Tony Rome
Created by Anthony Rome (pseudonym of Marvin H. Albert; 1924-1996; AKA Mike Barone, J.D. Christilain, Al Conroy, Albert Conroy, Ian MacAlister and Nick Quarry)

The real Tony would have kicked Frankie over there off the boat.

TONY ROME's "hard-loving, hard-loving private detective (who gets) his fill of offers from women, but always preferred The Straight Pass, the 36-foot sports cruiser he won in a crap game. And remember this is a few years before Travis McGee showed up in The Busted Flush.

Tony may not have done as well as McGee, but he was no slouch, either. The three novels he appeared in, all paperback originals, were a cut above the rest -- good tough reads, with a rather unique setting (for the time) and an appealing, yet flawed hero. A former lieutenant in the Miami police force, he resigned after his father, a disgraced police captain, committed suicide. He set up a detective agency with Ralph Turpin, but he and Ralph didn't get along, so Tony went solo.

Not that he seems to need much help. Tony's one tough dick, and he doesn't take much shit. He carries a .38 Police Special, or a Luger (which he also won in a poker game), and he's been known to carry a small six-shot .22 up his sleeve, just for fun. And he's not afraid of mixing it up with the various lowlifes, thugs, and contract killers he seems to always be running into. No wonder he keeps the "Straight Pass" as his ace in the hole, both financially and as his escape when life on shore gets to be too much.

So he lives on board, but he keeps an office downtown on the corner of Miami Avenue and Flagler Street. And, like any P.I. worth his salt, Tony has a pal on the police force. In Tony's case, it's Lieutenant Santini, who he went through the academy with. He may not be getting rich, but he seems to be making enough to keep himself in Luckies and brandy, and to indulge in his two passions_women and gambling. Like I said, the books are worth searching out, especially The Lady in Cement, which features Tony going up against a social-climbing mobster, and a pretty memorable scene involving the lady of the title and a few hungry sharks.

Alas, these days Tony Rome's probably best known now as a the hero of a couple of smirky Frank Sinatra vehicles filmed in the late sixties, starring ol' Blue Eyes as our boy Tony and Richard Conte as Lieutenant Santini. Unfortunately, putting a dorky captain's hat on Ol' Blue Eyes didn't make him into a believable boatnik, never mind a hard-ass P.I with a gambling jones. The books seemed hard, tight and right, but the films were incredibly cheesy affairs, with various pals, sycophants and hangers-on of Frankie's popping up all over the place, grinning like the second stringers they were, trying to be hip. Let's face it, as a rock'n'roll kid, I never thought Frankie and the rest of the Rat Pack were that hip to begin with, and by the late sixties, they were definitely well past their expiry date. Stick to the books.

Anthony Rome was actually a pseudonym for writer Marvin Albert, who wrote for newspapers, magazines, television and film. He created other P.I. characters, including French Riviera gumshoe Pete Sawyer, two-fisted gumshoe P.I. Jake Barrow (which many regard as his best work) and retro eye Harp under such pen names as J. D. Christilian and Nick Quarry. Quite prolific, Albert was also known to have written quite a few quite decent Westerns (several of which came quite close to hard-boiled/noir territory).

In the early 1980's, Albert moved to France, where he was widely admired, and lived there until his death in 1996. After his death, a collection of short stories by French writers was published, as a literary "hommage" to Albert.

EVIDENCE

• "You get used to unfinished dramas in my line of work. You're always dropping briefly into the middle of people's lives, getting a sharp, disturbing glimpse of how disturbed they are, and leaving them that way. It's a series of second acts, in which you seldom arrive in time for the opening scene or stick around long enough for the final curtain. I had a memory full of cliffhangersabout which I still wondered whether those hanging had managed to climb back up on solid ground_or had fallen to the jagged rocks far below."
  (Miami Mayhem)
  .
• When told his plan may cause trouble for him, Tony replies brusquely, "I live on trouble." (Which wouldn't have made a bad title, either)
  (My Kind of Game)

OUCH!

• "I had the sensation of having overslept and missed some appointment or other....Memory returned with conciousness, and suddenly I didn't mind at all not having kept that appointment. It had been with death."

NOVELS

• Miami Mayhem (1960; AKA Tony Rome) ...Buy this book
• The Lady in Cement (1961) ...Buy this book
• My Kind of Game (1962) ...Buy this book

FILMS

• TONY ROME...Buy this video...Buy this DVD
  (1967, 20th Century Fox)
  Based on the novel Miami Mayhem by Anthony Rome
  Screenplay by Richard Breen
  Directed by Gordon Douglas
  Produced by Aaron Rosenberg
  Title song, "Tony Rome", written by Lee Hazelwood, performed by Nancy Sinatra
  Starring Frank Sinatra as TONY ROME
  Also starring Jill St. John, Richard Conte, Sue Lyon, Gena Rowlands, Simon Oakland, Jeffrey Lynn, Lloyd Bochner, Rocky Graziano, Shecky Greene
  .
• LADY IN CEMENT...Buy this video...Buy this DVD
  (1968, 20th Century Fox)
  Based on the novel by Marvin Albert
  Screenplay by Marvin H. Albert and Jack Guss
  Directed by Gordon Douglas
  Starring Frank Sinatra as TONY ROME
  Also starring Raquel Welch, Dan Blocker, Richard Conte, Matin Gabel, Lainie Kazan, Richard Deacon, Joe E. Lewis