On Sunday, 21st September 2003 at 21:05:56 (GMT +0100 BST),
which was 22:05 in Bratislava, Slovakia,
deep13@... wrote:

> I was aware of the Italian series, but these are news to me:

> http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0368157/

> http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0055641/

> Anyone seen them? Anyone own them?

Wow! What a surprise... Something more, beside the Italian series (see
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nerowolfe/message/6651 ),
for Kevin Burton Smith to include in his Nero Wolfe filmography at
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/wolfe.html

The German TV mini-series (1961) in 5 parts is _Too Many Cooks_. I've
been unable to find a picture of the German Wolfe (Heinz Klevenow) --
there's only a much younger actor of the same name. The Archie Goodwin
actor (Joachim Fuchsberger) is a celebrated figure in Germany; here's
a picture of him when young
http://www.jimmy-jungermann.de/galerie/jimmyjungermann_3.jpg
(the guy on the left)
and here he's today:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?H564267F5

But there's an even bigger German movie star on the supporting cast of
_Too Many Cooks_: Horst Tappert (as Odell, the hotel detective). Tappert
became world-famous in the 1970s and 1980s as "Inspektor Derrick" in
the German TV series that ran for over 25 seasons (!) in over 100
countries. A German scholarly article on Derrick:
http://www.gkpn.de/derrick.htm
Derrick is to mystery viewers on German TV what Inspector Colombo is
to mystery viewers on US TV.

As to the very recent Russian Wolfe TV movie, there are actually no
fewer than 5 (!) Russian Nero Wolfe TV movies made in 2001/2. The
teleplay for the series was written by Vladimir Valutskiy who had
previously also written the Russian Sherlock Holmes TV series (around
1980). The Russian Sherlock Holmes series is considered to be one of
Russia's alltime TV classics (I remember it was also shown here in
Slovakia).

Also the score for both the Holmes and Wolfe Russian series was
composed by the same person: Vladimir Dashkevich. He says he found it
important for the Wolfe series to feature period music of the 1930s.
Nevertheless, he "composed" the opening tune of the Wolfe series by
simply playing backwards (!) his own opening tune of the Sherlock
Holmes series of the 1980s.

It seems that between 2001-2002, A&E and the Russians were shooting
Wolfe stories in parallel. (Though I can't find either of them ever
to be referring to the other team's effort.)

Here's the VHS cover for the Russian version of _Before I Die_
(which is the only Russian Wolfe movie advertised on the
English-language webpage):
http://mmedia.ozon.ru/multimedia/video_covers/1000008494.jpg

Here is the cover for _The Gun With Wings_:
http://mmedia.ozon.ru/multimedia/video_covers/1000005197.jpg

This should be _The Silent Speaker_:
http://mmedia.ozon.ru/multimedia/video_covers/1000029540.jpg
(the Russian title really is _A Voice From the Other Side_)

This one should be _Disguise for Murder_:
http://mmedia.ozon.ru/multimedia/video_covers/1000036820.jpg
(the Russian title is _The Affair With the Cap_)

This one is _Man Alive_:
http://mmedia.ozon.ru/multimedia/video_covers/1000040101.jpg
(the Russian title goes something like _Resurrect to Die_)

All of these links were found on the Russian filmography webpage for
Archie Goodwin's Russian protagonist, Professor (!) Sergei Zhigunov:
http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/231663/?type=306

From what I gathered on the Russian webpages, these may be 5
instalments of the Russian Nero Wolfe TV series, but -- just as with
A&E -- some of the 5 movies above actually are, in each instance,
adaptations of a pair of Nero Wolfe novellas.

Donatas Banionis (obviously a person of Lithuanian descent), who plays
the Russian Wolfe, is a legendary veteran actor whose most famous role
was the lead in Andrey Tarkovskiy's _Solaris_ (1973). _Solaris_ was
re-made only last year with George Clooney playing Banionis's part.
Banionis's Russian pronunciation was not good enough for the Russian
producers of Wolfe, so viewers get to hear another Russian actor's
voiceover in the final version. (The same procedure was applied in all
Soviet-era movies that starred Banionis.) Banionis is to this day
active as stage actor in his native Lithuania, and he speaks all his
parts there in Lithuanian.

When Banionis played Wolfe, he was 77 years old! Now that might be
interesting to watch... Here are a few larger pictures of the man:
http://www.robertoquaglia.com/img/sf/russia/Sheckley99-P-026b.jpg
http://nirovulf.narod.ru/photo14.jpg

I found the following interview (in transcribed Russian) with the
movie's director Yevgeniy Tatarskiy:
http://www.aif.ru:81/online/moskva/524/08_02

Guess who's the producer of the Russian Nero Wolfe TV series?
Sergei Zhigunov, the esteemed actor (and, it seems, the current acting
president of the Russian Filmmakers' League) who plays the Russian
Archie Goodwin. Here he is in his pre-professor days:
http://actors.khv.ru/actors/zhigunov.jpg
http://rol.ru/pictures/misc/consnews/zhigunovaif.jpg
Zhigunov had originally approached the director Tatarskiy with his
idea of shooting

"... America, New York, year 1935, beautiful girls in beautiful
robes, courteous gentlemen..."

In the interview, the director relates how it would have been much
easier to "shoot New York" in Moscow, but for financial reasons they
had to move the crew to St. Petersburg. So Wolfe's house was located
at St. Petersburg's English Quay, near the Neva river that had to
substitute for Hudson River. But, the interior of Wolfe's house was
built outside of St. Petersburg, in the town of Pushkin. The director
says that the biggest challenge they faced while shooting Russian
Wolfe was to find enough cars from the 1930s.

The series has a Russian fan's homepage at
http://nirovulf.narod.ru/
The page includes links to pictures from the Russian Wolfe series.
Perhaps true to its subject, the webpage and pictures are extremely
slow to load, but they seem worth it.
Wolfe at his desk:
http://nirovulf.narod.ru/photo.jpg
A highly suspicious-looking picture with Wolfe and a young lady --
might actually be a picture from the set, rather than a movie scene:
http://nirovulf.narod.ru/photo12.jpg
The Russian New York:
http://nirovulf.narod.ru/photo01.jpg
Archie at his desk:
http://nirovulf.narod.ru/photo03.jpg
Archie in action:
http://nirovulf.narod.ru/photo06.jpg
http://nirovulf.narod.ru/photo13.jpg
A very Russian-looking Archie (well, it's Professor Zhigunov) at
Rusterman's, I suppose:
http://nirovulf.narod.ru/photo09.jpg

An interesting article on the Russian Wolfe TV series, titled
"Zhigunov Drowns Banionis in Beer", is here:
http://www.rgz.ru/arhiv/22.03.2002/txt1.html

It quotes Banionis saying, "I don't love Nero... I love my wife and
son. Yes, I neither like Wolfe nor am I interested in him. I'm just
here to obey the director, and that's what I'll do... A job is a job,
that's all. I most certainly don't like the characters I play. Movies
are just lies."

Banionis also objects to being addressed or looked upon as "Mr. Wolfe"
outside the set. And he's no beer-drinker, preferring cognac.

When asked about who was his intended audience for the Russian Wolfe
TV series, the director Tatarskiy replies:
"My series is for intelligent folks, and my jokes are Rex Stout's
jokes. Not everyone will understand them today. Our production is for
those who do understand."

You may find dozens more Russian webpages dealing with the Russian
Wolfe TV series via the following Google link:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?N416527F5

Finally, how envious can we be that the full text of the complete Nero
Wolfe corpus is available for download in the Russian language here:
http://lib.ru/DETEKTIWY/STAUT/

--
Yours,
Alex.
http://avenarius.sk/stout

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