By
Hank Reineke
In early July of 1952, a 65-year old Boris Karloff returned
to England for a four-month long stay. He and his wife, Evelyn “Evie” Hope, had arrived from America via
transatlantic liner. The ship would dock
at the quay in Plymouth, some two-hundred and forty miles south of London. The actor, who by his own calculation had
been away from England for some sixteen years, was met at the port by a
journalist from London’s Daily Mirror. Karloff would describe his touching down again
in his native homeland, as the “Return of the Ghost.”
The Mirror writer
made immediate comment on the unusual “grey, military moustache” Karloff was
sporting. “This is for some TV pictures
I hope to make for the American market while I’m in England,” the actor
explained. “I expect to play the role of
Colonel March, special investigator.” When asked if his role was the usual “sinister” one” for which he was
accustomed, Karloff shrugged. “Oh,
no. I shall be tackling many odd
assignments in a rather light-hearted manner. In fact, the role might be a little too benign.”
American author John Dickson Carr (as “Carter Dickson”)
was the creator of the irascible, but brilliant investigating Scotland Yard detective
Colonel March. Dickson’s character first
appeared in a series of short stories published by London’s Strand magazine 1938-1940. Dickson would pen nine Colonel March
mysteries in total, seven of them collected and published as The Department of Queer Complaints (Dell
Books, New York, 1940). The book’s odd
title is a reference to department “D.3.,” a branch of Scotland Yard’s
metropolitan police for which March works.
March is, for the most part, the only investigator of
“The Department of Queer Complaints.” He’s
assigned to those quirky cases appearing unsolvable: “locked room” mysteries
that have baffled the investigations of the mainstream detectives. While many of the mysteries he’s called to
solve appear occult or supernatural in appearance, March proves these enigmatic
challenges to be nothing more than smokescreens for more routine crimes. Having now sat through the better part of
this television series, I find the guilty parties can be readily identified
easily and early. The real mystery lies
in how the cerebrally deductive Colonel March manages to puzzle his way through
the criminal fog to bring the guilty to justice.
The rights to Dickson’s The Department of Queer Complaints were optioned by Hannah
Weinstein. Weinstein, an American
publicist and former journalist for the New
York Herald Tribune, was also a long-time left-wing activist. Choosing to leave behind the chilling
political climate of encroaching McCarthyism, Weinstein fled the U.S. for Paris
in 1950. Interested in getting involved
in the film industry, Weinstein would form Panda Films. It was in partnership with England’s Fountain
Films that the original trio of pilot episodes of Colonel March of the Scotland Yard were filmed at Nettleford
Studios, Walton-on-Thames, England. But Weinstein’s
ultimate intent was to launch Colonel
March as a television property in America.
It’s of interest that prior to Colonel March of the Scotland Yard playing on U.S. television, a
feature-length film, Colonel March
Investigates, would play theatrically in second run cinemas of the United
Kingdom from June through December 1953. In May of ’53 Variety reported
that Panda had “packaged two trios of half-hour pix into features for
theatrical release” - with the caveat the films could not play in the U.S. die
to a “telepix” deal already struck with Official Films in the U.S. In any event, only the Colonel March Investigates feature was released in Great Britain through
Criterion Films. More often than not, the
film was paired in cinemas with the aged Bob Hope horror-comedy The Cat and the Canary (Paramount,
1939). Perhaps of more import was the
fact that directorship of Colonel March
Investigates was credited to another American expatriate Cyril (“Cy”) Endfield. Blacklisted from the United States film
industry due to his own dabbles with leftist politics, Endfield moved to London
in 1952 to seek employment opportunities overseas.
This feature-length version of Colonel March Investigates, described contemporaneously by a
British critic as “a hotch-potch film,” was, in fact, just that: a stringing
together of Endfield’s three pilots (“Hot Money,” “Death in the Dressing Room”
and “The New Invisible Man”) portmanteau style. Endfield’s biographer, Brian Neve, suggests in his The Many Lives of Cyril Endfield: Film Noir, the Blacklist and Zulu,
that once the series was broadcast in the U.S., many of the on-screen credits
of the Colonel March television
series were tweaked. Neve suggests that
many of the scripts - credited to “Leslie Slote” or “Leo Davis” - were likely “front”
credits. In this estimation, Neve was entirely
correct.
The earliest original scenarios of Colonel March were written primarily by American writers living in
Europe due to the McCarthyism at home: the screenwriter Harold Buchman possibly composed scripts, with the writing
team of Walter Bernstein and Abraham Polonsky most definitely contributing. The latter two would use the nom de plume of “Leo Davis” (on Colonel March Investigates) and of “Leslie
Slote” on the subsequent television series.
In Bernstein’s recollection, it was Weinstein who asked
for his assistance in helpfully filling-out Dickson’s “thin” mystery stories. This would have been in April 1952. “She wanted to use blacklisted people to work
on it,” Bernstein confided in his memoir Inside
Out, “so Polonsky and I took on Colonel
March.” Bernstein recalled his
decision to collaborate with Polonsky as an entirely practical choice, “since
writing dramatic puzzles seemed easier for two than one.”
I’ve not read any of Carter Dickson’s original mysteries,
so I can’t determine if Bernstein and Polonsky significantly changed the tone
of the original stories, nor can I judge the subsequent adaptations better or
worse. I can say that the criminals introduced in the Colonel March TV series are rarely street-level thugs. There are a few toughs sprinkled here and
there, but mostly they’re engaged as pawns in the employ of gentile
professionals, respectable people who command power and prestige. Most of the crime-scenes in the series take
place in high society settings: swanky cabarets, university libraries, art
galleries, fashion shows, solicitor offices, private clubs and manor houses. Crimes of the suite, not of the street.
Weinstein’s employ of blacklisted writers and filmmakers would
in time, of course, prove problematic when attempting to sell the series to
U.S. distributors. When the original
three pilot episodes of Colonel March
Investigates were telecast in the U.S., Endfield’s credits are conveniently
scrubbed, replaced with the name of Donald Ginsberg: Ginsberg now attributed as
both producer and director. Of the Colonel’s twenty-six episodes,
eighteen are credited to British directors Bernard Knowles and Arthur Crabtree;
three to “Donald Ginsberg” (Endfield), three to Philip Brown (another
blacklisted American actor recently re-settled in England), one to Paul Dickson
(as “Paul Gherzo”) and even one to Terence Fisher, soon a celebrant of Hammer
Films mythology.
It’s unlikely that Karloff was unaware he was working alongside
a company of “radicals.” These were American
citizens holding distinguished resumes now tainted due to their associations
with WWII-era anti-fascist work. Karloff
was a mild political progressive in comparison. But he was also the biggest star among the original twenty-one actors who
incorporated the Screen Actors Guild in June of 1933. In the study Tender Comrades, contributing writer Glenn Lovell offered that
Karloff too, as a “very early SAG activist,” was considered suspicious for his
union-organizing work. The actor would
choose “to park blocks away from Guild meetings to avoid surveillance.” But
Karloff was simply a man of fair play and conscience. A former National Executive Secretary of the
Guild explained to Karloff biographer Cynthia Lindsay, “Boris was a
philosophical anarchist. Simply couldn’t
tolerate injustice.”
In August of 1953, Official Films of W. 45th
Street, New York City, staged a special screening of pilot episodes of the Colonel March series to prospective
regional U.S. television buyers. A
writer from Billboard attended,
perhaps puzzled of any distributor interest in the series. Detective and mystery programs were already
glutting the schedules and evening time-slots of network television. But the reporter was impressed with Colonel March, acknowledging the program
brimmed with “possibilities.” That same month, Official signed syndication deals
with some twenty eastern U.S. television markets.
The reporter mused that producers were bravely trying
something different, “striving after an off-beat quality that will set the show
apart from the many other mystery shows already on TV.” Though Billboard
thought the scripting was not up to scratch,” Karloff’s sparkling performance
as Colonel March managed to rise above the otherwise mediocre scenarios. The chief inspector of the “Department of
Queer Complaints” was, in the estimation of the trade, the “closest thing to
Sherlock Holmes to be found in a regular series.”
Seeing there was U.S. television interest in the series,
Panda farmed the production of all remaining episodes to Foundation Films. The company was tasked to hastily deliver all
remaining episodes by May of 1954. Shooting of the series was set to re-commence on October 26, 1953. The monochrome series was a low-budget affair
to be sure, but the episodes were generally well-written and performed.
By November of 1953, the producers already managed to
collect some $75,000 into their coffers for television syndication rights
privileges. Sales of Colonel March of the Scotland Yard were handily
outpacing Official’s other television package offerings as the Robert Cumming’s
comedy My Hero and a television
version of the comic-strip adventure Terry
and the Pirates. Currently in the
works for Official were the adventure series Secret Files with Robert Alda and Arthur Dreyfus and Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion
featuring Buster Crabbe. But Colonel March had become, for a brief time
anyway, the company’s standard bearer, a “fascinating, brand new half-hour film
series of scientific crime fiction.”
The series was different
from its counterparts. Karloff would muse
he was “pleased” with “the absence of brutality in the stories.” These were thinking-man mysteries, cases
solved through erudite deduction rather than fisticuffs. The promotional
material of Official Films would highlight how March’s method of crime solving
differed from that of the average gumshoe: “This
witty gentleman is equally at home with Shakespeare and shakedowns, Heifitz and
heisting. Don’t let his charm deceive
you. Though he carries no gun, throws no
punches, and kisses no blondes – he packs a wallop with his brain!”
By early December of ’53, Variety would report some forty U.S. television markets had already
pre-purchased the full package of twenty-six episodes – the majority of which still
had not yet been produced. These
included markets in eleven western states, Hawaii, and Alaska. Variety
opined that the Colonel March
“series shapes as a good buy for beer and drug sponsors.” There was an
acknowledgment this was adult entertainment, the program’s atmospheric
mysteries – demonstrating “socko video potential” – were likely “best fitted
for a late night slot.”
At least one suds manufacturer took their advice. Two weeks following Variety’s suggestion, the entire twenty-six episode series was sold
for sponsorship by Chicago’s Atlantic Brewing Company, the series’ biggest
urban market by far. The brewer was planning
on going all-in with their investment, desiring to “shoot integrated
commercials for Atlantic with Karloff starring.” The Colonel
March series was eventually broadly syndicated in sixty U.S. markets.
Though public and market interest for Colonel March of Scotland Yard would
gradually diminish following those earliest broadcasts in January of 1954, you
could still find the series playing somewhere
in America as late as 1959. The series
would vanish almost completely from TV screens by 1960. Their disappearance was, perhaps not
accidental: Karloff’s anthology series Thriller
would make its television debut on NBC-TV in September of 1960.
This is the first time to my knowledge that the entire
twenty-six episode of Colonel March of
Scotland Yard has been made available on home video in the U.S. Alpha Video previously published a total of
eight episodes of the series in two DVD sets as early as 2014. Other labels would include an episode or two
on their various Detective or Mystery budget sets of public domain material. The series might be of some tangential
interest to collectors due to some of the on-screen cameos and roles of folks
on the cusp of achieving greater fame: Christopher Lee, Peter Asher (of the
British pop-duo “Peter and Gordon”), composer Anthony Newley, John Schlesinger,
and Zena Marshall (“Miss Taro” of the Bond film Dr. No).
One might question Film Chest’s decision to put out the
set on DVD instead of Blu ray in 2024 as a curious one. The monochrome episodes look pretty good, all
things considered, but the visual images are noticeably soft and would have certainly
benefited from a loving high-def. treatment. Having said that, the set is eminently watchable, if not perfect… well,
to my aging eyes at least. But obsessed techie-collectors will not likely greet
this release with neither fanfare nor acclaim. For those of us more forgiving, it’s nice to have the series, at long
last, complete.
Finally, a word of caution: though this set includes an
eight-page booklet-episode guide, be wary of believing all that you read within. The booklet purportedly gives episode broadcast
dates, but they are all well off the mark,
at least as far as U.S. television debuts are concerned. Episode One is given a booklet broadcast date
as October 1, 1955, but in reality the first episode of Colonel March of Scotland Yard was broadcast in the U.S. as early
as January 27, 1954 on Pittsburgh’s WDTV. (In fairness, it could be that the dates given
by Film Chest (a U.S. company based in Connecticut) have been sourced from the
series’ belated 1955 appearance on Britain’s ITV television). A minor criticism, perhaps, but it’s the sort
of erroneous information that’s assumed as gospel and repeated ad infinitum on
internet sites.
The Film Chest Media Group, founded in 2000 or
thereabouts, promises their engagement “in
the acquisition, preservation, development, and distribution of film and
television media. With an extensive archive and a state-of-the-art facility, we
offer many essential services to the media and entertainment industry,
including climate-controlled film storage, film scanning and restoration,
content management and distribution, and so much more.” The company’s film library purportedly boasts
“thousands of titles” which is said to include films in the public domain as
well as “proprietary asset” titles.
The Film Chest catalog is diverse in its offerings: mostly DVD collections so far, but with a few
Blu-ray titles mixed in as well: in the latter category you’ll find such
pictures as The Red House (1947, with
Edward G. Robinson) and Suddenly (1954,
with Frank Sinatra). A good portion of
their releases are complete series collections of mostly forgotten (or dimly
recalled) television programs circa 1957-1961: Colonel March of the Scotland Yard,
of course, but also Decoy (1957), The Invisible Man (1958-1960), Deadline (1959-1961) and One Step Beyond (1959-1961).
Releases of more recent television series from Film Chest
runs the gamut from Stacy Keach’s Mike
Hammer series (1997-1998) to The Lost
World (1999-2002) and even to ABC-TV’s Lancelot
Link, Secret Chimp (1970). Film
Chest also offers generous DVD collections of public domain issues of Hollywood
musicals, film noirs, and detective mysteries. It’s well worth a look through their catalog offerings.
It’s encouraging that, in this era of streaming, such
niche interest films and aged television series are being made available for
collectors of physical media. It must be
said that Film Chest’s releases are also very
economically priced for the amount of content offered in their multi-disc
television sets. Fans of Boris Karloff
and 1950’s television mystery and detective series now have, for the first
time, the opportunity to pick up the entire series of Colonel March of Scotland Yard in one swoop. I know I’m certainly happy to showcase my
copy of the Colonel March set alongside such other Karloff television
collections as The Veil (1958) and Thriller (1960-1962). Recommended.
Click here to order from Amazon