Barton Keyes
Created by James M. Cain

BARTON KEYES is the dogged, determined investigator for General Fidelity of California who puts it all together in Double Indemnity, James M. Cain's classic 1936 tale of lust and murder and insurance .

Directed by Billy Wilder, with a screenplay by Raymond Chandler based on the novel, the 1944 screen version is simply one of the all-time great film noirs. Do I even have to tell the story? Insurance man and love-struck sap Fred MacMurray gets drawn into the web of femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck, who wants him to bump off her no-good husband, while Edward G. Robinson plays the hard-bitten insurance dick (and Fred's boss and friend) Barton Keyes, who smells a rat.

Not to take anything from MacMurray or Stanwyck, but check out Robinson in the film -- he makes the most out of his limited time onscreen, delivering a powerful but nuanced performance, all the agony and pain of a man caught between duty and friendship and idealism and cynicism you could want. A bit more screen time, and Keyes could have been, in my humble opinion, one of the all-time great cinematic eyes.

And evidently, I'm not alone in that opinion. Due to the film's popularity, Robinson himself had high hopes of spinning off Keyes into a continuing character. So, in 1946, Cain wrote Nevada Moon, intending to sell it for serial publication to the slicks and from there to the movies. The story focussed on Keyes, but it failed to sell to either market so Cain tucked it away.

Eventually, he dusted it off, reworked it (eliminating all references to Keyes and Double Indemnity), and sold it to Avon, who published it as a 1950 paperback original, re-titling it Jealous Woman.

Black Lizard reprinted it in 1989 under that title, with Keyes once again, if not the central character, at least very much the dominant force in it, and references to Double Indemnity abound. He's now head of the claims department of the General Pan-Pacific of California Life Insurance Company, with a rep for sniffing out any "twisted, cock-eyed, queer angle that could be found on (a claim), and about two dozen of his own that nobody else could find in it, but that he had to see just to show what a genius he was at it."

Meanwhile, in 1973, ABC television took another crack at Double Indemnity, airing a made-for-television flick starring Richard Crenna and Samantha Eggar and the treacherous lovebirds, and Lee J. Cobb as Keyes. It's interesting remake for fans of the original, but it's hardly essential viewing, and was pretty much forgotten until it was brought back to life as a bonus feature on the long-awaited DVD release of the original 1944 classic.

NOVELS

• Double Indemnity (1936) ....Buy this book
• Jealous Woman (1950; reprinted in 1989) ....Buy this book

SCREENPLAYS

• Double Indemnity: The Complete Screenplay (2000) ....Buy this book
  Just what it says: the complete screenplay Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, based on Cain's novel, plus the original -- and quite different -- ending, and an introduction that boasts several tales out of school about the collaboration (did Chandler get along with anyone?), and other inside dope on the making of the film..
  

FILMS

• DOUBLE INDEMNITY....Buy this video...Buy this DVD
  (1944, Paramount)
  106 minutes
  Screenplay by Raymond Chandler and Billy wilder
  Based on the novel by James M. Cain
  Directed by Billy Wilder
  Produced by Joseph Sistrom
  Executive producer: B.G. DeSylva
  Starring Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff
  Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis Dietrichson
  and Edward G. Robinson as BARTON KEYES
  Also starring Porter Hall, Jean Heather, Tom Powers, Byron Barr

TELEVISION

• DOUBLE INDEMNITY...Buy this DVD
  (1973, ABC)
  Teleplay by Steven Bochco
  1944 screenplay by Raymond Chandler and Billy wilder
  Based on the novel by James M. Cain
  Directed by Jack Smight
  Original Music by Billy Goldenberg
  Cinematography by Haskell B. Boggs
  Produced by Robert F. O'Neill
  Executive producer: David Victor
  Starring Richard Crenna as Walter Neff
  Samantha Eggar as Phyllis Dietrickson
  and Lee J. Cobb as BARTON KEYES
  Also starring Robert Webber, Arch Johnson, Kathleen Cody, John Fiedler, John Elerick, Gene Dynarski, Joan Pringle, Ken Renard, Arnold F. Turner
  

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to James Stephenson for the leads.