, like me, and those admirers will enjoy a new collection of his stories published by the Library of America, called “O. Henry’s 101 Stories.” 

 

As crime is my primary interest and beat, I particularly love O. Henry’s short stories about crime. There are several crime stories in “O. Henry’s 101 Stories,” such as the classic “A Retrieved Reformation,” “After Twenty Years,” and “The Girl and the Graft.” 

“O. Henry’s 101 Stories” was edited by Ben Yagoda. He noted although that although O. Henry is mostly known for stories with a twist ending, such as “The Gift of the Magi,” the majority of his stories do not have surprise endings and are not sentimental.

 

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/oct/21/book-review-o-henry-101-stories/ 

My favorite O. Henry short story, The Clarion Call, was not included in O. Henry's 101 Stories, but you can read the story via the below link:

The Clarion Call (americanliterature.com)

You can also watch the film O. Henry's Full House free via the below link:

O. Henry's Full House (1952) - YouTube

Note: The above photo is of Dale Robinson and Richard Widmark from The Clarion Call in O. Henry's Full House. 

A Look Back At Director Don Siegel's Crime Thriller 'Madigan'

I’m a huge fan of Don Siegel’s films, especially Dirty Harry and Coogan’s Bluff, two crime thrillers he directed with actor Clint Eastwood. 

Don Siegel, who died in 1991, made several good crime films, including another two crime thrillers I like, Charley Varrick, with Walter Matthau, and Madigan, with Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda and Harry Guardino.      

Raymond Benson offers a review of the Blu-Ray Special Edition of Madigan at Cinemaretro.com.

The filmmaker who made the iconic Clint Eastwood vehicle, Dirty Harry in 1971 also made something of an early test-run three years earlier in the form of a crime picture called Madigan.

Starring Richard Widmark as a tough, cynical, and world-weary police detective in New York City, Madigan displays the same look, feel, and grit that the later Eastwood police procedural exhibits. And, like Harry Callahan, Dan Madigan doesn’t always follow the rules.

Don Siegel (credited here as “Donald” Siegel for some odd reason, for he had been “Don” in earlier films) had been a solid craftsman since the 1950s, responsible for such works as Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), the admirable remake of The Killers (1964), and Coogan’s Bluff (1968). Likewise, Madigan is a well-made thriller with a hard-boiled plot and realistic characters portrayed by an excellent cast that includes Henry Fonda, Inger Stevens, and James Whitmore.

The tale begins when Madigan (Widmark) and his partner Rocco Bonaro (Harry Guardino) screw up while attempting to bring in hoodlum Barney Benesch (Steve Inhat) for questioning, unaware that he is wanted for murder in Brooklyn. Benesch gets the upper hand on the pair and runs away with their guns. Police commissioner Russell (Fonda) isn’t happy about this, but he has other problems on his mind.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://cinemaretro.com/index.php?/archives/10670-REVIEW-MADIGAN-1968-STARRING-RICHARD-WIDMARK-AND-HENRY-FONDA;-KINO-LORBER-BLU-RAY-SPECIAL-EDITION.html

'O. Henry's Full House': A Fine Film To Watch On Christmas Eve

There are a half dozen or so films I like to watch each year during the Christmas season. 

One of the films is O. Henry’s Full House.

The 1952 film offers four adaptations of O. Henry’s great short stories with Christmas themes, featuring five fine directors, fine screenwriters and a fine cast. 

The film presents some of my favorite short stories from one of my favorite writers. 

The O. Henry stories - The Clarion Call, The Gift of the Magi, The Cop and the Anthem, and The Last Leaf - offer humor, drama, pathos and irony.  

I especially like the crime story The Clarion Call, with Dale Robinson and Richard Widmark (seen in the above photo).

You can watch the opening of the film and the first story, The Cop and the Anthem with the late, great actor Charles Laughton and a young Marilyn Monroe (seen in the above photo), via the below link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IC0Ch_k1k0 

 You can also read about the film via the below link:

http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article.html?id=919515%7C719126

 And you can purchase the DVD via the below link:

https://www.amazon.com/Henrys-Full-House/dp/B000HT3PPQ 

Note: The above photo is of William Sydney Porter, whose pen name was O.Henry. 

Dale Robinson, Tales Of Wells Fargo TV Western Star, Dies At 89

Mike Barnes at the Hollywood Reporter reports on the death of TV Western star Dale Robinson.

Dale Robertson, a veteran of movies and TV Westerns of the 1950s and ’60s who played “the left-handed gun” on NBC’s Tales of Wells Fargo, died Wednesday of lung cancer and pneumonia in a San Diego hospital. He was 89.

An Oklahoma native and member of the Cowboy Hall of Fame, Robertson also starred as gambler-turned-railroad tycoon Ben Calhoun in Iron Horse, which ran on ABC from 1966-68, and as the Texas billionaire title character in NBC’s 1987-88 adventure series J.J. Starbuck, from Stephen J. Cannell Productions.

 

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dale-robertson-westerns-wells-fargo-425019

 

I grew up watching Dale Robinson as Jim Hardy, a Wells Fargo detective in the Tales of Wells Fargo. I loved the show. You can now watch the old episodes on Cozi TV.

 

And thanks to youtube.com you can watch some episodes of Tales of Wells Fargo online.

Below are links to one of the shows:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbE40lPpOwk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrvYIf7qnIk  

 

 

Not mentioned in the Hollywood Reporter story is Dale Robinson's fine performance with Richard Widmark in The Clarion Call, one of the five short stories dramatized in the 1952 film O.Henry's Full House.

 

Robinson portrayed a New York detective who is indebted to a crook portrayed by Richard Widmark. This was a great short story with two fine actors.

You can watch author John Steinbeck introduce the story via the below link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-68pI8Jx8pM

I purchased the DVD for my daughter this past Christmas and I also purchased a copy for myself. 

A Look Back At Don Siegel's Great Crime Films

I'm a big fan of the late film director Don Siegel.

I often watch his films again whenever I catch them on TV, especially his great crime films, like Madigan, with Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda (seen in the above photo with Don Siegel on the left), Coogan's Bluff  and Dirty Harry, both with Clint Eastwood, and Charley Varrick, with Walter Matthau.

Siegal also made a good spy thriller with Michael Caine called The Black Windmill and he directed John Wayne's last film, a great Western called The Shootist. 

Oliver Lyttelton at indiewire.com takes a look back at Don Siegal and five of his notable films.

In the credits to his masterpiece "Unforgiven," Clint Eastwood included a dedication: "for Don Siegel and Sergio Leone." Leone was a no-brainer, one of the great filmmakers who worked with Clint on a trio of films ("The Good The Bad And The Ugly," "A Fistful Of Dollars" and "For A Few Dollars More"). But Siegel was less beloved of cinephiles. A cosmopolitan Chicago native who studied at Jesus College, Cambridge, he started directing montages at Warner Bros. (including the opening scene of "Casablanca"), before breaking into features, with a string of B-movies with everyone from Robert Mitchum to Elvis Presley (the latter on 1960's "Flaming Star"), but became most notable for his work with Eastwood on five pictures from 1968's "Coogan's Bluff" to 1979's "Escape From Alcatraz."

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/the-essentials-the-films-of-don-siegel-20120420