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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 10, No. 30 |
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ED McBAIN'S "COP HATER"
At left, the original United Artists' poster for the 1958 movie version of Ed McBain's "Cop Hater." At right, a very young Robert Loggia, playing detective Steve Carella, defends his hearing-impaired sweetheart (Ellen Parker) from a killer. |
A rare visit to the very first
"87th Precinct" tale on film
of TheColumnists.com
The year 1956 is a very important one in my book of memories. For one thing, it was the year I was graduated from high school and headed for college. For another, it was the year a make believe person named "Ed McBain" published a slim little novel called "Cop Hater."
What? You've never heard of "Cop Hater"? I'm not surprised. I didn't know about it either until I was in my late 50s and becoming more and more interested in the history of mystery. I'm guessing only diehard mystery fans know about it and the significance it has come to have in the modern history of the mystery genre. You don't see copies of it much these days. I found mine a few years ago in a used bookstore on Orcas Island in the San Juan chain of islands in Washington state's Puget Sound.
"Cop Hater" was the first in the long, long series of crime novels about the mythical "87th Precinct" and its hard-working police detectives. It is today considered a seminal work in the creation of what we now call the "police procedural" school of mystery--those stories that concentrate on the authentic day to day investigative procedures followed by police agencies as they track down criminals and solve mysteries.
Before the police procedural, most mysteries were solved by "consulting detectives" like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot or "private eyes" like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. Things changed after producer Mark Hellinger and director Jules Dassin made the 1948 documentary-style movie called "Naked City" and Jack Webb began his "Dragnet" radio series in 1949, there were few novels that spent much time trying to make readers appreciate the teamwork involved in normal crime-solving activities. "Cop Hater" was revolutionary in that aspect, laying down the fundamentals that eventually would lead to today's serious and credible detective novels and the TV shows like "CSI" and "Law and Order."
"Cop Hater" was the creation of a talented and versatile writer named Salvatore Lombino, who wrote science fiction stories under his own name, but used several pen names for his other writing that by 1956 had already put him on the best-seller list. Under the name Evan Hunter, for instance, he had written the searing novel "The Blackboard Jungle," which was turned into the sensational movie of 1955 that not only started a long cycle of realistic "juvenile delinquency" pictures, but also is credited with officially opening the era of rock and roll by using Bill Haley's rock anthem "Rock Around the Clock" as the film's theme song.
"Cop Hater" also launched one of the most enduring literary series of modern times, stretching to more than 50 volumes by the time of Lombino's death in 2005. (Lombino, by the way, finally changed his name legally to Evan Hunter.) Several movies were made from the 87th Precinct novels, including "Cop Hater"; "The Mugger" (1958); "Fuzz" (1972); Akira Kurasawa's "High and Low" (1963), which took the novel "King's Ransom" and moved it to a Japanese setting; and several made-for-TV movies, including "Ice." NBC put on "87th Precinct" as a weekly TV series in 1961-62.
In the original novel, two detectives from the 87th Precinct--Reardon and Foster--are killed in separate shootings. Since they were partners and both were killed by the same .45 caliber handgun, the investigators initially believe someone they had busted in the past must have had a grudge against them.
But that theory falls apart when a third
detective from the precinct--Hank Bush--is killed, but manages
to put a bullet into the assassin before dying. Once the man
is wounded, his apprehension seems much more likely. We follow
the exciting manhunt as all the precinct's detectives focus on
catching the cop killer.
Published in 1956, "Cop Hater" was quickly turned into
a movie by William Berke, a veteran filmmaker who had been an
actor in silent pictures, then turned to writing, producing and
directing "B" westerns and jungle movies--he directed
the Johnny Weissmuller "Jungle Jim" in 1948--before
turning mostly to television in the late 1940s.
Berke acquired the rights to the first
two "87th Precinct" novels--the other was "The
Mugger"--and produced two low-budget films with mostly TV
actors in the casts. Both films were independently produced and
released to theaters by United Artists in 1958. Berke made one
additional film also released in 1958--"The Lost Missile,"
which featured several actors from the "Cop Hater"
cast--before he died in February of 1958, before any of the films
had gone into wide release. He was only 54.
In "Cop Hater," readers first met Detective Steve Carella,
a young officer of Italian extraction, who had fallen in love
with a beautiful young lady named Teddy Franklin, who happened
to be deaf. Carella would gradually emerge as the pivotal figure
in the 87th Precinct series and his subsequent marriage to Teddy
gave the books a special romantic interest that attracted many
female readers.
The screenplay by Henry Kane, another veteran of "B"
movies and television, retained most of the McBain characters
and plot developments, with a few very prominent exceptions.
The most radical change: Detective Hank Bush is gone and in his
place is Mike Maguire. Though there are some minor alterations
in the Bush character to make him Maguire, they both have the
same vital role to play in the story. Maguire's wife, Alice (Shirley
Ballard), is a sexy, overtly passionate woman whose dissatisfaction
with her rather crude husband plays a crucial part in the solving
of the mystery of the cop killings, just as it does in the book.
McBain's book blames a local tabloid newspaper reporter with riling up local teen-age gang members by accusing them of the cop killings. When the punks overreact and shoot off-duty patrolman Bert Kling, the reporter is held responsible by most of the police detectives. His reports also cause the real killer to go after Detective Carella, hoping to get at him through his deaf girl friend.
For some inexplicable reason, the movie changes the name of the reporter from Savage to Miller, possibly because the actor who played the part was named Gene Miller. This is not a significant change.
In the book, Teddy (Ellen Parker) knows
when Steve Carella is at her door because they have worked a
special code for the way he jiggles her door lock. In the movie,
she has a light over the door to her apartment that goes on when
somebody rings the doorbell that she can't hear. This makes it
easier for the killer to get into her apartment--and it's also
probably more realistic in terms of what a real hearing-impaired
person would have in her apartment.
The casting of the "Cop Hater" movie is especially
interesting. Carella is played by a very young Robert Loggia,
an actor who would not become a really familiar face to moviegoers
for another 27 years when he earned an Oscar nomination playing
the "leg man" to criminal lawyer Glenn Close in 1985’s
"The Jagged Edge." Detective Maguire was played by
another face soon to be familiar to most--Gerald O’Loughlin,
who would become a TV regular as Lt. Eddie Ryker, nursemaid to
the young cops in TV’s "The Rookies" (ABC, 1972-76).
Two other members of the "Cop Hater" ensemble would
also become very familiar faces to both moviegoers and television
watchers: Vincent Gardenia, who played a police informer known
as "Danny Gimp," and Jerry Orbach, who played Joe "Mumzer"
Sanchez, spokesman for the teenage street gang initially suspected
of involvement with the cop killings. Gardenia went on to win
a Tony award on Broadway for Neil Simon‘s "The Prisoner
of Second Avenue" and an Emmy for "Age-Old Friends"
(1989). He was Oscar-nominated twice for his performances as
the baseball manager in "Bang the Drum Slowly" (1973)
and as Cher’s father in "Moonstruck" (1987). He
also had recurring roles in the hit TV series "All in the
Family" and "L.A. Law." Orbach also was a Tony
winner ("The Fantasticks"), but was best known for
his long-running role as Detective Lennie Briscoe on NBC’s
"Law & Order."
The movie version of "Cop Hater" is not a very powerful
film and surely would have been much better if made by a younger,
more creative director with an "A" budget. It might
have led to a long series of movies that echoed the success of
the McBain novels, which still remain immensely readable in the
21st century.
But it's still extremely interesting to see how this landmark "police procedural" was handled by Hollywood in the late 1950s when authenticity was not yet very common for police action films. Sadly, though, neither "Cop Hater" nor its companion film, "The Mugger," have ever been made commercially available on home video. I obtained my DVD copies of both via a Canadian film collector I found through the internet and the quaxi-legal "collectors' market." Some enterprising outfit ought to bundle both films together for a single DVD release and market them to the growing market for classic mysteries.
©2009 by Ron Miller. The poster and photo from "Cop Hater" are courtesy of United Artists. This column first posted Aug. 24, 2009.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine
and on our DARK CORRIDORS pages.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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