The Dame and Darrow

There’s much being made today of what would have been Agatha Christie’s 118 birthday (she died in 1976). The New York Times and The Daily Telegraph both carry reports about a newly unearthed trove of audio tapes from the 1960s in which Dame Agatha explains that she based spinster sleuth Jane Marple in part on her own grandmother, that Marple was not intended to be a series character, and that “she thought the fastidious Hercule Poirot and the indomitable Miss Marple should never meet.” More on the discovery of these tapes can be found here. (Hat tip to Sarah Weinman.)

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Foxwell has news about BBC Radio 7’s plans this week to broadcast several installments of writer Andrew Eames recalling how he retraced Christie’s 1928 journey to the Middle East, a trip about which he wrote in The 8:55 to Baghdad: From London to Iraq on the Trail of Agatha Christie (2005). BBC will also broadcast an adaptation of Christie’s 1940 novel, One, Two, Buckle My Shoe in five parts, beginning today. Click here to listen live or catch up on archived shows for a limited time.

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And let’s not forget another birthday today, that of actor Henry Darrow, who turns 75 years old.

Born in New York City but reared in Puerto Rico, Darrow (né Enrique Tomas Delgado, Jr.) later moved to Los Angeles to become an actor. After taking small parts in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Wild, Wild West, and Mission: Impossible, Darrow became a regular on the 1967-1971 western series The High Chaparral. In 1973, he starred in a Richard Donner-directed TV pilot called Hernandez, playing Juan Hernandez, a Mexican-American detective from Chicago, who transfers to the police force in Houston, Texas. (The series, had it been sold, was to be called Hernandez: Houston P.D. In its synopsis, the Internet Movie Database says that Darrow’s character “can handle anything criminals and bureaucrats throw at him, but can’t manage his mother at home.”) A year later, Darrow took a co-starring role as Lieutenant Manuel “Manny” Quinlan in the great David Janssen private-eye series Harry O. Unfortunately, when that series’ location was moved from San Diego, California, to L.A. partway through its first season, the writers had Quinlan gunned down and substituted Anthony Zerbe as Harry Orwell’s cop adversary/friend.

Since Harry O, Darrow has appeared in McMillan & Wife, Hawaii Five-O, Quincy, M.E., Magnum, P.I., and Diagnosis: Murder, as well as a variety of non-crime series, notably two of the Star Trek shows.

READ MORE: “Dame Agatha Speaks,” by Jeri Westerson
(Getting Medieval).

Singer, Dancer, Spy

Funny how these things work, eh?

The recent news that the DVD set Mission: Impossible--The Fifth Season will reach stores in early October put me in mind of the lovely New York-born actress Lesley Ann Warren, who during that season (1970-1971) took on the series’ lead female role as Dana Lambert, replacing Barbara Bain’s Cinnamon Carter. Credited as “Lesley Warren,” she was only 24 years old at the time, and as Wikipedia reports, “was considered too inexperienced for the part.” Yet I remember Warren’s participation fondly, in a year when the series itself was undergoing some changes, its stories having more to do with combating organized crime in the States than tackling international intrigues. (The fifth season of Mission: Impossible was also when Sam Elliott joined the IMF team.)

The gaming Web site UGO has a Mission: Impossible tribute section, where it recalls that Warren

did a remarkable job of differentiating herself, most obviously by embracing the show’s penchant for disguises. Her transformation into an Asian woman in the 1970 episode “Butterfly” was astounding. While Lambert wasn’t the most versatile of the female operatives, she played the romance card very well. Of course, it also doesn't hurt that Warren was particularly outspoken about her character, publicly proclaiming that Lambert was a “now” person, meaning she was a well-versed member of the sexual revolution. Young, gorgeous and free-spirited? That’s just the way we like our spies.

Anyway, all of this got me thinking about Warren, and caused me to look up her birthday. Which just happens to be today. Amazingly, she’ll be blowing out 62 candles on any cake set down before her this afternoon. I say “amazingly,” because even though I enjoy watching her now as Mary McCormack’s alcoholic mother on In Plain Sight (the first-season finale episode of which will be broadcast tomorrow night on the USA Network), I still think of Warren as a much younger woman. As Dana Lambert in Mission: Impossible. As Cathy Lange in the 1972 TV movie Assignment: Munich, which spawned the Robert Conrad series Assignment: Vienna. And as a convicted thief’s daughter in one episode of The Mod Squad.

Warren made the rounds of celebrated crime dramas during the 1970s, guest starring on Columbo, Harry O, Jigsaw John, and other shows. But she is probably better recognized for several of her film roles. Warren, who originally trained as a ballet dancer and has developed an outstanding singing voice over the years, has put both to excellent use on the screen. Who could forget her remarkable, seductive performance in the 1984 Alan Rudolph film Choose Me, or her Oscar-nominated role as James Garner’s brassy, blond gangster’s moll in Victor, Victoria (1982), which included an eye-catching nightclub floor show in honor of Chicago, Illinois?

I, for one, have not forgotten. Happy birthday, Lesley Ann.

The Other Centenarian

Much will be made this spring of what would have been spy novelist Ian Fleming’s 100th birthday, on May 28. (He died in 1964.) But today marks the 100th anniversary of another memorable player in the crime-fiction sphere, Buddy Ebsen. Yes, he portrayed Jed Clampett in television’s The Beverly Hillbillies and almost became famous as the Tin Man in the 1939 classic film The Wizard of Oz (but the powdered aluminum irritated his skin, and he had to be replaced by actor Jack Haley). What really matters to us, though, is that for seven years he played elderly, milk-gulping private eye Barnaby Jones in an eponymous CBS-TV series. (The last show produced by the once-ubiquitous Quinn Martin, as it turns out.)

I was never a Barnaby Jones fan. I found the series too formulaic, not innovative enough. But it certainly had many other followers, one of them apparently being “Rick,” a Kentucky banking industry employee who gives a pretty good précis of the series at his blog, On My Mind:

Barnaby Jones was a retired private investigator who left the business to his son Hal. When Hal was murdered while working on a case--he was shot to death while calling his dad--Barnaby came out of retirement and along with Hal’s widow, played by Lee Meriwether, solved Hal’s last case and caught his murder. They worked well together and they decided to keep the Jones detective agency open. Like Columbo, many crooks mistook his home-style country ways and his age as making him seem a bit slow. They really masked a keen detective mind. Their mistake gave Barnaby the upper hand in solving the crime. Later Mark Shera, formerly on the show S.W.A.T., [joined the series] as his young cousin Jedediah Romano (“J.R.”) Jones. He did Barnaby’s legwork on investigations while also study[ing] for the bar to become a lawyer. He was a welcome addition to the cast, but it always seemed funny that J.R. would chase the crook through half the city. The only way he caught the crook was when Barnaby would show up, gun in hand, at the end of the trail. He usually said “Hold it right there!” With Barnaby in front of him with a gun and J.R. coming up from behind, the villain knew he was cornered and gave up. When the show Cannon was on the air the two shows would often cross over.

Sadly, Ebsen died in 2003, after a brief but noteworthy return to television for the 1984-1985 season of Matt Houston, during which he played actor Lee Horsley’s retired CIA operative uncle, Roy Houston. According to Wikipedia, “During the mid 1990s, Meriwether and Shera expressed interest in a Barnaby Jones reunion TV movie, but could not talk Ebsen into joining the project. However, in 1993, Ebsen reprised the role of Barnaby Jones in the big-screen remake of his most famous TV series, The Beverly Hillbillies. It would be his final theatrical appearance.”

Despite his absence from the festivities, we’ll drink a toast today--appropriately, with milk--to Buddy Ebsen for his TV crime-drama contributions. By the way, if you’re feeling as nostalgic as we are right now, pay a visit to the Absolute Barnaby Jones site, or click below to watch the pulse-quickening intro sequence to Barnaby Jones.

READ MORE: “Hand Me Down My Walking Cane: Old Dicks,” by Kevin Burton Smith (The Thrilling Detective Web Site).

Happy Birthday, Renaissance Man

Extremely prolific Iowa novelist Max Allan Collins, the creator of early 20th-century private eye Nate Heller (Flying Blind, Angel in Black, Chicago Confidential), as well as private eye Ms. Tree (Deadly Beloved), hired killer Quarry (The Last Quarry), and professional thief Nolan, turns 60 years old today. And he seems not to be slowing down one iota. Not only is the Shamus Award-winning Collins working to prepare the late Mickey Spillane’s final books for posthumous publication, but he has a sequel to last year’s A Killing in Comics, Strip for Murder, due out in May; a new standalone thriller, Red Sky in Morning (penned under his pseudonym “Patrick Culhane”), coming in August; and a fresh Quarry novel (The First Quarry) due out from Hard Case Crime in October. Oh, and it looks as if he’ll be writing new Heller novels in the near future.

I was pleased and privileged a few years back to interview Collins at length for January Magazine. If you’d like to read that exchange, it can be found here.

Do you want to send Max your own birthday wishes? You can do so at this publicly available e-mail address: macphilms@hotmail.com.

READ MORE: “Dick Tracy: The Collins Casefiles, Vol. 3,” by Christopher Mills (Guns in the Gutter).