MovieChat Forums > The Glass Key (1942) Discussion > comparison with the original story (spoi...

comparison with the original story (spoilers)


I read "The Glass Key" a few weeks ago, and while there are a number of changes with the plot and characters, the movie is a reasonable adaptation.

I thought the entire sequence of beatings by Jeff was overdone in the movie; but I went back to the text and it happened just like that, including Beaumont (Ned in the book, not Ed) setting fire to a mattress and then waking up in the hospital.

The violence in the movie was far more graphic. In the book, Jeff said how much he enjoyed beating guys up, and especially Beaumont. But the beating was not described, only how Beaumont felt when he regained consciousness. And there was no sadomasochistic sexual undertone in the book, though Jeff accused Beaumont of being a "massacrist".

I don't think Alan Ladd was any great actor, but he played Beaumont very close to the character in the book. Same way with the other main characters, like Varna (O'Rory in the book) and Janet Henry, Paul Madvig, Farr the DA, and so on.

An insignificant detail, but ultimately important. Senator Henry argued with his son, they scuffled, the senator took Paul's walking stick and killed his son with it -- then returned home and left the monogrammed stick by the door in its usual place. This was the clue that suggested the Senator was the killer -- how did the murder weapon get back inside the house? In the book Paul was seen arguing with Taylor Henry on the street, but Paul was not present when Taylor was killed, though he returned while the Senator was standing over his son's body. In the movie the explanation how Beaumont figured it out was much weaker, IMO.

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How much of the snappy dialogue is original to the novel? Maybe a Bogart or Cagney could pull off that schtick, but I really couldn't buy it or, indeed, the characters, in this film.

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When I posted in March, it had been just a few weeks since I read the story.

Now it's been at least five months, and some aspects of the book and the movie are fuzzy (though I have the movie on disk, if I should choose to watch it again.)

I think the dialogue in the movie is similar to if not identical to the dialogue in the book.

One of the unique appeals of Dashiell Hammett was the words he put into the mouths of his characters -- they said things in ways that no one had ever spoken before. Or since.

Remember that Hammett also wrote the stories for The Thin Man and Maltese Falcon. There were words and phrases in the Maltese Falcon that Hammett put in just for laughs, like "gunsel" which the censors let by because they thought it mean a gunman. (It actually meant a gay boy-toy.)

I would love to see the 1935 version with George Raft playing the role that Alan Ladd played in 1942. It sounds like it could be closer to the book.

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I too would like to see the 1935 version. Hammett is one of my top favorite authors (and 'Glass Key' my favorite of the books) and the first time I saw this version of the story I was bitterly disappointed.

The look of the movie and the hard-boiled corn is good, but Alan Ladd as (N)ed Beaumont is wrong - in the book I was picturing someone more resembling Doc Holliday (or Hammett, for that matter - thin, consumptive, mustached, didn't smile but grinned - cynically). Although Ladd does nail the character at times, like in the scene of the meeting with Mathews and his manipulation of the note.

And the ending as I remember (I'm rewatching the movie on TCM just now) trashed the whole thing: everybody smiling together (as I recall). A polar opposite of the very dark ending of the book, where Beaumont "goes away" with Janet Henry. He saved his friend Madvig's bacon, but took his girl away. Which was more important to Madvig?

Ned Beamont said: "Janet is going away with me."

Madvig's lips parted. He looked dumbly at Ned Beaumont and as he looked the blood went out of his face again. When his face was quite bloodless he mumbled something of which only the word "luck" could be understood, turned clumsily around, went to the door, opened it, and went out, leaving it open behind him.

Janet Henry looked at Ned Beaumont. He stared fixedly at the door.


Hammett's stories seemed to me to be mainly character studies, in which the characters' character was to be gleaned solely from their actions (there's never any internal dialog, or "he thought..." in Hammett). The plots were merely vehicles (although usually very good in their own right) for the characters to reveal themselves in.

Much better for fans of the book IMO is a movie inspired by it, the Coen Bros.' Millers Crossing.

~Peter Hummers http://obxonstage.com
==
"In my own mind, I'm not sure that acting is something for a grown man to be doing." ~Steve McQueen

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