”…the bulkiest, balkiest, smartest, most unpredictable detective in the world…”

One of the most popular fictional detectives in the 20th Century was Rex Stout’s sleuthing creation Nero Wolfe, who first appeared in the pages of The Saturday Evening Post in 1934. Wolfe was an eccentric bon vivant whose fondness for both orchids and fine food often necessitated his using his deductive powers to support the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed. He rarely left his apartment (except in dire emergencies), leaving the legwork to his assistant, Archie Goodwin—a hard-boiled, wisecracking ladies’ man who had an eye for a shapely leg. (Check out this interesting website for some more detailed background on the Holmesian sleuth “who rates the knife and fork as the greatest tools ever invented by man.”)

The Wolfe character made his debut on the silver screen in 1936’s Meet Nero Wolfe, but he didn’t achieve prominence on radio until 1943, with the “gargantuan gourmet” being played by J.B. Williams over a New England network. The detective then went national over NBC Radio beginning July 5, 1943 with Santos Ortega in the role of Nero (later replaced by Luis Van Rooten) and John Gibson as Archie; this series lasted about a year, and then another version cropped up on Mutual in 1946 with Francis X. Bushman (playing Nero) and Elliott Lewis (as Archie). Wolfe’s final incarnation was played by rotund character actor Sydney Greenstreet (The Maltese Falcon, The Mask of Dimitrios) in a show that ran on NBC from October 20, 1950 to April 27, 1951.

I listened to a couple of episodes of The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe last night in-between Suspense shows and I was genuinely pleased with the results. It’s a shame the program didn’t last longer than it did; Greenstreet made the perfect Nero Wolfe, and both episodes are well-scripted with a nice mix of humor and mystery. The first of the two, “The Case of the Dear Dead Lady” (11/3/50), contains a humorous exchange between Wolfe and his minion Archie Goodwin (Herb Ellis), who tries to drive home to his boss the idea that he needs to generate some much-needed cash after the detective places a large grocery order:

NERO: You seemed to be worried…
ARCHIE: Oh, I am…this means naturally that I’m supposed to handle Hausbrecker’s delivery boy when…and if he shows…
NERO: I had thought of leaving that simple matter to you…
ARCHIE: And what about the simple matter of the money?
NERO: Money?
ARCHIE: I hate to bring up a vulgar subject, but where’s it coming from?
NERO: Oh, of course…you’re right, Archie, I should have said…
ARCHIE: Said what?
NERO: Charge it.
ARCHIE: Boss, look…you don’t realize, I know…but we’re into that truffle broker for 500 odd bucks and change…
NERO: All right, all right…we’ll give him a check…
ARCHIE: Okay…okay, I will give him a check…and I hope they’ll let you keep the orchids in your cell…
NERO: You’re a wit, Archie…
ARCHIE: Mm hmm…you know, I’m on the bank’s mailing list…we got a notice this morning…
NERO: You don’t mean…
ARCHIE: Oh, but I do…
NERO: Again?
ARCHIE: Yeah, you just can’t take money out of an account, boss…sometimes you gotta put some in…

The two men are visited by a religious fanatic, Ted Olifant, who asks Nero to save the life of the woman with which he’s fallen in love (her another suitor, a bruiser named Jack Hunter, has threatened in a fit of jealousy to kill her). Archie pays a visit to the woman—and stumbles over her corpse in the process. In the second episode, “The Case of the Vanishing Shells” (2/2/51), an actress contacts Nero and Archie when she’s afraid to leave her hotel room after receiving a series of threatening notes. Gerald Mohr (a.k.a. Philip Marlowe) essays the Archie Goodwin role in this broadcast, and therein lies the interesting puzzle behind The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe: in its brief season on the air, the program went through five Goodwins: Wally Maher, Lamont Johnson, Ellis, Mohr, and Harry Bartell. (I guess good help is hard to find after all.) Of the quintet of Archies, I’d give Ellis the edge—although I think the actor who played the role best was Elliott Lewis from the 1946 series.