In 2011, I wrote a series called "Fredric Brown on TV" that examined TV shows written by or based upon works by the author. An index to that series may be found here. In the ensuing six years, more classic TV shows based on Brown's writing have come to light and become available online, so I decided to pick up where I left off and add occasional posts examining more of Brown's television work.
"The Deep End" has been found and is available on DVD here or may be viewed for free online here. It is based on Brown's 1952 novel of the same name; the novel, in turn, is based on a 20,000-word novelet titled "Obit for Obie" that was written in early 1945 and first published in the October 1946 issue of the digest, Mystery Book Magazine.
Obit for Obie is one of Brown's best novelets. Narrated by reporter Joe Stacy of the Herald newspaper, the story begins as he is assigned to write a human interest story about 16-year-old Henry "Obie" Westphal, a local high school sports hero who was "just killed on the roller coaster at Whitewater Beach." Joe writes the obit but has to put it in a drawer when it turns out the boy who was killed was not Obie after all but rather a boy named Jimmy Chojnacki, who had stolen Obie's wallet. Suspicious of how a boy could be on the tracks of the roller coaster and not hear it coming, Joe cancels his week's fishing vacation and stays home to investigate the death while his wife Millie is away visiting family for a week.
Joe's investigation leads him to question Pete Brenner, a friend of Jimmy Chojnacki's, and to visit former flame Nina Carberry, who tells him about a series of fatal accidents at the high school attended by the boys. Gradually, over the course of a week, Joe begins to suspect that Obie Westphal, a "bronzed young giant," is actually a serial murderer who hides his evil deeds behind the mask of an All-American teenager. As Joe closes in on the truth, he nearly becomes Obie's next victim, as the boy sets a typewriter at the top of the stairs inside Joe's house in the middle of the night and nearly causes Joe to trip and fall.
Joe observes Obie twice head out of his home after dark and walk to the railroad jungles at the edge of town. Enlisting the aid of Pete Brenner, who had followed Joe menacingly in his hot rod on a couple of occasions, Joe follows Obie to the freight yards and is nearly killed when Obie reverts to his true form and tries to push Joe off of the top of a railroad car to his death. Only timely intervention by Pete, who hits Obie over the head with a lead pipe and causes the killer's demise beneath the wheels of a railroad car, saves Joe from becoming another victim. In the end, Joe is back at work at the Herald on Monday morning, and he is able to use the "obit for Obie" that he had written the week before. All he has to do is change a few words to report the boy's death under the wheels of a railroad car instead of a roller coaster car.
"Obit for Obie" runs 40 pages in its original digest appearance and is a perfect story, fast-moving and taut, with strong plotting, suspense, and action. Fredric Brown decided to expand and revise his novelet in 1951 and the resulting novel, The Deep End, was published on December 1, 1952. It is one of his best novels of suspense. To turn a novelet into a novel, Brown made many changes, both small and large. The narrator and main character's name is changed from Joe Stacy to Sam Evans, and as the novel begins he and his wife Millie are having marital problems, something that was absent from the novelet. Millie goes away for a week to see if the marriage can be saved and, while she is away, Sam has a torrid affair with Nina Carberry, something else that does not occur in the novelet.
Evans in the newsroom |
Brown's novel was sold several years after publication to a TV series called Wire Service that ran on ABC during the 1956-57 TV season and featured three stars, each appearing in about one-third of the 37 episodes produced, playing reporters for the Trans-Globe Wire Service of the title. One of the three lead characters was named Dean Evans, and it may have been a coincidence that he took the role of the character who had been known as Sam Evans in Brown's novel. In any case, The Deep End was tailor-made for a TV series that revolved around reporters; it is too bad that none of Brown's other great novels about journalists, such as The Screaming Mimi or Night of the Jabberwock, were similarly adapted.
Margaret Hayes as Mary Carberry |
As the show progresses, the writer of the teleplay finds a way to work in the character of Nina Carberry, renamed Mary, who is so important in the novel. This is accomplished by Evans remarking that he had been in Riverdale a few years before to cover an earthquake and that he had met Mary at that time. Now that he is back in town to write the story of the supposedly dead football star, he wants to look up Mary once again. In the book, high schooler Pete Brenner drives a jalopy and follows Evans a couple of times when the reporter does not know who he is. For the TV show, the detail of the car driven by the young man is retained, but here is is Johnny Westrup who drives it, and it is a souped-up hot rod with a large wolf's head mounted on the engine.
Larry Pennell as Johnny Westrup |
In the next act, Evans continues his investigation with Mary's help and there is a very subtle hint of a possible sexual relationship between them when Mary invites him to dinner and he says no, telling her that "if I stayed in Riverdale I wouldn't get a wink of sleep." He explains that he would be thinking about the mysterious brown envelopes, but the inference is there that he really meant that he would be up all night with Mary. Evans does end up staying for dinner at Mary's house, after which they drive to the junior college and walk the dark, empty halls. Evans asks Mary to check the records of the fatal accidents and we see that Johnny's hot rod is parked outside the school.
George Brent as Evans |
The second half of the TV show veers farthest from Fredric Brown's novel. Dean speaks to Johnny on the football field and tricks him into admitting that his father left the brown envelopes anonymously to pay for the funerals. Dean goes back to the office and shares his suspicions about Johnny with Mary. That night, Dean remarks in voice over that "I had a date with a tiger," a line taken directly from Brown's book. He waits outside the Westrup house and speaks to Johnny's father while Johnny lurks in the shadows of the porch. Johnny gets in his hot rod and Evans follows him by car; in voice over, Evans compares Johnny to "a predatory animal on the prowl in the jungle" and there is a close up of the wolf's head on the front of Johnny's car engine. The last commercial break occurs as Dean loses track of Johnny, who has sped off in his hot rod.
Johnny's car |
"The Deep End" is an interesting adaptation of a great suspense novel, but the combination of budgetary restrictions, censorship, and a limited running time make it less effective than it could have been. The locations of the amusement park and the freight yards that play key roles in the book are gone, replaced by a rather mundane junior college football stadium. The characters are all older, from Johnny, who is now in junior college and who is played by a 28-year-old actor, to Evans, who is now a globe-trotting reporter for a wire service rather than a reporter for the local town newspaper. He is played by a 54-year-old actor who looks older. Mary is played by a 40-year-old actress who also seems older than her real age; perhaps she was made to look this way to minimize the age difference between her and the actor playing Evans. There is some of the psychological discussion found in the novel, but the fact that Evans comes from out of town to write this story and then suspects that something is wrong and stays on to investigate it does not seem credible.
The final chase at night |
The teleplay is by James Edmiston (1912-1959), who had a brief career writing for TV and film from 1952 to 1959 before his untimely death. He wrote two episodes of Wire Service and he also wrote a book titled Home Again (1955) about a Japanese-American family's experiences during WWII.
Johnny shows his true colors |
George Brent (1904-1979) was a Hollywood star nearing the end of his career when he played the lead role of Dean Evans. Born in Ireland as George Nolan, he was a member of the IRA during the Irish War of Independence (1919-1922) and fled the country with a bounty on his head. He came to the United States, where he became an actor on stage and then on film, with many starring roles from 1930 to 1953; among his films were 42nd Street (1933), Dark Victory (1939), and The Spiral Staircase (1946). The last part of his career was on TV, where he appeared on various shows from 1953 to 1960.
Mary Carberry, Dean Evans's female friend, is played by Margaret Hayes (1916-1977), who was born Flora Regina Ottenheimer. She acted in films from 1940 to 1962, including roles in Sullivan's Travels (1941), Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942), and The Blackboard Jungle (1955); she also played parts on TV from 1946 to 1964.
Robert Carson |
Most notable among the other players are Robert Carson (1909-1979), a very familiar face who played countless policemen, judges, wardens, and military men in film and on TV during a long career that spanned the years from 1939 to 1974. He was on the Hitchcock show 11 times and he also was seen on two episodes of Thriller.
Finally, the role of Bob, the gas station attendant, is played by none other than Edward Byrnes
Edward Byrnes |
"The Deep End" is one of what appear to be 21 of 37 episodes of Wire Service that survived and were discovered several years ago after having been thought to have been lost.
Sources:
Brown, Fredric. The Deep End. Garland, 1983.
Brown, Fredric. “Obit for Obie.” Mystery Book Magazine, Oct. 1946, pp. 89–128.
“The Deep End.” Wire Service, season 1, episode 11, 13 Dec. 1956.
IMDb, IMDb.com, 3 Dec. 2017, www.imdb.com.
Seabrook, Jack. Martians and Misplaced Clues: the Life and Work of Fredric Brown. Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993.
Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Dec. 2017, www.wikipedia.org.
2 comments:
In the '56-'57 season, Wire Service ran on the ABC network, first on Thursdays, moved to Mondays in midseason.
In the summer of '59, ABC showed reruns of the Dane Clark episodes on Sundays, under the title Deadline For Action.
After that, Wire Service went into syndication.
Being an hour long, and having three rotating stars made Wire Service one of the more expensive film series of its time. It narrowly missed a pickup for a second season, in which Brian Keith would have replaced Dane Clark in the rotation (Keith appeared in the final first-run episode), but the sponsor (Miller Breweries) dropped out.
All that aside, Merry Christmas.
Thanks, Mike! I hope you had a good Christmas. I appreciate the correction--real time crowd editing is one of many things I love about posting these directly online.
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