Fifth Man in a String Quartet
A
mobster seeking public office devises a scheme to silence a murder witness.
A Little Tête-to-Tête
Fred
R. Shultke is running for Harbor Commissioner. Years before, he killed a rival,
and believes he was seen. The question is, what to do at this juncture?
The
witness is a low-level runner named Stephen Rudensky, who saw nothing at all.
He has a brother, “the internationally-renowned violinist Paul Rudell”
according to the latter’s remarkably lifelike and true-to-form obituary on the
evening news (“he will be missed”), who founded a Conservatory of Music in New
York, and whom Stephen deeply admires in his far-flung travels, saving the odd
newspaper clipping that comes his way.
Shultke
has a plan. He donates $10,000 to the Conservatory (“a modest little
contribution,” McCloud observes), places his own Fifth Avenue lawyer on the
staff as a part-time advisor without pay, arranges a frame job, and has Rudell
stabbed after a charity concert rehearsal.
Stephen
Rudensky surfaces for the funeral, Shultke tries to have him killed. Meanwhile,
a student of Rudell’s, Louis Brocco is held for the murder on impressive
circumstantial evidence that leaves McCloud cold. This is a lovelorn lad who
looks over his shoulder every day because in his childhood, like Cocteau’s
poet, kids threw snowballs full of rocks at him. He has, by his own admission,
“no personality”, is “not strong, not attractive” without his violin.
The
rest of the quartet, second violinist Waldemar, violist Milton and cellist
Kurt, are studies of a very similar sort. They train like athletes and live
like chessplayers, work at a deli and scrape along in the city. When Louis is
arrested for first-degree murder (the motive is asserted to be love for
Rudell’s granddaughter Natalie), they try to bail him out, and then get into
trouble by taking evidence from his room (they give themselves away by
straightening up the apartment before they go). McCloud wonders how a man
wearing one blue sock and one yellow sock could have such a neat apartment,
finds out they have a key, could run them in, but will accept a bribe. “You
see,” says Kurt, who thinks the marshal has beady eyes and hence a wrongheaded
implacability, “I told you so!” They bring him Louis’s returned love letters
from behind the deli counter (“‘Dear Miss Rudell,’” McCloud reads, adding,
“sort o’ formal for a love letter, ain’t it?”), and inquire about the bribe.
“That’s gonna cost you one bagel and cream cheese, and maybe a cream soda, I
don’t know, I haven’t figured that out yet.”
Natalie
is receiving the attentions of Shultke’s lawyer, Kevin Mallory, who disprizes
Louis in the strongest terms as “a weirdo”, if not “dangerous” on the surface.
McCloud
grasps the situation with great rapidity, helped out by general astuteness and
by chance and good investigative work. He sees Rudell’s double on a
streetcorner near the Conservatory, learns of Rudensky’s plight, has the rest
of the quartet stake out Natalie, follows her to Rudensky. A shootout with
Shultke’s assassin (the “man in the green hat” who’s been following Louis
around) and a pursuit through Long Island bring him to the arrest of the
lawyer, whom Shultke has set to kill Rudensky (“I don’t want to think I saddled
myself with a weakie”). The last scene has the quartet playing Dvořák (the
“American” quartet), and between Alex and Milton is toe-tappin’
McCloud with his harmonica, under a bust of Beethoven.
Mayberry’s
direction is distinguished by a sense of detail in a flowing mise en scène.
Shultke flip-flops back to his hotel room in robe and slippers after assigning
Mallory to kill Rudensky, and this walk from the elevator (out of which two
prostitutes emerge and are sent on to the room), his short parti-colored robe
and the sound of his slippers as he walks away from the camera down the
corridor, is one of the best scenes of this kind. The final chase under a clear
blue sky is not less remarkable.
Brand
and Rick Weaver give seemingly effortless performances that go very far in
refinement and characterization. Lilia Skala is skillfully present as Natalie’s
aunt Eugenia (these Russians call each other Natalya and Eugénie and Pavel and
Stefan), a ballet teacher at the Conservatory, “an aristocratic lady,” McCloud
says, and as quick as he is to understand the situation.
Wiseman
has a brief scene as Rudell signing autographs, then plays Rudensky in a tricky
twofold manner as a man of feeling and violence. One is in his gentle demeanor,
the other in his tough-guy voice.
Henteloff
stays on a nervously even keel as the co-violinist amid these rapids. Haydn and
Schreiber are brought in to definitely etch their characters in a swift
movement. Fabares is abstracted and responsive by turns, as needed. Collins is
a perfect tool.
It’s
a balmy summer day in New York at the opening. How are things, Chief Clifford
would like to know. McCloud has collared a pickpocket, also a man selling
flying saucers, he’d like more challenging duty, at night for instance. Every
day, says the Chief standing on the steps outdoors, we meet and have a talk
like this, you tell me of your day, I have a plan. “From now on, you work
nights.”
And
that night, McCloud has just answered a call about a “dying animal” (it was the
old man’s bagpipes, “he gave me a demonstration that wouldn’t quit, a whole
serenade, you betcha”) when the call goes out about Rudell’s murder.
Responding, he finds Louis fleeing from the scene after a passerby’s scream of
terror.
Chief
Clifford berates McCloud for “coercing” the prisoner by bringing his violin to
him in jail. The marshal tells Louis about his Aunt Cora, who loved the violin
and had 23 cats. “One day a stranger came and took away her innocence, just
took away her innocence. He told her what those strings were made of, and just
absolutely devastated a fantastic musical career.” He gets Louis to play for
him, “you know, that Borodin quartet, No. 2 in D Major, I think it is, just
that third movement, that’s the part that really turns me on.”
The
beauty of the structure is revealed in the transition from Louis’s dreary
apartment, where the manager offers McCloud a cup of tea (“haven’t had m’
booster shot,” the marshal answers, refusing it), to the Conservatory, where
Eugenia serves him from a samovar.
|
Joseph Wiseman Paul Rudell/Stephen
Rudensky |
Written by James D. Buchanan & Ronald Austin Directed by Russ Mayberry |
33415, 2.2.72
Theater marquees: A Gunfight (dir. Lamont Johnson),
Creatures the World Forgot (dir. Don Chaffey).
FRED R. SHULTKE: (To his miniskirted chambermaid, who is
interrupting Paul Rudell’s obituary on television.) Go polish
something.
(The other members of the quartet want to bail out Louis
Brocco on a first-degree murder charge.)
SGT. BROADHURST: (To McCloud.) If you need anything at all, I’ll be
gone.
McCLOUD: There ya
go.
MILTON: (To McCloud.) Louis couldn’t hurt the
lowest creature in the world! A caterpillar! A music critic!
MILTON: (To McCloud.) An ant, he couldn’t
hurt!
McCLOUD: You know, my Aunt Cora played the fiddle, she was—
LOUIS
BROCCO: Please don’t call it a fiddle. That’s a very ugly word.
(Louis Brocco plays a little Borodin in his jail cell.)
PRISONER: (Off-camera.) Hey, knock off the lullaby!
McCLOUD: Well,
there’s no accountin’ for bad taste, is there.
McCLOUD: (To Louis Brocco.) You
always look around to see if someone’s followin’ you?
APT. MANAGER: (Of Louis Brocco, to McCloud.) You say good
mornin’ to this kid, you know what he does, he hums to you.
APT. MANAGER: His three musician friends, Huey,
Louie and Mooey, or whatever their names are...
(At the Conservatory.)
McCLOUD: Excuse me, ma’am, may I ask you a few questions?
EUGENIA: I would
say it’s about time someone did..
(Serving Russian tea.)
EUGENIA: I hope it’s steeped long enough.
McCLOUD: Oh,
listen, that’s quite all right! I don’t like it too steep.
SGT. BROADHURST: (Of Fred R. Shultke, to McCloud.) He’s
never tried to hide his past. As a matter of fact, he’s stated publicly that he
grew up being somewhat less than lovely.
McCLOUD: You wouldn’t happen to have a little free time to help me
out, would ya?
SGT.
BROADHURST: Free time? You are speaking of a long-forgotten luxury, my friend.
(The trio volunteer for stakeout duty.)
KURT: (He has opposed McCloud as inimical to “artistes”.) When a man
of honor has pledged himself to assist, such a man is not deterred.
McCLOUD: There ya
go.
KURT:
(Indicating an upstairs window.) The subject is up there.
McCLOUD: You’re
doin’ a bang-up job.
McCLOUD: A crazy idea gets reasonable when a man gets desperate
enough.
FRED R. SHULTKE: (Of Kevin Mallory.) My
lawyer. Phi Beta Kappa. All the right social circles. All that spiffy stuff money
just can’t buy. Ain’t that right, silver spoon?
FRED R. SHULTKE: Kevin, you’re gonna have to learn
how to read people instead of books.
FRED R. SHULTKE: (Of Stephen Rudensky, to Kevin Mallory.) I told
you, however he got it, he now knows it was us that zinged his brother.
FRED R. SHULTKE: Well, personally of course, I got a
pretty full appointment schedule, but an old friend like Steve, he deserves to
get met. Definitely deserves to get met.
(Fred R. Shultke, candidate for Harbor Commissioner, contributed
ten thousand dollars to the Paul Rudell Conservatory of Music.)
SGT. BROADHURST: Well, where are you going?
McCLOUD: I hate to
be a namedropper, but if Chief Clifford should ask as to my whereabouts, you
can tell him I’m havin’ a little tête-to-tête
(he pronounces this, moreover, “Tate-ta-Tate”) with a
patron of the arts.
SGT.
BROADHURST: What?
McCLOUD: Yeah, and
I shall return anon. (Exits.)
SGT.
BROADHURST: (To himself, likewise.) Tête-to-tête?
(At first, Shultke denies his involvement with the
Conservatory.)
FRED R. SHULTKE: (To McCloud.) Cowboy, can you picture me
snorin’ my way through a violin concert, huh?
(If he was trying to win support, why did he contribute
anonymously?)
FRED R. SHULTKE: (To McCloud.) Well, you make ‘em
anonymously, it leaks out eventually, at the right time. Makes you look more
benevolent, huh?
(He knows every man on the docks.)
FRED R. SHULTKE: When I was a kid they called that bein’ a bum. Now they
say I got practical experience.
(Kevin Mallory pulls a gun.)
KEVIN MALLORY: You’re dangerous, Rudensky.
STEPHEN
RUDENSKY: Yeah, I must be, your hand’s shakin’. Come on, boy, if you’re
gonna use it, use it! You dishrag! You no good— (He grabs
Kevin Mallory by the throat.)