The Singing Skirt: Book vs. Episode

I have been seriously neglecting this blog this month. Part of it is because of my annual October Writing challenge, to write ten or eleven creepy stories in October, and they’re turning out longer than other years, so I’m devoting more time to them on this round.

Another part is that I haven’t been able to think hard enough to come up with a new topic I want to discuss. Unfortunately, I once again didn’t get up a special anniversary post back in September to celebrate the day our show premiered. But after seeing The Singing Skirt again and looking over the book summary, I am intrigued enough to want to muse on the similarities and differences between the two versions.

Most names are different in the book version, as usual. George Anclitas and Slim Marcus retain theirs. Some characters’ names are oddly similar, such as Ellis instead of Ennis. Other characters’ names are completely changed, including the defendant’s.

It’s interesting that Slim Marcus and George Anclitas are working together in the book to cheat Mr. Ellis, instead of Slim doing it behind Anclitas’s back. And the amount of money is much less—$6,000 instead of $60,000.

The basic plot is more or less the same as the episode, including the thing of Anclitas framing people with marijuana cigarettes when he wants them out of the picture and Perry switching guns and causing even more of a problem because of it. But of course, since a little 50-minute episode can’t hold everything, the book is much more fleshed-out than the episode.

Also the same is the defendant not being so squeaky clean, which isn’t as big a deal in the books but is in the episodes. She’s having an affair with Mr. Ellis, which seems to be more pronounced in the book than it was in the episode. In the episode, they still seemed to be trying to tone it down somewhat by it being said that they only went out two or three times (albeit that may have been a lie).

The biggest difference between the two versions, and the one I find most pleasing, is that Slim Marcus is not the murderer in the book. However, it’s kind of sad that in the book it’s actually Mr. Ellis. After the defendant was so crazy about him, he just kills his wife and lets the defendant take the rap. And in addition to dating her, he was also dating her friend Sadie! I guess that’s what she gets for getting involved with a married man.

According to Storrer’s site, the books tried to build up on the tension between Perry and Hamilton by having Hamilton get closer each book to either getting Perry in (probably deserved) trouble or getting the defendant convicted. I suppose that means that was kind of the gimmick of the books, as opposed to the episodes’ gimmick of the wrong person always being arrested. In The Singing Skirt, to make the tension even more pronounced, even Della disbelieves the client is telling the truth.

That is unusual for the episodes too, isn’t it? There’s been quite a few times when Paul has disbelieved, but it seems like Della usually sticks with whatever Perry thinks. Or even times when Perry doesn’t want to take a case because he’s skeptical, Della encourages him to do so. I think about the only time television Della was absolutely not thrilled with Perry’s involvement was in The Velvet Claws, when Della could see how dangerous the client was but Perry kept trying to help her anyway.

That element of Della encouraging Perry to take cases he isn’t that interested in seemed to be a theme running through several mystery series. The same thing happened several times on Mannix, with Peggy encouraging her boss to take certain cases. It seemed very strange and even out-of-character when later on, in season 7, there were two or three occasions where Peggy was convinced that Joe’s theories were baloney and that he should drop the cases because the clients were not worth helping.

Since both Della and Peggy serve as the consciences for their bosses during those rare but human times when they would rather do something other than take on a particular case, it’s odd to see either of the girls being cynical and trying to discourage their bosses instead. Of course, in the case of The Velvet Claws, Della’s objections are understandable, while Peggy’s objections in the season 7 episodes are puzzling. Why those cases any more than any others? They’re not any stranger, nor the clients any more suspicious, than many of the others. Our Velvet-Clawed lady, on the other hand, is extremely unique in her manipulations of and flirting with Perry. I can’t think of another client quite like her in any way, and that is negatively speaking.

But I digress. The Singing Skirt is actually not one of my favorite episodes; were it not for H.M. Wynant taking part, it would probably have been destined to remain as one of my least favorites, due to all the shenanigans with the guns that Perry causes and the resulting problems in court because of them. Also, it is the last episode to feature Hamilton until the last two episodes of the season. And I find myself quite unprepared for the long stretches of Hamilton-less episodes in the remainder of season 3 and much of season 4! Maybe, since now I own most of them on DVD, I’ll watch the uncut versions instead of just seeing the cut versions over once again. I’ve hardly seen any of those episodes uncut, so that will at least be a fun adventure.

And I do look forward to The Crying Cherub in any case, as I think Sergeant Brice and Lieutenant Tragg have some nice interaction in it. I also particularly like The Nimble Nephew. And of course, I always enjoy seeing the Sampson episodes, cut or uncut.

Meanwhile, since The Singing Skirt is one of the books available to read online on that site I found (http://www.e-reading.me/bookbyauthor.php?author=21005), I shall probably read through at least some of it sometime.

The Uncut Velvet Claws

Wow, what a week. I am so sorry. Sunday was rather hectic, I was ill from Sunday night through early Wednesday morning, and Wednesday was busy, too. I’m hoping I can get things steered back on track now.

It was very interesting to watch The Velvet Claws uncut. My original reason for doing that recently was in hoping to find a little more footage of Andy. I did, although the smidgen of what was cut of him puzzles me.

The very first scene that’s absent is right at the beginning, after Eva and her guy escape the joint (which seems to be the vine-covered house used as the Barkley mansion on The Big Valley). They’re stopped on the road near the house by the police and Eva has the guy hide under a raincoat so he won’t be seen and identified while she gives the officer a song and dance about being the neighbors and she’s trying to get her sick husband to the doctor. The officer is reluctant to believe her, but finally does, and lets them through.

I’m confused over why he does, too, since when he goes to look in the car it looks like all he sees is the raincoat and not any (unidentifiable) form hiding under it. I thought sure he would bust Eva when he came back and that he would say she didn’t have anyone else in the car, but instead he told her to go on through.

It’s an illogical setup. In order to make the officer think there’s someone else in the car, and ill, it seems that Eva should have told the guy to wrap the raincoat around himself and slump down towards the driver’s side of the car so he won’t be recognized. Having him get under the raincoat while it’s on the floor, so it looks like there’s no other person there at all, just doesn’t make sense considering what happens after the officer looks in the car.

It ends up being a fairly important scene for character understanding, but I wonder if it was cut both because of the illogic and also Eva’s playfulness with her guy. While he’s hiding under the raincoat, she gets back in the car and talks with him about her desire to find one good man who loves her, and how she’ll lie, cheat, or steal to have that. As she talks, she starts running her bare foot over his face. (Eww!) He responds by kissing the top of her foot.

Also cut is a scene where Perry goes to talk to the guy. He defends Eva’s erratic behavior by telling of how she’s always had a terrible life and says he loves her.

It’s very exasperating that so much of his screentime is missing from the standard version of the episode. One of the things that always baffled me about the cut version is how we don’t see much of him for the longest time and then we hear about him fleeing town after the murder. It makes him seem rather spineless, even with them keeping the later bit where he admits he shouldn’t have left and only did because Eva told him to (and that he came right back when he heard about the murder). I felt that he just wasn’t involved enough in everything that was happening and it was hard to swallow that he really cared about Eva. The uncut largely solves that problem with these other scenes and makes so much more sense—although I still don’t know if I would want someone like him to attain a high political office.

And then Andy is very puzzling. The bit missing with him seems to be when Perry goes downstairs to talk to Eva after the murder and she tells him she’s sure that he was the one arguing with her husband right before his death. Andy suddenly appears at the top of the stairs and bellows, “Goodnight, Counselor!” Perry then takes his leave.

Wow, Andy. Why so insistent? The police are currently investigating upstairs not down, Andy acted like he was through talking with Eva, and Eva is Perry’s client. (Not to mention the house is hers.) Why can’t Perry talk to her whenever he feels like it, especially when she isn’t even under arrest?

Of course, the police generally don’t like when Perry is hanging around while they’re trying to investigate a place. I imagine they don’t want him poking around through everything and Andy was concerned of that happening. But the scene would have made more sense if Perry had indeed been poking through something when Andy caught him, instead of just talking to his client.

It seems to be one more instance of Andy showing rather clipped and stressed behavior, as he does now and then in seasons 6 and 7 and in season 8 a lot more. It also seems an unnecessary bit; the scene could have easily ended, as the cut one does, with Perry staring at Eva in disbelief. Not that I’m knocking any extra footage of Andy; I’m happy to see him, but it doesn’t take away my puzzlement over the purpose of the bit.

Sometimes it seems like the writers like to slip in anything anywhere they can to show the strained feelings between Perry and the police. But it usually ends up making either one side or the other look bad, as it does here for Andy. They could have instead had Andy appear at the top of the stairs and rather casually or confusedly mention that he had thought Perry was leaving, which is his reaction in some episodes with similar scenes. Whereupon Perry could still take his leave as he does at that point in the episode.

The episode, overall, has never been a particular favorite of mine, in any form. But it is interesting, unique, and significant, considering it’s the televised version of the very first book.

Perry is always a puzzle in it; despite his insistence that he’s in it to stop Spicy Bits, it certainly seems obvious over time that he has some interest in the mixed-up, twisted Eva. If nothing else, the fact that he agrees to continue being her attorney at the end shows that he doesn’t hold the dislike for her that he does for some other clients.

I’ve heard that the plot in the book is quite a bit different, naturally, and that it also has the rather interesting ending of Della kissing Perry and Eva being upset about it. Considering that in the episode Eva’s interest is in the guy she keeps fighting to protect, I highly doubt it would have bothered her at all if Della had kissed Perry in that version.

Eva is certainly treacherous, the way she weaves Perry into her trap and threatens to make it look like he was present on the scene when her husband was killed—hence making him the prime suspect. But honestly, in the television series at least, I don’t really mind her. (I can’t say how I would feel about her book counterpart.) Aside from her nastiness in the bit about the murder, she kind of amuses me and appalls me all at once. And I do like how she really seems to love that guy so much and is so desperate to protect him. At the end she goes off with him, so the fans of the Perry/Della pairing surely don’t have to worry about her trying to break up any possible relationship between them.

Eva’s actress, incidentally, is the highly talented Patricia Barry, who often seemed to play femme fatales on Perry. She’s also the duplicitous Janet in The Frantic Flyer and the older woman luring David Gideon into a trap in The Grumbling Grandfather. Recently I saw her on Ironside, for once playing a relatively normal (by comparison) television producer—albeit she was in love with a very bad man. Her tastes certainly left something to be desired. She also toned down her usual, very distinctive voice. If not for seeing her name in the opening credits, I’m not sure I would have recognized her!

I wonder if Patricia and Raymond Burr were friends in real-life, since that seemed to be the case sometimes when actors recurred on Perry or on both series.