Word: shamus
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...SHAMUS...
...movie was Reynolds' own deliverance. Overnight he became the Frog Prince of Hollywood. He made two more pictures in breathless succession, Fuzz and the forthcoming Shamus. Last week he was on location in Little Rock, Ark., shooting McKlusky with Director Joe Sargent. Sargent admires Reynolds' "ballsiness and talent" and says, "He has the same kind of craft as McQueen and Newman...
Aldo Cassidy, the pram king, is 36 years old and nice, but numb. His wife, whose frigidity extends beyond sex, calls him by nursery names. One day he meets Shamus, a wild writer and roaring boy, and Helen, Shamus' fine, warm wife. He falls in love quite innocently with the pair of them. "Gradually, with the aid of a third bottle of wine and several names supplied by Shamus," le Carre writes, "Cassidy formed a picture of this wonderful band of brothers, this few: a non-flying Battle of Britain squadron captained by Keats and supported by Byron, Pushkin...
...dawns on the reader and finally on Aldo, however, that Shamus is not only a free spirit but a not-always-beguiling bully, who clubs his genius menacingly and insists that when he swings, everybody swings. Le Carre develops the implications of this in the novel's best sections. But, perhaps wary of the complexities he has set loose, he then retreats into farce. The result is seldom less than amiable, but seldom more than that either...
...Philip, prosperity is just around the coroner. In Marlowe-an adaptation of Chandler's The Little Sister-he follows the spoor of a runaway brother who leaves ice picks in people's necks. On the trail, the shamus uncovers some California tourist attractions (Gayle Hunnicutt, Rita Moreno), some lethal gangsters, and the mandatory snide police lieutenant (Carroll O'Connor...