What a beautiful time for homicide

So why do mystery writers -- for print, the screen and television -- choose the Christmas holidays as an ideal time for murder? Perhaps the most obvious answer lies in the setting of a time of peace and good will toward all men (and women), where finding a body buried in the snow or under a traditionally decorated tree is completely at odds with everything that is Christmas. Because the end-of-the-year holidays also provide a legitimate reason for bringing people together, circumstances are ripe for crime, greed, family feuds and all of the ingredients for a motive to mix and mingle and produce a mystery for official and amateur detectives to try their hands at solving.

So why not have homicides occur on other occasions such as Valentine's Day, Memorial Day or Labor Day? No doubt some whodunits and crime stories have been played out against such backgrounds, the latter two representing long weekends in which the initial slaying doesn't come to light immediately, muddying the waters some for the sleuth investigating the case. And while those three holiday examples all have unique features to offer to the tale because of the occasion and reason for the holiday they celebrate, little else seems to work better than Christmastime.

As far as old Hollywood was concerned, yuletide cheer offset by dark crimes had served as a plot element for a number of movies, memorably as the atmosphere for M-G-M's 1934 adaptation of THE THIN MAN from the Dashiell Hammett novel that introduced the world to tipsy but astute ex-detective Nick Charles (William Powell) and his wealthy but evenly-matched spouse Nora (Myrna Loy). Nick may be out of the detection game but becomes drawn into the probe of the slaying of an inventor (Edward Ellis), using his skills to uncover the killer while still enjoying a generous amount of alcohol and the glad tidings of the season. It is noteworthy that when the sequel, AFTER THE THIN MAN, appeared in 1936 it picked up right where the original left off as Nick and Nora are confronted with a New Year's Eve killing after returning to their home in San Francisco.

Chronologically, and selectively, this survey of happy holiday homicide begins with a look at Universal's production of Charles Dickens's final novel, THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD (1935), in which the disappearance and suspected murder of the title character occurs on a mid-19th Century Christmas Eve in the village of Cloisterham. Indeed, the fate that has befallen "Ned" Drood (David Manners) climaxes a building set of tensions between himself and newcomer Neville Landless (Douglass Montgomery) for the favors of attractive girls' school student Rosa Budd (Heather Angel). Neville's quick temper and resentment of the villagers' estimation of him as a "foreigner" for being raised in Ceylon fail to make him popular, and aggravates the rivalry with Ned.

However, the edge is taken off when Ned discovers he no longer feels so strongly about Rosa, and they amicably agree to part. Ned's outwardly pleasant uncle, choirmaster John Jasper (Claude Rains) invites the young men to his residence on Christmas Eve in a move to have them settle their differences, which is successful, and Neville leaves their company as friends. However, the village is struck overnight by a terrific storm, leaving the residents to awaken to a Christmas morning laden with damage and debris from the wind and rain, and the apparent disappearance of Ned. Neville, who had chosen to go on a walking tour of the countryside, returns to help with the search. But unaware that he and Ned had resolved their differences, the villagers soon suspect Neville of doing away with Ned. Believing he will be railroaded into a murder charge, Neville flees and the story plays out over successive months, now focusing more on the dark secrets held by Jasper and what his opium-induced dreams tell us about Ned and what happened to him.

Dickens's original and unfinished story has been subject to theories as to how it solved its own mystery since the author's 1870 death while it played out in magazine serialization. Dickens reportedly provided no clue as to how it ended, but hinted that it dealt with the murder of a nephew by his uncle. That put numerous writers on the trail of the dodgy Jasper, whose activities became more suspicious as the published version developed. The screenplay for the Universal film by John L. Balderston and Gladys Unger, working from an adaptation by Bradley King and Leopold Atlas, leaves little to the imagination but is entertaingly played by the cast, particularly by Rains' intense approach to the repressed Jasper.

The Christmas atmosphere of THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD carries the charm of the Victorian period in which Dickens composed A CHRISTMAS CAROL in 1843, several addition stories built around the holiday and finally, THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD itself. Although the author's other seasonal tales are varied and sometimes go out of their way to even avoid mention of Christmas, Dickensian scholar Stefan R. Dziemianowicz maintains there is a "common subtext" to the stories that, in order to detect said subtext, "the reader must put traditional Christmas motifs out of mind and instead consider the spirit of Christmas as it was interpreted by Charles Dickens."*

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD's director, Stuart Walker, had scored a success for Universal with the 1934 filming of GREAT EXPECTATIONS that starred Jane Wyatt, Phillips Holmes and Henry Hull, so another Dickens-based story was an obvious choice for his next project. Effective dressing of the studio's European Village set on the backlot sustains the mood of the fictional community in which the tale is laid. The Christmas portion of the plot is small in relation to the rest of the film but carries with it the impressions of the special day that Dziemianowicz referred to as seen through the creator's eyes. The feeling of warmth and camaraderie that emerges in the celebration of the season attended by Jasper, Ned and Neville is palpable even with the audience realizing dark deeds are ahead.

Just as Dickens made Christmas a background for part of THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD, Raymond Chandler did not set THE LADY IN THE LAKE, the fourth of his novels featuring private detectve Philip Marlowe, during the holiday period as did the 1946 film version (the title shortened to LADY IN THE LAKE) directed by and starring Robert Montgomery for M-G-M. Chandler's 1943 work occurs in the dead of summer. "San Bernardino baked and shimmered in the afternoon heat," Marlowe vividly observes. "The air was hot enough to blister my tongue. I drove through it gasping, stopped long enough to buy a pint of liquor in case I fainted and got to the mountains, and started up the long grade to Crestline."** Whatever possessed fellow pulp magazine writer and novelist Steve Fisher, who is credited with the screenplay of LADY IN THE LAKE, to set the story before and during Christmas is a little sketchy, but it seems to work in a solid noir taken more to task for its experimental cinematography than for its overall quality.

Brought in to search for the missing wife of a magazine publisher (Leon Ames) by his ambitious assistant (Audrey Totter), Marlowe (Montgomery) encounters various questionable types, an antagonistic police detective (Lloyd Nolan) and at least three murders, all against the seasonal cheer surrounding him that puts him at odds with the holiday spirit. His intrusion on the publishing company's Christmas party provides a jarring note to the proceedings. A later scene in the Bay City Police Department press room speaks to the traditional slowing down of business as usual on Christmas Eve. Marlowe enters the darkened office to make a call, finding a sole reporter reclining on a desktop while sweet-talking his girlfriend of the moment on the other end of his phone. 

The stillness of the night before Christmas is successfully conveyed to the viewer as Marlowe drives away from the home of Florence Almore's parents; the sudden accident engineered by the desperate DeGarmo (Nolan) effectively shatters the illusion of peace on Earth. 

As Marlowe recovers from injuries suffered in the mishap, he and Adrienne Fromsett (Totter) share an elusive moment of relaxation in her apartment while listening to a radio dramatization of "A Christmas Carol" (featuring the voice of Reginald Owen, star of M-G-M's 1938 version of the Dickens classic, as Scrooge). A choral accompaniment on the soundtrack arranged by David Snell and Maurice Goldman is not only seasonal but also eerie, reaching an almost skin-crawling crescendo when Marlowe discovers the body of the slain Chris Lavery (Richard Simmons) crumpled up in the shower of the house he's renting. The Christmas atmosphere pervades LADY IN THE LAKE unobtrusively but effectively.

Chandler, who was contracted by Paramount to work on the script of Billy Wilder's DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) shortly after publication of THE LADY IN THE LAKE, disliked the Montgomery film, which was produced by George Haight. His dissatisfaction, biographer Frank MacShane reported, stemmed from Chandler's lucrative but unhappy relationship with Hollywood studios. M-G-M borrowed Chandler from Paramount to adapt the novel into a screenplay. But when Chandler's pages for the screen LADY IN THE LAKE started straying from his original concept, Chandler confessed that once he had finished the book, he was done with it and preferred to compose something new. "When a writer breaks his heart to do a job and does it as well as he can, he doesn't want to do it all over again and worse," the author told Haight.*** 

In a classic case of creative differences that plagued the prickly Chandler's overall experience as a screenwriter, the studio dropped Chandler from the project after 13 weeks and the script was completed by Fisher, with the final product containing some major differences from the novel. Told LADY IN THE LAKE was "probably the worst picture ever made," Chandler endorsed that statement to cover his disappointment that, instead of being the disaster the author hoped it would be, LADY IN THE LAKE was critically successful and did decent box office, MacShane related.

LADY IN THE LAKE had a certain curiosity value in its day because the camera and Marlowe became one, except in scenes where Montgomery directly addressed the audience, appeared in a mirror,  or shared a clinch with Adrienne in the closing scene. The subjective camera as a character did not catch on, however, due to mixed opinions about its effectiveness as a storytelling tool, prompting Delmer Daves to use the idea only partially in the Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall vehicle DARK PASSAGE (1947) at Warner Bros. Reportedly, Montgomery didn't want to be seen on screen at all to reinforce the strength of his argument for using a subjective approach, but the studio insisted on his appearing somewhere in the film since he was one of Metro's veteran stars.

In contrast to LADY IN THE LAKE's subtle insertion of a Christmas background into the proceedings, Alfred E. Green's COVER-UP (1949) lays it on thick enough to almost detract from the central mystery that insurance company investigator Sam Donovan (Dennis O'Keefe) looks to solve in a small midwestern town preparing for the season. 


In this United Artists release, Sam is dispatched to the town to see if the shooting death of policyholder Roger Phillips was suicide or not. He's not likely to find out soon given the polite but uncooperative reception he gets from the people who knew Phillips. More disturbing is the caginess of the local sheriff (William Bendix) and his apparent unwillingness to allow Sam to examine the war-souvenir Luger that may have ended Phillips's life.

Sam, puzzled by the townspeople's behavior and more determined to get to the bottom of it all, finds some solace in a budding romance with the daughter (Barbara Britton) of a banker (Art Baker) who knows more than he will say about the mystery. Eventually, Phillips's death and the seemingly unrelated demise of a well-respected doctor lead to a concluding revelation, proving to be the film's more disappointing element. For the script by O'Keefe (as Jonathan Rix) and Jerome Odlum builds so beautifully with the easygoing sheriff emerging as the lead suspect and then falls as flat as a souffle with the explanation that's offered to Sam. It may have been an attempt to try something different with a basically noir situation, but if that was the intention, we'd have rather had a straight mystery. That, however, would have shattered the folksy milieu the town offers.

All of this unreels against an almost idyllic wintry setting of snow-covered streets, sidewalks sharing space with piled-up snowfall and houses whose halls have already been decked. COVER-UP's strength lies in the charming depiction of home for the holidays, whose appeal is not lost on Sam, a rootless kind of guy who finds himself at odds with the down-home hospitality of the season and the mission that brought him to town in the first place. As an example of dark cinema, though, COVER-UP has always been on the outskirts of noir, too uneven for purists to accept as part of the community. Too bad, because it's a rather engaging film thaty benefits from the sincere acting of a cast led by the likeable O'Keefe, whose position as a noir icon of the time has been ignored for too long.

And an honorable mention is due to I, THE JURY (1953), the first film to feature Mickey Spillane's tough-as-nails private eye Mike Hammer and based on the initial Hammer novel of the same title, which saw print in 1947. 

Christmas is again the season for murder, violence and psychological distress in this UA release directed by screenwriter Harry Essex. It opens with Mike's (Biff Elliott) disabled war buddy Jack Williams (Robert Swanger) shot and left to die in his apartment after a holiday party. Mike, of course, vows to perforate the killer himself once found, and a list of Jack's party guests serve as the springboard for his typically energetic investigation.

Like LADY IN THE LAKE, holiday music is worked into the soundtrack to offer a discordant contrast with what's being played out on the screen, as demonstrated in the opening scene as soft tunes playing in the background clash with the visuals of Jack crawling across his living room to get his own gun after being shot. Reportedly, noir cinematography icon John Alton had planned to shoot scenes of New York at holiday time to illustrate transitions and passages of time in the movie. But the budget only allowed him to shoot the covers of Christmas cards with the same yuletide music of a choral nature in Franz Waxman's arrangement accompanying them.@ A stereoscopic view of blondes Tani Guthrie and Dran Hamilton (as the Bellamy twins) in skimpy Santa's helpers outfits was no doubt designed for I, THE JURY's original distribution in 3-D as well as eye candy for the film's expected male audience.

There are many more examples of holiday murders out there, and no doubt you have a few of your own favorites. If so, watch them again while the time is right. And to all, a Merry Christmas!

* Dziemianowicz, "Foreward" to CHARLES DICKENS'S CHRISTMAS TALES, New York: Bonanza Books, 1985, p. viii.
** Chandler, THE LADY IN THE LAKE, Vintage Books reprint, New York, 1976, p. 26.
*** MacShane, THE LIFE OF RAYMOND CHANDLER, New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1976, p. 119.
@ Bob Porfirio critique of I, THE JURY in Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, eds., FILM NOIR: AN ENCYCLOPEDIC REFERENCE TO THE AMERICAN STYLE, third edition, Woodstock, N.Y.: The Overlook Press, 1992, p. 141.