Philip Marlowe - The Monkey's Uncle
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"Stop, Pops; He's Going To Fling It!" Adventures Of Philip Marlowe - The Monkey's Uncle March 7, 1950 Yes, we all know the simian's first line of defence. Philip Marlowe may be a tough guy's tough guy, but when faced with a chimpanzee who starts to fling what a chimpanzee is known to fling, well, no one is that tough. (As you may be starting to suspect, this is a lighter-hearted episode with much humour accompanying the mystery.) As it turns out, Cornelius, the pooh-flinging perpetrator of The Monkey's Uncle, is not the guiltiest of the guilty parties. He is simply an everyday vaudevillian whose speciality is playing an English butler, complete with derby hat and boiled shirt. The real villain of the story may be Lord Ashley Duke, a pompous nightclub entertainer who purchased the chimpanzee for his act, a take-off on British drawing-room farce. It could also be Wesley McDuff, animal trainer and previous owner of Cornelius, who resents Lord Ashley Duke and intends to steal his chimpanzee back. We soon learn that neither of these characters is beyond reproach, but only one is acting out of love, not greed. If the name Cornelius seems familiar to you, Roddy McDowell played an ape with the same name eighteen years after this broadcast, in the 1968 film Planet Of The Apes. While Cornelius is certainly not a common name, it is not known for sure if the name of McDowell's ape was inspired by The Monkey's Uncle. Perhaps both names were in honour of the Austrian painter Gabriel Cornelius Von Max (1840-1915) , who kept a family of monkeys at his home, often painting them in very human situations. This episode is a fine illustration of the importance of minor characters in radio drama, and how they help the listener to visualize the story. One character that gives us insight into Marlowe's day is Lady Ashley Duke, the phoney dowager with upper-class diction who, when alone, "climbs out of her accent like it was a tight girdle." Another well-constructed minor role is the bellhop, who provides information in exchange for a stream of five dollar bills, filling Marlowe (and at the same time, the listeners) in on the back story of the major characters. As Philip Marlowe describes him: "The uniform said bell-hop and the sprinkle of freckles plus bow and cowlick said All-American boy, but the shifty eyes and narrow mouth that slid over to the side of his face when he talked said something else, like racetrack tout." Anyone familiar with the 1950 Evelyn Keyes film The Killer That Stalked New York will be reminded of Brainy Danny, Walter Burke's obliging bell-hop who does almost anything to keep a guest happy, as long as the tip is good. The Monkey's Uncle also features another fine example of Gerald Mohr's patented introspective epilogues, reaffirming the Marlowe character's respect for people (and chimpanzees) who lead lives of care and compassion toward others. This episode of Adventures Of Philip Marlowe is enjoyable not just as a crime drama, but also as a character study of regular people and their humanity and benevolence toward others, even when those others may be less evolved than we believe ourselves to be. Links: To visit the OTRR's Adventures Of Philip Marlowe page, with over one hundred episodes available for download, click here . To visit Introduction To Old Time Radio's Adventures Of Philip Marlowe page, click here . To view the entire ITOTR collection, click here . Text © 2017 W.H.Wilson
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.