Not much of an “assassination”, but I’ve always felt that filmed adaptations of Agatha Christie “Miss Marple” stories have consistently failed to get the title character right.
Miss Marple as written is supposed to be quite elderly, fluffy, dithery, nosy, shawl-draped, self-deprecating, white-haired, euphemistic, gossipy, a pure distillation of Victorian-era affectionate maiden aunt, with an unexpected substrate of shrewd inductive brilliance and hard-headed realism about the seamier side of human behavior. Invariably, at least in the adaptations I’ve seen, the shrewdness and realism are transferred to the persona of a forthright, grey-haired, dowdy and active middle-aged spinster, with all the Victorian-femininity affectation stripped away.
In fact, filmed Miss Marples always seem to me to be a much better read for Miss Marple’s chief knitter-detective rival in Golden Age crime fiction, Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver. I’d love to see filmed adaptations of Miss Silver stories, but I don’t want to see Miss Silver playing Miss Marple.
I’ve heard similar complaints about other filmed or TV-ed versions of popular detectives. Nero Wolfe hasn’t been well-treated by TV or radio (although Thayer David’s performance was supposed to have been very good – only he died before a series could be made. And I liked Maury Chaykin in the Timothy Hutton- produced series). Similarly, Hercule Poirot had originally been badly done, with a miscast Tony Randall or Austin Trevor. But then we had Albert Finney and David Suchet (although Peter Ustinov seemed a throwback to the miscast days). There have been a lot of others (including Kenneth Branaugh with a ludicrously oversized moustach)
Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias in HBO’s Watchmen. In the original comics, and the movie adaptation for that matter, Dr. Manhattan is technically the only super-human, but Veidt is basically superhumanly intelligent. He’s consistently several steps ahead of everyone else, outsmarts and outmaneuvers literally everyone on the planet, including Dr. Manhattan who has god-like powers and who knows his own future with perfect accuracy, and pulls off a monstrous scheme in such a way that all of the “heroes” are forced to acquiesce to it.
In HBO’s Watchmen, he’s basically a washed-up has-been who had one big idea and then…just kinda stopped being relevant. He’s outmaneuvered and outsmarted by several characters, and then just gets chumped.
Of course, Alan Moore has more or less made a career out of “de-constructing” other people’s creations, so I suppose turnabout is fair play.
Maybe not pure fiction. From the Wiki on the Homestake Mine:
My major objection to them using Hearst under that name is that we know that he was never arrested or punished for anything he did at the time, and he died as a respected Senator in Washington DC in 1891. So as far as the historical record was concerned, he couldn’t be killed or otherwise suffer consequences for his deeds no matter how big a villain he had been. Yet in the movie that concluded the Deadwood saga, set in 1889:
Hearst is beaten by a mob in the street and nearly killed, but rescued by Seth Bullock and arrested. This is really just a sop to the audience in wanting to see a villain punished. In contrast, Al Swearengen is virtually rehabilitated in the movie.
Mimsie Pott, wife of Cmmdr Caractacus Pott, mother of Jeremy & Jemima and occupant of the front passenger’s seat of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, got pretty thoroughly assassinated by Disney. She simply doesn’t exist (Disney movies often prefer their male parents to be widowers, their children to be motherless).
The car also got pretty badly assassinated, if that counts.
I could not agree with you more. The current series of movies seems tailored for millenials. I mean, everyone is about the same age from the same class at the academy. How assignment of rank was worked out is a mystery. How the Kirk of this series shot straight to the rank of captain is beyond belief. He seems to be more of a Capt. George W Bush.
Well, it doesn’t take a lot of fan-wanking to note that he was semi-legitimately the first officer who took over the captaincy when Spock cited regulations on himself.
He of course saved the day, so proved he could handle the role and the rigidly egalitarian Star Fleet bureaucracy gave him a birth.
OK, there is perhaps a lot of wanking there, but it kind of parses.
*“Oh, yes you do, McMurdo,” cried Sherlock Holmes, genially. “I don’t think you can have forgotten me. Don’t you remember the amateur who fought three rounds with you at Alison’s rooms on the night of your benefit four years back?”
“Not Mr. Sherlock Holmes!” roared the prize-fighter. “God’s truth! how could I have mistook you? If instead o’ standin’ there so quiet you had just stepped up and given me that cross-hit of yours under the jaw, I’d ha’ known you without a question. Ah, you’re one that has wasted your gifts, you have! You might have aimed high, if you had joined the fancy.” *
Have you seen the Joan Hickson BBC adaptations? They’re from the 80s and I would say she does an amazing job of capturing the “quite elderly, fluffy, dithery, nosy, shawl-draped, self-deprecating, white-haired, euphemistic, gossipy, a pure distillation of Victorian-era affectionate maiden aunt” character. I believe they’ve been remastered recently so well worth checking out.
Farmer had a real obsession with Tarzan. Not only did he write the biography of Tarzan in his Tarzan Alive, he wrote several other pieces (collected in the anthology [io]Mother was a Lovely Beast*), a novel about someone trying to duplicate Tarzan by having a human raised by apes (Lord Tyger), and he wrote a Sherlok Holmes-Tarzan crossover pastiche 9The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, which is awful). Plus, of course, he wrote the X-rated Tarzan /Doc Savage crossover A Feast Unknown and its G-rated sequels Lord of the Trees/The Mad Goblin.
No he couldn’t. The Deadwood Pioneer would most certainly have published an account of the public beating and subsequent arrest of a US Senator, who was also incredibly rich and had been one of the most influential people in the town since just after its founding. Issues of the paper dating back to its founding in 1877 are available on line.
But my point was that we know from the historical record that Hearst was not punished in any way for his alleged crimes. If he were released without charges that means he wasn’t punished in any serious way. And if a man with the wealth and power of Hearst had been beaten by a mob, you can be sure that wouldn’t have been an end of it. Both Seth Bullock and Calamity Jane had prominent careers after the supposed events of the movie. The real Hearst certainly would have taken action against them for false arrest and assault.
I’ve seen the covers of some of Farmer’s pulp sci-fi, too; it’s kinda fetish-y, isn’t it? Creepy. Like that undercurrent that runs through Heinlein.
I’m not sure why I found those covers so icky. I had no clue of any of that when I read “Tarzan Alive,” which I truly enjoyed. The best part was the family tree" in the appendix. It was worth it for that alone.
