Kona Coast

In the mid-sixties John D MacDonald was approached by producers at Seven Arts and asked to come up with an idea for a dramatic television series. He had already been solicited by producers Mark Goodson and Bill Todman to sell the rights to the Travis McGee series for a television series, and he had a face-to-face meeting with four members of their production team in New York, where he told them no. Although it was never directly stated, the Seven Arts project may have been a sort of consolation prize for not getting McGee. The Goodson-Todman story, amusingly related by MacDonald to pal Dan Rowan in 1967, refers to the meeting taking place “two years ago,” so the time frame fits.

He responded with something he called Bimini Gal. In JDM Bibliophile 9 (1968) he explained a bit of the background:

The only thing I have ever done which could be classed as a 'screenwork' was to do a so-called styling of a possible television show. About fifty pages, I think, which included six outlines of sequences. I put the locale in the Bahamas, and called it Bimini Gal, and hoped they could get Mitchum to do it. (They being Seven Arts.) Well, that was a couple of years ago, and Seven Arts bought Warner Brothers, and they got Richard Boone to do it, and changed the locale to Hawaii, and changed the title to Kona Coast, and changed it from a series to a movie for first showing on CBS television.

There is no available information on why Mitchum turned the deal down. Perhaps it was only an idea in some producer's head to have him starring in a television series. Perhaps it was MacDonald’s idea. Back then there was a fairly strong demarcation between television and film, and actors and directors who did film rarely sullied themselves in the lower art form unless driven by necessity. The project lay fallow for some period of time before it was picked up by Pioneer Productions, a company founded by actor Richard Boone.

Boone was a journeyman television and film actor, born in 1917, who performed in a wide variety of different roles. He studied at the famed Actors Studio, starred in the 1954 TV series Medic and did scores of one-shots on series like Playhouse 90, General Electric Theater and Suspense. His big success came in 1957 when he began starring in the television western Have Gun -- Will Travel, where he played a character known only as “Paladin,” a gentleman mercenary who used brains more often than gunfire. The show lasted five seasons and was extremely popular, ranking high in the ratings and even spawning a dramatic radio series of the same name.

When Have Gun -- Will Travel ended in 1963 Boone shifted immediately to his dream project, a television anthology series titled The Richard Boone Show which used a repertory company of about 15 actors to perform in the various episodes. Boone hosed and starred in about half of the shows. It was highly regarded (I remember my mother loved it) and it won a Golden Globe award but lasted only one season due to the fact that it was programmed in the same timeslot as Petticoat Junction (!). The series was overseen by none other than Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, and this may very well have been the connection between Boone and the Bimini Gal project.

When The Richard Boone Show ended production in early 1964 the actor moved with his family to Hawaii, a dream destination for him ever since he had been stationed there during the war. He became a great proponent of the local acting scene and reportedly was offered the lead role in the upcoming series Hawaii Five-0, which he turned down. In another JDM connection, that role went to Jack Lord, a friend of the author’s and one of his early choices of actors to play Travis McGee. According to a local newspaper, Boone’s goal was to prove

that a first rate production company can be built and prosper in the Islands; that Hawaii and its people offer all the ingredients for success; that creation and production of films locally can mean exciting employment and a brighter future for many young people.

Toward that end he began searching for a project to prove his point, and somehow -- whether it was through Goodson and Todman or some other means -- he found the Bimini Gal treatment. Of course, the first thing he would have to do was change the locale and, hence, the name. It was originally to be titled Hula Gal (which, I suppose, would have been the name of the boat, as it was in Bimini Gal) but eventually came to be know as Kona Coast. Pioneer Productions received the financial backing of CBS, who agreed to support the project for theatrical release (a fact borne out by the widescreen aspect ratio the film was shot in) as long as they had the rights to air it afterward on television. And, if it was a success, a television series would follow. Pioneer submitted a budget of a mere $900,000 and CBS agreed to fund $750,000 of that amount.

Richard Boone as Sam Moran

Television writer Gil Ralston was hired to write the screenplay, very likely based on one of MacDonald’s “six outlines.” According to the book Unsold Television Pilots: 1955-1989 by Lee Goldberg, science fiction writer Harlan Ellison was originally hired to write the script but clashed with Boone and was replaced early in the writing process. Supposedly the only bit of Ellison’s input that survived was the opening scene. Boone’s longtime pal Lamont Johnson, who he had known since their Actor’s Studio days in New York, was selected as director. Johnson had directed probably hundreds of episodes of various television series by then, including several episodes of both Have Gun -- Will Travel and The Richard Boone Show, but had done only one theatrical film before, the now-forgotten thriller A Covenant With Death (1967).

The premise, plot and characters are pure John D MacDonald. Sam Moran, a gruff, hard-fisted, hard-drinking, womanizing charter boat captain works out of the Kavala Marina in Honolulu, where he operates his own boat. His friend and fellow dockmate, an Australian named H.Charles Lightfoot, operates his own vessel, the Alika. One day, Sam receives a phone call from his estranged, illegitimate daughter Dee, who he hasn’t seen in ages and who he didn’t even know existed until a year ago. Dee calls from the home of a notorious playboy known only as Kryder, where a large group of drugged out hippies are having a wild party. Dee herself is drugged and is caught by Kryder’s men talking to Sam. For this impropriety she is killed by Kryder, taken out to sea in a boat and thrown overboard.

Boone with Chips Rafferty as Lightfoot

Sam begins looking for Dee only moments after the phone call and seemingly knows everyone in the city, so he only has to ask around about where a party might have taken place. From this thin plotting he is directed to Kryder’s, where he bursts in the following morning and finds nothing. Kryder, who loves “playing people through sick party games,” begins a game of pestering and hunting Sam.

Four days later Dee’s body washes up on shore and Sam begins his mission of vengeance, only he has nothing concrete to go on and Kryder is one step ahead of him. He spends the next few days moving around the neighborhoods of Honolulu, from bars to restaurants, to fishing wharfs to rundown residential areas, trying to get something to pin on Kryder. After a while he is beaten by Kryder’s goons in an alley and later warned off by a cop, who has an obvious past with Sam.

A few days later he is called back to the Kavala Marina, where finds his boat on fire and his friend Lightfoot nearly dead due to smoke inhalation while trying to fight the blaze. Lightfoot makes a request of Sam to pilot him home in the Alika where he can die in peace. And where is home? It’s in Kona on the island of Hawaii.

Boone with Joan Blondell as Kittibelle Lightfoot

They are met there by Sam’s sister Kittibelle, a gruff old dame who runs a retreat for recovering alcoholics called The Refuge. They give Lightfoot medical attention but it is obvious he is not going to make it. The Alika is owned jointly by Lightfoot and Kittibelle, and she relies on the revenue it generates to help support The Refuge. Realizing he is not long for this world, Lightfoot gives Sam his half of the Alika, something Sam is definitely not happy about.

Kittibelle tells Sam that the owner of a local bar, Akamai Barnes, would know if Lightfoot has any financial loose ends to clean up, so Sam heads over. Naturally the two of them know each other and have a long mutual past. And of course Akamai is more than just a shop owner: he has a PhD in Anthropology and was a sociology professor before giving it up to run the place he has named after himself. After the talk, in walks another person from Sam’s past: Melissa Hyde, or Dr. Melissa Hyde, a once-noted marine biologist who had a torrid love affair with Sam five years ago. The relationship was marked by heavy drinking on the part of both members and Dr. Hyde succumbed to alcoholism. She is in Kona drying out at Kittibelle’s Refuge. The fact that Sam knows both Akamai and Melissa but doesn’t know the sister of his best friend is never explained. Also a mystery is why Lightfoot speaks with a thick Austrailian accent while his sister speaks like -- well, like Joan Blondell.

Steve Ihnat (center) as Kryder, with his two goons

Meanwhile, Kryder has been keeping close tabs on Sam’s activities and discovers he has gone to Kona. He had his own “summer place” there, naturally, so he picks up and moves his entourage, dreaming up an elaborate plan to trick and kill Sam using a young girl named Mim as bait. But Sam picks up on the plot and begins devising his own method of getting to Kryder.

Production for Kona Coast began in the summer of 1967. Cast in the role of Kittibelle Lightfoot was, of course, screen veteran Joan Blondell, who was 61 at the time of shooting and who seems to have used this part as a training ground for her future part of Lottie Hatfield, the role she would essay in the television series Here Come the Brides the following year. (In fact, had Kona Coast been picked up for television, she never would have had that role.) Dr. Melissa Hyde was played by the luminescent Vera Miles, an actress whose credits included some of the greatest films ever produced in Hollywood (The Searchers, Psycho, The Wrong Man, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance). At 38 she still retained her youthful beauty and figure, and she is a bright spot in an otherwise misbegotten venture. (She is also a member of the John D MacDonald film club -- an actor who has appeared in more than one screen version of a JDM work: she was later cast as Julie Lawless in the feckless 1983 made-for-TV movie adaptation of The Empty Copper Sea, titled simply Travis McGee.) Kent Smith, of The Cat People fame, was cast as Akamai Barnes and Chips Rafferty, the quintessential Aussie character actor of the period, was cast as Lightfoot. Steve Ihnat, an actor just coming off a memorable performance as Barney Benesch in the film Madagan the year before, essayed the role of Kryder, and early rock star (now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) Duane Eddy had a minor part as Kittibelle’s nephew Tiger Cat. He speaks no lines of dialogue but does get to play a bit of guitar. His casting was likely due to his association with Boone and Johnson: he had acted in a couple of episodes of Have Gun -- Will Travel.

The balance of the cast was filled out with local talent, including many members of the Kona Coast Players, a nearby amateur company that Boone had encouraged; he had recently directed a production of The Drunkard for the group. The one standout of this group is Gina Villines, a 21-year old making her screen debut. She plays the role of Mim Lowry, the young lady Kryder has sent to lure Sam to his doom. Except for a one-shot part in a subsequent episode of Hawaii Five-0 she doesn’t appear to have ever done anything else.

Due to the fact that there were no local film production facilities in Hawaii -- something Boone hoped to ameliorate with this film -- every scene was shot on location.

Boone had great respect -- and high hopes -- for his local actors:

Vera Miles as Dr. Melissa Hyde

"Give it a thought... maybe some of these kids have a reason for dropping out or withdrawing. A lot of them don't have a helluva lot to look forward to -- not too many places to go. After all, they don't ALL want to become chambermaids, busboys or cab drivers... Now here's a chance to be creative, part of something alive and growing -- not only the acting but the allied jobs. If we can get this industry going locally there'll be some fine opportunities for youngsters. Monty [Lamont Johnson] flipped when he saw some of these kids perform. It's hard to believe they've had no professional training... it's that natural, easy Hawaiian-style, I guess."

He was especially high on Gina Villines:

"The girl is really something. She bursts. She's good. The first time we read script together I watched her. There she sat -- her first big break -- across from two great actresses like Miles and Blondell. Her script was shaking like a leaf but she came on like Gangbusters."

The feeling on the set was upbeat and everyone involved thought they were doing good work. A local reporter overheard a veteran Hollywood crew member talking:

Gina Villines as Mim Lowry

"Two days into a picture I can tell you whether or not it's good. Two days into Hallelujah Trail I told them they had a flop -- a dog. But this one is gonna be good. Right cast, right director, good story... I got a good feeling about this picture."

The production was a boon to the local economy, with tourists arriving hoping to catch a glimpse of some famous Hollywood stars. Boone entertained the crew at nights at his the beach house where he lived, one evening reciting The Gettysburg Address while Duane Eddy played “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the background. The autograph seekers were patiently accommodated, the local economy expanded and all seemed right in this little world, with a product soon to be submitted that would turn into an ongoing television series, bringing more money into Hawaii and attracting other, more permanent Hollywood productions. The film even came in under budget, at $877,000..

Kona Coast was released in May 1968 and opened in Los Angeles as the first part of a double bill along with Franklin J Schaffner’s The Double Man starring Yul Brynner. Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times gave it a good review, calling it “"fast-paced, action-packed, well-acted entertainment... set against [a] colorful locale." He acknowledged MacDonald’s contribution of a “50-page outline for a proposed television series” and he liked Boone in the title role, calling him “splendid,” but ended the review on a note of reservation:

While Kona Coast is completely ingratiating, with much local color, it lacks the trenchant, thrusting style and pungent observations of MacDonald in print that keeps his strong sentimental streak in check.

An interesting observation from someone who had obviously read his John D MacDonald.

The few other reviews I’ve been able to find weren’t nearly so kind. A reviewer for a local Hawaiian paper didn’t slam it completely, but it’s obvious he wanted to and was just being kind to a local product. Variety called it “run of the mill,” which in and of itself was kind. Kona Coast played briefly throughout the country, in theaters and drive-ins, in places like Kansas City, Detroit, Indianapolis and Tampa, but it didn’t last long. It’s no surprise that CBS decided not to pick up their option to produce a Kona Coast series. And it took them four years to finally get around to airing the movie on television, which they did on the CBS Thursday Night Movie on April 27, 1972 at 8:00 pm. Five months later, on September 17 they ran it as the CBS Late Movie at 11:30, after which they released it into the wild, where it lived on late night television for many years.

That’s where I first saw it, on a late show on a Washington, DC television station sometime in the early 1980’s. My impression at the time was that it was a terrible film and a waste of the talent of everyone involved, with only a wisp of anything recognizably John D MacDonald. I quickly forgot it and passed up on chances to view it again when it was rebroadcast. Then, in 2011 Warner Brothers released the thing on DVD and still, it has taken me that long to bring myself to watch it again. Could it really be as bad as I recall?

Boone with Kent Smith as Akamai Barnes

In a word: yes. But this time I saw a lot more JDM in the finished product.

As I mentioned, the characters are all straight out of the John D MacDonald playbook, from the tough-but-flawed hero who lives on a boat, to the grizzled old dame who runs a retreat for alcoholics (she reminds me a lot of Alice Stebbins in The Beach Girls), the the highly educated slummers like Melissa Hyde and Akamai Barnes who have escaped from the rat race, the sociopathic, evil-for-its-own-sake villain, right down to the young, gamin girl with her head turned around, who seems to have jumped straight from MacDonald’s imagination onto the screen. Anyone who’s ever read even a little MacDonald can begin to fill in their own list of candidates from earlier role models.

And some of the dialogue sounds suspiciously MacDonaldean. I don’t know if any of those six "outlines of sequences" he wrote contained words coming out of characters’ mouths, but if they did I’ll bet Gil Ralston either copied or adapted certain snatches of it. Here’s Akamai Barnes showing his exasperation over Sam’s unwillingness to let the police handle the investigation of Dee’s murder.

“Sam, my PhD in anthropology and eleven years in sociology professorship never truly prepared me for the likes of you. Pathological, primeval, bloody Sam! How in hell you managed to live that rich full life locked up in that jumbled, destruction of body and soul beats me! You’re a fascinating cat, captain, with an infinite gift for collecting enemies. You know, if you just stay out of town our choleric friend [the cop] was convinced he could wrap up the situation, and I’m inclined to agree with him.”

Villines, Miles and Boone. Yes, Boone wears the same outfit for the entire film.

Dee’s drug induced call to Sam in the beginning of the film also sounds to me like JDM writing hippyspeak, and could have come out of the mouths of a character from Dress Her In Indigo:

Dee: I wanna speak to big daddy Sam Moran.
Sam: Sam Moran
Dee: Hello Big Daddy
Sam: Dee?
Dee. It's me, Dee, in the sky. All red and pretty in the sky.
Sam: Dee, now listen to me. If you want me to I’ll come and get you. I’ll come and pick you up.
Dee: It’s late. A little too late to be worried now. Pick me up? I’m up already. I know where you are, too. Right where you’re at. Nowhere. Sam, Sam, Sam the Man…

A later scene in Akamai’s bar has Sam dancing drunkenly with a group of young ladies. Mim arrives and he goes over to her with a drunken greeting, “Welcome, welcome, thrice welcome!” She joins the group of other girls as Akamai and Melissa (who hasn’t seen Sam in five years) look on:

Melissa: Are they all his?
Akamai: Probably. I’ve seen him come in after a week’s fishing, standing on the dock, sleepy as a lizard with that planter’s hat on the back of his head… In two minutes, some gal will pat her boyfriend on the head and come over to Sam and play with the grownups. But you know all that.
Melissa: Ohhh, yes!

That really sounds like MacDonald, and the line about “sleepy as a lizard” seems to have been written specifically with Robert Mitchum in mind.

Finally, there’s a love scene between Sam and Melissa late in the film where Sam begins by speaking Spanish, something that would have worked in a film set in the Caribbean but sounding way out of place in Hawaii. They kiss, then Melissa pushes Sam away.

Melissa: No! It’s beautiful making love… with you something… something goes wrong.

Sam: Words tore it the first time… you want to try for two?

Melissa: Help, Sam… help! You may be the same, I’m not the same. What do you think I’ve been since you? It damn well hasn’t been one big five year marine biological survey! I’ve loved a man since you. I married him. Then one day he killed himself. I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to kill myself ever since then. Oh Sam, I’ve waked up in drunk tanks choking on my own vomit. I tried to dry out… but I wake up in a straight jacket somewhere else. I'm worn out trying to make the world turn out right, the way I think it ought to be. That’s the way it was with us, Sam. It can’t be, it’s got to stop. I destroy everything…

Boone and Villines

On a technical level, the film looks gorgeous, no thanks to Joseph Lashell’s cinematography -- his compositions are sloppy looking and unimaginative -- but owing more to the fact that the movie was filmed in Technicolor, the best film stock ever used in Hollywood. The blues of the sky and sea, the greens of the mountainsides are simply beautiful, especially when seen in its original widescreen format.

OK, so what goes wrong?

Let’s start with the script. What probably began as MacDonald’s hour-long pilot idea establishing Sam Moran’s origin story has bloated into a 93-minute feature film, with very little substance added to justify that length. As a result, we are treated to lengthy sequences that seem endless, from the dreary montage where Sam’s goes around Honolulu asking for information on Kryder, to a deadly dull funeral-at-sea for Lightfoot, to a drawn-out ending sequence that has got to be one of the most unsuspenseful hunter-and-prey bits ever filmed. More time should have been spent writing organic scenes that expanded on the plot.

The dialogue, which I attribute in part to MacDonald himself, doesn’t sound authentic to the ear and is stilted in many places. That love scene conversation between Melissa and Sam reads like MacDonald on the page, but sounds embarrassing when heard coming out of the mouths of a real person. Like James M Cain before him, MacDonald’s dialogue could look magnificent on the page, but unrealistic when actually spoken.

Lamont Johnson’s direction is lackluster and seems phoned-in. There’s no electricity in any of the scenes, they are drably staged and all look like something out of an episode of a sixties television show. The acting, especially by the locals, is -- understandably -- amateurish to the point of embarrassment, and Boone himself is completely one-note in his performance of Sam. The only actors who seem to bring any energy to their roles are Miles, Smith and (especially) Villenes. To top everything off, the music score, by Jack Marshall, is awful and makes the film sound like every bad TV show you ever watched growing up. He even interjects bars from “Waltzing Matilda” during Lightfoot’s funeral scene. The effect is to make an already borderline effort seem cheaper than it already was.

And the film has not aged well. A collection of viewer review titles on the IMDb give an accurate idea as to how the movie has held up: "An Amiable Mess of a Movie," "Hokey," "Dreck," "Relentlessly Bad," and "Perhaps The Worst Film I've Ever Seen."

MacDonald was famously ill-served by Hollywood, although not as badly as he always claimed. Part of the blame, I think, must go to the author himself, who clearly didn’t understand the medium and at times wore that misunderstanding like a badge of honor. In cases where talented film artists were willing to take the time to interject their own sensibilities (J Lee Thompson with Cape Fear, Victor Nunez with A Flash of Green) real works of art were produced. But most of the time, when directors and screenwriters let the material lead the way, the results ranged from the unremarkable (Man Trap, Darker Than Amber) to the really, really bad (Condominium, Travis McGee).

In April 1986, the year MacDonald died, he again recalled the project, this time for TV Guide in an article titled “The Movies of My Books? Dumb, Listless, Inept.”

I began to get more insight into the movie process when, long ago, I was induced to write a "treatment." No matter what they tell you, a treatment is a very short non-book written entirely in the present tense: "He then hits the woman in the face and jumps out the window." Rambo and Rocky feed entirely on treatments.

I called mine Bimini Gal and that was the name of an old rust-bucket freighter operating in the Bahamas and Florida. Robert Mitchum was to be the hired captain, and Joan Blondell the owner. It disappeared from human view and popped up again a couple of years later as Kona Coast, a story about Richard Boone operating an old sailing vessel [sic] in the Hawaiian Islands. I never found out who owned the ship, and I never saw the movie.

But MacDonald was well paid for the effort, despite its failure. For the rest of his career he continued to be asked about the project, and he usually had a witty response ready. The best one was quoted by Hugh Merrill in The Red Hot Typewriter: "The few people who have seen that pilot on the tube -- in random places, usually very late at night -- have thrown up."

JDM on Film

Since there doesn't seem to be a 100% complete or error-free list of John D MacDonald's works on film and television, I thought I'd post those I know of. Since MacDonald was rarely done well on either screen, it is, perhaps, not surprising that a reliable listing hasn't been put together. I've seen stuff in print and on the web, but everything has something missing. Even the IMDb, to which I have submitted numerous additions and corrections, has several errors and omissions they seem incapable of correcting. I'll break this up between theatrical releases and television adaptations, beginning with the easy one, film. Television will follow sometime next week.

1. MAN TRAP (1961) Directed by Edmond O'Brien, starring Jeffrey Hunter, David Jansen and Stella Stevens. Based on the novella "Taint of the Tiger" which was published in the March 1958 issue of Cosmopolitan. It appeared in book form in August of that year under the title Soft Touch.

Producer Stanley Frazen purchased the film rights after reading the novella in the Cosmo. He still recalls the film fondly, stating in 2009 "It was a great heist caper with a terrific performance by Janssen." He is in a definite minority, as I have never heard of anyone else feeling warmly about this hash of an adaptation. The New York Times Guide to Movies on TV called it a "a second-rate melodrama, derived from a typical, brass-knuckled John D. MacDonald crime yarn that read better and certainly moved faster." In 1984 MacDonald told Ed Gorman "I think I would have a warmer feeling about Soft Touch had it not been made into a pretty sorry motion picture called MAN TRAP." That remark implies he actually saw the film, which is belied by a 1986 TV Guide article he wrote titled "The Movies of My Books? Listless, Dumb, Inept." "A friend advised me not to see it," he wrote of the film, "but I would have, had it been shown anywhere handy. Another friend saw it listed on a billboard in Kentucky as the third feature in a midnight drive-in fiesta."

I saw MAN TRAP once about 30 years ago and remember it as being utterly boring. According to the IMDb, it was actor Edmond O'Brien's first solo effort at directing a feature-length film, and it shows. Stella Stevens would go on to a better JDM screen adaptation in the 1973 Made-For-TV version of LINDA.

2. CAPE FEAR (1962) Directed by J. Lee Thompson, starring Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Polly Bergen. Based on the novel The Executioners, published in April 1958.

Peck purchased the film rights to the novel after reading it and decided to both produce and star in the film. He formed his own production company, along with co-star Mitchum (Melville-Talbot Productions) and hired James R. Webb, a screen writer of primarily westerns to do the adaptation. Director J. Lee Thompson had just directed Peck in The Guns of Navarone. According to MacDonald's biographer Hugh Merrill, Peck originally wanted Telly Savalas to play Max Cady but was overruled by the film's backers because Savalas lacked the box office power. He settled for a smaller role as a private detective. The film was moderately faithful to its source, adding a few new characters and completely changing the location and action of the ending, moving it from the Bowden's home to the Cape Fear River.

Often touted as the best adaptation of a MacDonald work, the author himself apparently didn't think much of the end result, referring to it as a "dreary moving, I mean unmoving, picture." He later wrote "Artistically the movie warped the concept of the novel -- which was that no matter how threatened you might feel, you don't get police protection until you have been hurt." He was more involved with this effort, attending the Florida premier and making several publicity appearances. "I stood on those stages," he said, "and said it was a fine movie. When they asked if I had someone like Barrie Chase in mind, I said 'Sure.' But she wasn't in my book. She had been written into the script."

The film is best known -- rightly so -- for Mitchum's iconic performance as Max Cady, MacDonald's archetypal soulless villain. He is truly frightening to behold. According to MacDonald, he took on the part with great relish, going as far as to do a bit of his own wardrobe, purchasing that cheap, distinctive hat for a dollar in a local second-hand shop.


3. DARKER THAN AMBER (1970) Directed by Robert Clouse, starring Rod Taylor as Travis McGee and Theodore Bikel as Meyer, with Suzy Kendall and Jane Russell. Based on the novel Darker Than Amber, published in June 1966.

The first attempt to film a Travis McGee novel, DARKER THAN AMBER was not well received at the time but tends to look better as the years roll on. MacDonald fought for years to keep McGee off the screens of both film and television. At one point in 1965 Goodson and Todman proposed a TV series starring Chuck Conners as McGee, and waived huge amounts of money in MacDonald's face, only to be told that McGee wasn't for sale at any price. But the author was much more receptive to the idea of putting McGee on the big screen. In 1966 he signed a deal with Major Productions Corporation to film a McGee movie every eighteen months, with MacDonald's cut significantly larger with each succeeding film.

For years MacDonald had harbored the idea of having actor Jack Lord play McGee, having first seen him in the television series Stoney Burke. MacDonald believed he "had all the right moves" and "had the look of a sailor." Lord apparently expressed an interest in playing McGee, but in 1968 he was cast in the long-running television series Hawaii Five-O, which was filmed in Hawaii and occupied most of the shooting year. (It has also been told that MacDonald's wife Dorothy thought little of Lord's acting ability, once telling her husband, "John, all he does is act with his teeth!")

Once AMBER had been chosen to begin the "series" and the project was given the go-ahead, the search for McGee began. Many names were considered and many actors coveted the part, including Robert Mitchum, Steve McQueen and Vic Morrow. The producers of AMBER very nearly signed Robert Culp for the part, but the deal fell through, much to MacDonald's relief ("Culp was a disaster," JDM wrote. "No comprehension of the touch needed. Glad he will not be McGee... too wispy and elegant") Ultimately Australian actor Rod Taylor was cast. MacDonald was initially unhappy with the choice, but after visiting the set and meeting Taylor, he grew to accept the casting ("...he understands what McGee is all about," wrote the author, "...the anti-hero, tender and tough, with many chinks in the armor.") He was ecstatic over the casting of Theodore Bikel as Meyer ("Bikel is Meyer," said MacDonald), but was less happy with the script and battled for months over its final form.

The final result was not well received, and the film was a flop, effectively burying the series idea. A reviewer for the Chicago Tribune wrote that the film was "feral, cheap, rotten, gratuitously meretricious, shallow and embarrassing," leaving little doubt as to where he stood. MacDonald regretted ever having sold the rights, vowing never to do so again (the rights reverted back to him once a second film was axed), but that was to prove, unfortunately, a false vow.

Years later, MacDonald's memories of the film had soured considerably. "I had an advance look at the script and thought it dreadful. I rewrote the first 30 pages as a gift [but it] was ignored. I hated the way they turned Meyer, a fine fellow, into a fat dumb clown." He concluded the filmmakers' efforts had been totally inept.

Seeing the film again a few years ago, it didn't seem as bad as it was made out to be, outside of the cheap film stock that seems to be the hallmark of most films made in the 1970's. Taylor comes close, and Bikel is OK, but the script is a mess, having McGee pine over the departed Vangie, despite the fact that she was part of a murder ring. As Lewis D. Moore wrote, " [It] makes a disappointing moral hash of the novel."

Still, it looks like a Bond film compared to the next McGee adaptation, which (mercifully) was limited to television.


4. A FLASH OF GREEN (1984) Directed by Victor Nunez, starring Ed Harris, Richard Jordan and Blair Brown. Based on the novel A Flash of Green published in 1962.

It took an independent filmmaker with very limited experience to finally bring John D MacDonald convincingly to the big screen. A FLASH OF GREEN is far and away, the best film version of anything JDM ever wrote. With a budget of just $1 million, Victor Nunez directed, wrote the screenplay and handled the cinematography. He beautifully captured both MacDonald's voice and the Florida of the early Sixties. The novel is a thinly disguised retelling of a real-life developer's attempt to fill in Sarasota Bay, and it holds a special place in the hearts of MacDonald aficionados. (Jim Harrison, writing in the New York Times Book Review in 1975, called it "the first and best of all novels with an ecological base...") Actor Ed Harris had just achieved stardom in The Right Stuff the year before, but had signed on to GREEN before that, otherwise Nunez would not have been able to afford him. Richard Jordon, who played villain Elmo Bliss, had been a longtime fan of the novel and was instrumental in getting the financing put together; he also served as the film's producer. MacDonald himself was a backer, contributing $30,000 after attending a screening of Nunez's first film, GAL YOUNG 'UN. GREEN was shot on Casey Key, where the MacDonald's had once lived from 1951 to 1952.

American Playhouse, a PBS anthology show of the time, was also a backer, which allowed it to air the film on television after its general theatrical release. They were forced to do a tiny bit of editing, cutting only a brief glimpse of Blair Brown's breast. The film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, but lost out to the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple. It had a general release, against MacDonald's wishes (he wanted it limited to art houses) and was favorably -- if unenthusiastically -- reviewed. Vincent Canby, writing in the New York Times, was typical, calling it "...not perfect, [but] provocative and nearly always intelligent."

In the 1986 TV Guide article, MacDonald complained that a poor distribution plan robbed the film of any chance of success. Still, he loved the film, writing:

"Through some special magic Victor Nunez captured the flavor and pace and ambience of my novel, and the scenes of anger and indignation and frustration are very close to what was happening in my head when I was writing the novel 24 years ago. Even the color tones of Florida sunlight and shade are reproduced with an uncanny exactitude...Damn it, the movie does move slowly -- because it is supposed to. It fits the style and mood of my novel better than I had believed any movie could.... the long wait was worth it."

5. CAPE FEAR (1991) Directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Robert DeNero, Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange. Based primarily on the previous film version, but using some of The Executioners.

This remake was originally to have been directed by Steven Spielberg, who ultimately turned it down and offered it to Scorsese. Scorsese was initially skeptical and had little interest in the project -- in fact, he showed open disdain for the original novel. He ordered many, many rewrites, until a satisfactory script was written. Unfortunately, by that time, the script had nothing to do with the MacDonald original, save the bare-bones outline of the plot.

If MacDonald thought the original film version of The Executioners was "a warped concept of the novel," he must have been spinning in his grave over this remake. His story of the inability of the legal system to protect its citizens becomes an overwhelming, nearly operatic tale of retribution, a world where the protagonists are nearly as guilty as the villain. Instead of being a witness to Cady's original crime of rape, Sam Bowden is now Cady's original defense attorney, one who willfully withheld evidence that would have exonerated his client. The Bowden family is changed from a typical middle-class representation of the average citizen into a group of amoral sinners, each worse than the next. Sam, in addition to his prior questionable legal tactics, is an adulterer who has had to move his family to another state because of a prior indiscretion, and who may now be indulging in another. His wife is a cynical, chronic nag who chain-smokes, and their daughter is just plain creepy, a slack-jawed semi-literate who longs for Cady to rape her. All of this may be material worthy of exploration, but it has absolutely nothing to do with John D MacDonald.

The climax of The Executioners takes place at the Bowden home, and that scene -- eliminated in the first film -- is retained, prior to the real climax, a CGI-enabled chase on the Cape Fear River taken from the first film. Scorsese used three actors from the original film -- Peck, Mitchum and Martin Balsam -- in bit roles, and used Bernard Herrmann's score from the original, adapted by Elmer Bernstein.

The Damned

If you were to ask the casual John D MacDonald reader which of his 77 books had sold the most copies, they could be forgiven for choosing a Travis McGee title. The McGee series has become MacDonald's primary legacy and it would only seem logical that one of the later, hardcover bestsellers like The Dreadful Lemon Sky, or The Green Ripper would have surpassed his earlier, more obscure efforts in sales totals. Perhaps they might choose 1977's hugely successful disaster novel Condominium. They would be wrong on both counts, for that honor is held by one of JDM's earliest books, his seventh published novel, The Damned.

Helped immeasurably by the shouting approval of Mickey Spillane on the cover, The Damned has sold nearly 2.3 million copies over 19 separate printings since 1952, and all of them paperback. The next closest book in sales is Condominium, which was a hardcover that sat on the bestseller lists for six months, received major reviews in nearly every periodical that reviewed books, and was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Poor little The Damned never received a single review when it was published, because nobody reviewed paperbacks back then. So how important was Mickey Spillane's envious recommendation? Very. Was it deserved? Most emphatically yes.

The Damned is a major leap forward for MacDonald, not just in sales and notoriety, but in style, character, focus and confidence. Compared to his previous novel, Ballroom of the Skies, it almost reads like the work of a different author. The plot is beautifully constructed, the characters finely detailed, the long interior monologues breathtaking in their complexity, the violence frighteningly real, and the dialogue is believable. The characters are hardboiled and haunted, deeply flawed and deeply emotional, and many of them are, indeed, damned.

MacDonald and his young family lived in Cuernavaca for a year while he was trying to establish himself as a professional writer, and reportedly the first draft for The Damned was written there. MacDonald based the novel's locale on a real place, a ferry crossing on the Rio Conchos, about 85 miles south of the US-Mexican border near the town of San Fernando. A new ferry boat has just replaced an older one, with one small problem: the water level has receded and the new vessel is too big for the river. Laborers must dig out a channel in the mud in order for the ferry to get close enough to the shore for the cars to board. The shore opposite San Fernando contains but two small stores and is filling up with cars quickly. Most of them are Americans, heading north to Texas, but they will have to wait while the heavy labor is done.

"I wrote The Damned," MacDonald said in a 1986 interview, "because I knew the locale and I was interested in what would happen if a lot of people got jammed up at the crossing. A lot of things would happen to them, and that is the definition of a story." The author creates many different characters with no prior connections, gathers them into a single location and weaves their destinies into a unified story. This type of plot construction -- called by some a portmanteau style, or more recognizably, the "Grand Hotel Motif," -- is a favorite of MacDonald's and he used it several more times later in his career, notably in Cry Hard, Cry Fast, and Condominium. It's best current usage is in the television series Lost, where past and present meet in each episode. The book begins with a prologue, where we meet Manuel Forno, a laborer whose job it is to pull the ferry back and forth across the river. He arrives at work, sees a lot of commotion, and is handed a shovel by his supervisor. It's going to be a bad day.

The first paragraph of Chapter One practically sings with MacDonald's hardboiled, descriptive prose, and right away the reader can recognize that "voice," the author's singular talent to describe, to create, to construct beautifully crafted sentences that transport us into his world:

"The ice-blue Cadillac with Texas plates boomed across the wasteland. Darby Garon held it at ninety, brown hands lightly on the wheel. Enchiladas and beer in Victoria had been a mistake at midday. The meal was a sodden, unmoving weight in his stomach. Both side vents were turned to slam the superheated air in against him and the girl who sat beside him, her eyes closed. The girl had been the same sort of mistake as the meal; the difference existed only in degree. She too was highly spiced, completely indigestible. ... [He] glanced over at her. The skirt of the yellow dress was bunched high, and her heavy thighs were slackly spread. Having eaten, the animal slept."

There are eight main characters in The Damned (if you count a pair of twins as a single character):

Darby Garon, a middle-aged oil company executive, long married with two adult children and a "fine home in Houston". In a classic pique of male menopause, he has propositioned a buxom, cheap-looking blonde off of the streets of San Antonio and taken her to Mexico City for two weeks of debauchery. "With driving, unthinking blindness, with his insatiable need for her, the days went by and the miles went by ... He used her with deadly persistency, and the times in-between were merely nothingness, a waiting." But then, "one morning, he awoke and it was as though he had walked out of a movie, stood blinking on the sidewalk, trying to remember which way to go." They are heading back to Texas, Darby silent and morose.

His companion is Betty Mooney, 23-years old and "precariously overripe. In another year or two the firm body would spread and soften, the heavy features begin to sag... [but] at the moment the physical impact of her was as real as a fist blow against [the] mouth." Not exactly a streetwalker, she is a goodtime girl who has spent time with many Darby Garons, some nicer, some meaner, some downright scary. Still, she had a blast (as usual) and is heading back to Texas with a trunk-full of expensive new clothing.

Linda Gerrold, a newlywed returning from her honeymoon. A former New York model, she is described lovingly: "White hair falling thick and sleek -- not precisely white, but with a faint glistening creaminess. Her brows were black and her face was oval, the brandied eyes spaced gravely, the lips wide and warm with instinctive wisdom, the throat and shoulders golden and fragile above the strapless material of the pale tan linen dress." AKA: The Ideal MacDonald Heroine. She is warm, and instinctive, and wise, and is reveling in her sexual awakening (this was 1952, after all). However she has a gnawing unease about her new husband, who seems withdrawn and reserved, and not at all open to the new sexual discoveries she has delighted in. Could that be because her mother-in-law has accompanied them on their honeymoon?

Her husband, John Carter Gerrold, has definitely got problems. He is introduced to the reader while he is enjoying a reverie from his youth, where he masturbated over the cold white statue of Venus that stood in his uncle's garden. He remembers "he cried, with his teeth against the grass, wishing [the statue] would fall and smash him utterly." He feels shamed after sex, and prefers to remember Linda as he first saw her: "standing, virginal, in billowing whiteness, her face lifted to a shaft of light that came down from an operatic sky." As I said, John has problems.

Del Bennicke, a short, tough, opportunistic user who is on the run after killing a famous Mexico City matador when he was discovered in flagrante with the bullfighter's girlfriend. For Del, the the stalled ferry is a real danger, for once the killing is discovered he knows the entire country will be mobilized and his escape from Mexico impossible.

Bill Danton, a tall, deeply tanned rancher, on his way to Houston to purchase some farm equipment. Bill is a Texan who was raised in Mexico after his father married an Hispanic girl following the death of his wife. Bill is accompanied by his Mexican friend Pepe, and everyone at the ferry assumes Bill is also Mexican, until he opens his mouth and speaks perfect English. Bill has a deep love for Mexico and its people, and has no intention of ever returning to live in the States.

Phil Decker, an aging burlesque comic, the leader of the stage act The Triple Deckers. Phil, along with stage-girl twins Riki and Niki, perform in dingy clubs and theaters, where the anachronistic, derivative Phil has gradually convinced the relatively innocent twins to perform a strip tease along with other risqué burlesque-era acts. Phil is constantly thinking, dreaming up new routines. He used to be one half of a fairly successful act and was paid well, but that all went to hell when his wife discovered him in bed with a chorus girl. The act broke up and things have never been the same. But there's this new thing called television, and Phil is planning for the big time. Riki and Nicki, however, are planning to split and return home, although they haven't told Phil yet.

These people, along with dozens of other unnamed travelers, are forced to sit for hours in the hot sun, while Manuel and his fellow laborers try to dig a passable channel for the ferry. Darby and Betty aren't speaking to each other; newlyweds Linda and John sneak off for an afternoon tryst, while momma waits in the back seat of their car; Del spots Betty, recognizes her type and starts scheming a plan to use her to get out of the country; Bill's heart almost flips the minute he lays eyes on Linda, and the twins decide to lower the boom on poor old Phil.

Then the mother-in-law has a stroke, and a self-important local politico and his entourage arrives, with deadly results.

As masterfully as the plot is constructed, weaving character with character, the real meat of this novel is in the background stories of the characters. Robin Smiley, Publisher of the magazine Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine, wrote in the November 2002 issue that one of those background stories "might stand alone as a short story. [A character] catches a stray bullet in the belly. MacDonald follows his interior monologue from the time he discovers he has been shot through his various stages of awareness until he dies. In another passage, MacDonald writes about a woman's decision to team up with a man although she knows he will abuse her. It is a sympathetic and utterly convincing presentation of a battered woman's mentality." I would argue that all of the background stories could stand as short stories. Indeed, MacDonald's strength as a writer of short fiction allowed him to put together such a novel, but it is his nascent ability to weave these stories together that shows his real talent as a novelist.

As good a novel as The Damned is, it would not have been as successful without that cover recommendation from writer Mickey Spillane. The value of his approval is proven by the fact that his name appears in larger print than the author of the book! Spillane was at the height of his popularity and power when The Damned was published, and one wonders why he would go out of his way to help an author he didn't know and had never met. According to a 1981 interview with Dick Lupoff (quoted in the Shine's Rave or Rage), it was an accident, followed by some quick thinking on the part of a Fawcett editor. MacDonald recalls:

The book has a cover band which says: "I wish I had written this book -- Mickey Spillane." I didn't know the Mick at the time. Ralph Daigh, who was editorial director at Fawcett ... loaned Spillane a set of galleys --- and Mickey brought them back in and he said casually, "That's a good book. I wish I had written it." Ralph wrote it out on a card and said, "Here, Mick, sign it." Mick said, "Yes, I'll sign it." ... When the book came out, Spillane's editors and lawyers and agents descended like a cloud of locusts on Ralph saying, "You can't do this. Spillane never gives a blurb." He said, "Gentlemen, I have it in writing and signed by Mr. Spillane and I have it dated. Now what do you want to do?"

That little trick probably helped make MacDonald a successful author a lot earlier than he might have without it. A testimony to its strength in selling books can be seen in the following three or four MacDonald novels, where Spillane's name keeps appearing. Dead Low Tide's cover featured a picture of The Damned, reminding would-be readers that this was the same author that Spillane had liked so much. The Neon Jungle features the reminder on its back cover: "Mickey Spillane: 'I wish I had written this book'. Mickey was talking about John D. MacDonald's The Damned. Well... here's an even greater novel, The Neon Jungle, by the same author." All These Condemned, written two years after The Damned, still featured Spillane's blurb on the back cover.

Finally, in 1955 actor Bob Cummings bought the film rights to The Damned, intending to produce and star in it (probably as Bill Danton). According to Walter Shine (in JDM Bibliophine #27), the project never got off the ground, but gossip had it that oil executive Darby Garon would have been played by Ronald Reagan, and his wife Moira (unseen in the novel, but referred to ) was to have been played by Nancy Davis! Now that would have been interesting! I'm sure it would have been easier to sit through than Hellcats of the Navy!

Leonardo DiCaprio as Travis McGee

One of the things that reawakened my interest in JDM was the recent announcement that The Deep Blue Good-By was, at long last, going to be filmed and that Travis McGee was going to be played by ... Leonardo DiCaprio?! At first I was horrified. It was so wrong on so many levels that I can't even begin to go into them all. McGee is a 6' 4" ex-football player with a deep salt-water tan and who was described in one novel as "spectacularly huge." Although the IMDb lists DiCaprio as standing 6' tall, he certainly doesn't look it, even in Hollywood, the land of little people. For years fans of McGee have longed for the right actor to play their favorite MacDonald character and have already been disappointed twice, once by Rod Taylor (mild disappointment) and once by Sam Elliott (deep disappointment). My favorite match for McGee would have been a young Robert Ryan, although his youth predated the series, or a young Clint Eastwood, but Travis is far more gregarious than any character Clint ever played. Contemporary actors who spring to mind are David Boreanaz or Nathan Fillion, but neither of them are really tall enough. Thinking about DiCaprio, I realized that he would make a better Junior Allen than Travis McGee. (Hey, maybe...)

And yet... DiCaprio is one of my favorite actors and he has a great talent and a good range. He is my all-time favorite movie Romeo, possessing more energy and passion than all the other middle-aged geezers combined who have played the part on screen before. I just saw him in Revolutionary Road, a film based on the 1961 novel by Richard Yates, and which made me think about possible adaptations of some of MacDonald's contemporaneous novels that covered the same ground, like Cancel All Our Vows and Clemmie. DiCaprio was excellent in Gangs of New York, and Catch Me if You Can was great fun. Despite the lack of any physical similarity to the character he will be playing, he does have the talent to pull it off. With a good script and good director, perhaps the real spirit of MacDonald's writing will be captured once and for all. The good news for those of us who have wanted to see this matchless novel filmed is the fact that DiCaprio is a mega-star and his name on a project will carry great weight in getting it "green-lighted" and into production. And even if the actor doesn't look how we've imagined Travis to be, the story is so good and well plotted that it would take a real moron to screw it up. Think of Elliott and his mustachioed McGee, living in California on a sailboat and dropping his "g"s. Nothing could be that bad... could it?

The only actor who has ever really nailed the character is one who never did it in front of a camera. Darren McGavin read 19 of the 21 McGees for Random House Audio Books Presentations back in the 1980's and he portrays Travis (and all the other characters) with more style and depth than either of his predecessors. Interestingly, McGavin once portrayed private eye Mike Hammer on television in the late 1950's. Hammer was the creation of author Mickey Spillane and was, for all intents and purposes, the "anti-McGee," a base, one dimensional, misogynistic sadist. MacDonald had no love for Spillane's writing. The Travis McGee audio books are no longer in print, however used copies are obtainable on Amazon and eBay. And if you look hard enough you can find digitized versions online, although their legality is questionable. I recently listened to the first four Travis books on trips from Maryland to Tennessee and back again, and I have to say the productions were riveting. Unfortunately only abridged versions are circulating, although I have seen unabridged versions for sale, but for very large sums of money. Even the abridged version are worth seeking out.