Nero Wolfe


Nero Wolfe is a fictional character, a brilliant, oversized, eccentric armchair detective created in 1934 by American mystery writer Rex Stout. Wolfe was born in Montenegro and keeps his past murky. He lives in a luxurious brownstone on West 35th Street in New York City, and he is loath to leave his home for business or anything that would keep him from reading his books, tending his orchids, or eating the gourmet meals prepared by his chef, Fritz Brenner. Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's sharp-witted, dapper young confidential assistant with an eye for attractive women, narrates the cases and does the legwork for the detective genius.
Stout published 33 novels and 41 novellas and short stories featuring Wolfe from 1934 to 1975, with most of them set in New York City. The stories have been adapted for film, radio, television and the stage. The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated for Best Mystery Series of the Century at Bouchercon 2000, the world's largest mystery convention, and Rex Stout was a nominee for Best Mystery Writer of the Century.

Title character

The Nero Wolfe stories take place contemporaneously with their writing and depict a changing landscape and society. The principal characters in the corpus do not age. Nero Wolfe's age is 56 according to Rex Stout, although it is not directly stated in the stories.
"Those stories have ignored time for thirty-nine years," Stout told his authorized biographer John McAleer. "Any reader who can't or won't do the same should skip them. I didn't age the characters because I didn't want to. That would have made it cumbersome and would seem to have centered attention on the characters rather than the stories."
Archie Goodwin, the narrator of the stories, frequently describes Wolfe as weighing "a seventh of a ton." This was intended to indicate unusual obesity at the time of the first book, especially through the use of the word "ton" as the unit of measure. In 1947, Archie writes, "He weighs between 310 and 390, and he limits his physical movements to what he regards as the irreducible essentials."
"Wolfe's most extravagant distinction is his extreme antipathy to literal extravagance. He will not move," wrote J. Kenneth Van Dover in At Wolfe's Door: The Nero Wolfe Novels of Rex Stout:
Perhaps Wolfe's most remarkable departure from the brownstone is due to personal reasons, not to business, and thus does not violate the rule regarding the conduct of business away from the office. That event occurs in The Black Mountain, when he leaves, not only his home, but the shores of the United States to avenge the murder of his oldest friend. He abandons his cherished daily habits for a time and, despite his physical bulk, engages in strenuous outdoor activity in mountain terrain.

Origins

The corpus implies or states that Nero Wolfe was born in Montenegro, with one notable exception. In the first chapter of Over My Dead Body, Wolfe tells an FBI agent that he was born in the United States—a declaration at odds with all other references. Stout revealed the reason for the discrepancy in a 1940 letter cited by his authorized biographer John McAleer: "In the original draft of Over My Dead Body Nero was a Montenegrin by birth, and it all fitted previous hints as to his background; but violent protests from The American Magazine, supported by Farrar & Rinehart, caused his cradle to be transported five thousand miles."
"I got the idea of making Wolfe a Montenegrin from Louis Adamic," Stout said, noting that everything he knew about Montenegrins he learned from Adamic's book, The Native's Return, or from Adamic himself.
"Adamic describes the Montenegrin male as tall, commanding, dignified, courteous, hospitable," McAleer wrote. "He is reluctant to work, accustomed to isolation from women. He places women in a subordinate role. He is a romantic idealist, apt to go in for dashing effects to express his spirited nature. He is strong in family loyalties, has great pride, is impatient of restraint. Love of freedom is his outstanding trait. He is stubborn, fearless, unsubduable, capable of great self-denial to uphold his ideals. He is fatalistic toward death. In short, Rex had found for Wolfe a nationality that fitted him to perfection."
Wolfe is reticent about his youth, but apparently he was athletic, fit, and adventurous. Before World War I, he spied for the Austrian government's Evidenzbureau, but had a change of heart when the war began. He then joined the Serbian-Montenegrin army and fought against the Austrians and Germans. That means that he was likely to have been involved in the harrowing 1915 withdrawal of the defeated Serbian army, when thousands of soldiers died from disease, starvation, and sheer exhaustion—which might help to explain the comfort-loving habits that are such a conspicuous part of Wolfe's character. He joined the American Expeditionary Forces, and after a time in Europe and North Africa, he came to the United States.

Suppositions

In 1956, John D. Clark theorized in an article in The Baker Street Journal that Wolfe was the offspring of an affair between Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler. Clark suggested that the two had an affair in Montenegro in 1892, and that Nero Wolfe was the result. The idea was later co-opted by William S. Baring-Gould and implied in the novels of Nicholas Meyer and John Lescroart, but there is no evidence that Rex Stout had any such connection in mind. Certainly there is no mention of it in any of the stories, although a painting of Sherlock Holmes does hang over Archie Goodwin's desk in Nero Wolfe's office. Some commentators note both physical and psychological resemblances and suggest Sherlock's brother Mycroft Holmes as a more likely father for Wolfe. Commentators have noted a coincidence in the names "Sherlock Holmes" and "Nero Wolfe": the same vowels appear in the same order. In 1957, Ellery Queen called this "The Great O-E Theory" and suggested that it was derived from the father of mysteries, Edgar Allan Poe.
Some Wold Newton theorists have suggested the French thief Arsène Lupin as the father of Nero Wolfe. They note that in one story Lupin has an affair with the queen of a Balkan principality, which may be Montenegro by another name. Further, they note that the name Lupin resembles the French word for wolf, loup.

Brownstone

Wolfe has expensive tastes, living in a comfortable and luxurious New York City brownstone on the south side of West 35th Street. The brownstone has three floors plus a large basement with living quarters, a rooftop greenhouse also with living quarters, and a small elevator, used almost exclusively by Wolfe. Other unique features include a timer-activated window-opening device that regulates the temperature in Wolfe's bedroom, an alarm system that sounds a gong in Archie's room if someone approaches Wolfe's bedroom door or windows, and climate-controlled plant rooms on the top floor. Wolfe is a well-known amateur orchid grower and has 10,000 plants in the brownstone's greenhouse. He employs three live-in staff to see to his needs: Archie Goodwin, Fritz Brenner, and Theodore Horstmann.
The front door is equipped with a chain bolt, a bell that can be shut off as needed, and a pane of one-way glass, which enables Archie to see who is on the stoop before deciding whether to open the door. The front room is used as a waiting area for visitors while Archie informs Wolfe of their arrival, and also as a place for Archie to hide one visitor from another.
Wolfe's bedroom is on the second floor of the brownstone, and Archie's is on the third. Each of these floors also includes one spare bedroom, used on occasion to house a variety of clients, witnesses, and sometimes even culprits. Wolfe takes pride in being able to offer such assistance and once remarked, "The guest is a jewel resting on the cushion of hospitality".
Wolfe's office becomes nearly soundproof when the doors connecting it to the front room and the hallway are closed. There is a small hole in the office wall covered by what Archie calls a "trick picture of a waterfall". A person in an alcove at the end of the hallway can open a sliding panel covering the hole, so as to see and hear conversations and other events in the office without being noticed. The chair behind Wolfe's desk is custom-built, with special springs to hold his weight; according to Archie, it is the only chair that Wolfe really enjoys sitting in. Near the desk is a large chair upholstered in red leather, which is usually reserved for Inspector Cramer, a current or prospective client, or the person whom Wolfe and Archie want to question. In the short story "The Squirt and the Monkey", Wolfe and Archie have a hidden tape recorder and microphone installed in the office, with controls in the kitchen. In the story "Eeny Meeny Murder Mo", the system is modified to transmit sound to a speaker in the front room.
The brownstone has a back entrance leading to a private garden, as noted in Champagne for One and elsewhere, from which a passage leads to 34th Street—used to enter or leave Wolfe's home when it is necessary to evade surveillance. Archie says that Fritz tries to grow herbs such as chives in the garden.
"That readers have proved endlessly fascinated with the topography of Wolfe's brownstone temple should not be surprising", wrote J. Kenneth Van Dover in At Wolfe's Door:
It is the center from which moral order emanates, and the details of its layout and its operations are signs of its stability. For forty years, Wolfe prepares menus with Fritz and pots orchids with Theodore. For forty years, Archie takes notes at his desk, the client sits in the red chair and the other principals distribute themselves in the yellow chairs, and Wolfe presides from his custom-made throne. For forty years, Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Purley Stebbins ring the doorbell, enter the office, and explode with indignation at Wolfe's intractability. The front room, the elevator, the three-foot globe—all persist in place through forty years of American history.... Like Holmes's 221B Baker Street, Wolfe's West Thirty-Fifth Street remains a fixed point in a turning world.

In the course of the books, ten different street addresses are given on West 35th Street:
"Curiously, the 900 block of West 35th Street would be in the Hudson River", wrote American writer Randy Cohen, who created a map of the literary stars' homes for The New York Times in 2005. "It's a non-address, the real estate equivalent of those 555 telephone numbers used in movies." Cohen settled on 922 West 35th Street—the address printed on Archie's business card in The Silent Speaker—as Nero Wolfe's address. On the "Literary Map of Manhattan", the brownstone is numbered 58 and is placed in the middle of the Hudson River.
It is described in the opening chapter of The Second Confession as being on West Thirty-Fifth Street "nearly to 11th Avenue", which would put it in the 500 block.
Writing as Archie Goodwin, Ken Darby suggests that "the actual location was on East 22nd Street in the Gramercy Park District.... Wolfe merely moved us, fictionally, from one place to the other in order to preserve his particular brand of privacy. As far as I can discover, there never were brownstone houses on West 35th Street."
The absence of brownstones in Wolfe's neighborhood sent television producers to the Upper West Side of Manhattan for an appropriate home and setting for select exterior shots, used in the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery. This Manhattan brownstone lacked some peculiarities of Wolfe's home, unlike the model specially constructed on the Toronto set where most of the series was filmed—for example, the correct number of steps leading up to the stoop. It was, therefore, shown from angles that would camouflage any slight discrepancies. The series settled on "914" for the brownstone's address. This number can be seen on the studio set representing the front door exterior in several episodes and on a closeup of Archie's paycheck in "Prisoner's Base".

Food

Good food is a keystone of Wolfe's mostly leisured existence. He is both a gourmand and a gourmet, enjoying generous helpings of Fritz's cuisine three times a day. Shad roe is a particular favorite, prepared in a number of different ways. Archie enjoys his food but lacks Wolfe's discerning palate, lamenting in The Final Deduction that "Every spring I get so fed up with shad roe that I wish to heaven fish would figure out some other way. Whales have." Shad roe is frequently the first course, followed by roasted or braised duck, another Wolfe favorite.
Archie also complains that there is never corned beef or rye bread on Wolfe's table, and he sometimes ducks out to eat a corned beef sandwich at a nearby diner. Yet a young woman gives Wolfe a lesson in preparing corned beef hash in "Cordially Invited to Meet Death". Another contradiction is found in Plot It Yourself when Archie goes to a diner to eat "fried chicken like my Aunt Margie used to make it back in Ohio", since Fritz does not fry chicken. But in The Golden Spiders, Fritz prepares fried chicken for Wolfe, Archie, Saul, Orrie, and Fred.
Wolfe displays an oenophile's knowledge of wine and brandy, but it is only implied that he drinks either. In And Be a Villain, he issues a dinner invitation and regrets doing so on short notice: "There will not be time to chambrer a claret properly, but we can have the chill off." Continuing the invitation, Wolfe says of a certain brandy, "I hope this won't shock you, but the way to do it is to sip it with bites of Fritz's apple pie."
On weekdays, Fritz serves Wolfe his breakfast in his bedroom. Archie eats his separately in the kitchen, although Wolfe might ask Fritz to send Archie upstairs if he has morning instructions for him. Regularly scheduled mealtimes for lunch and dinner are part of Wolfe's daily routine. In an early story, Wolfe tells a guest that luncheon is served daily at 1 p.m. and dinner at 8 p.m., although later stories suggest that lunchtime may have been changed to 1:15 or 1:30, at least on Fridays. Lunch and dinner are served in the dining room, on the opposite side of the first-floor hallway from the front room and the office. However, Archie will eat separately in the kitchen if he is in a rush due to pressing business or a social engagement, because Wolfe cannot bear to see a meal rushed. Wolfe also has a rule against discussing business at the table, sometimes bent but very rarely overtly broken.
In the earliest books, Archie reports that Wolfe is subject to what he terms a "relapse"—a period of several days during which Wolfe refuses to work or even to listen to Archie badger him about work. The cause is unknown. Wolfe either takes to bed and eats nothing but bread and onion soup, or else he consults with Fritz on menus and the preparation of nonstop meals. In Fer-de-Lance, Archie reports that, during a relapse, Wolfe once ate half a sheep in two days, different parts cooked in 20 different ways. The relapse also appears briefly in The League of Frightened Men, The Red Box, and Where There's a Will, but subsequently disappears from the corpus as a plot device—possibly because Archie eventually discovered how to shut down a relapse during its earliest stages, as chronicled in The Red Box.
Wolfe views much of life through the prism of food and dining, going so far as to say that Voltaire "... wasn't a man at all, since he had no palate and a dried-up stomach." He knows enough about fine cuisine to lecture on American cooking to Les Quinze Maîtres in Too Many Cooks and to dine with the Ten for Aristology in "Poison à la Carte". Wolfe does not, however, enjoy visiting restaurants. In The Red Box, Wolfe states, "I know nothing of restaurants; short of compulsion, I would not eat in one were Vatel himself the chef."
Wolfe appears to know his way around the kitchen; in Too Many Cooks, he tells Jerome Berin, "I spend quite a little time in the kitchen myself." In The Doorbell Rang, he offers to cook Yorkshire Buck and, in "Immune to Murder", the State Department asks him to prepare trout Montbarry for a visiting dignitary. In The Black Mountain, Wolfe and Goodwin stay briefly in an unoccupied house in Italy on their way to Montenegro; Wolfe prepares a pasta dish using Romano cheese that, from "his memory of local custom", he finds in a hole in the ground. During the short story "Murder Is Corny", he lectures Inspector Cramer on the right and wrong ways to cook corn on the cob, insisting that it must be roasted rather than boiled in order to achieve the best flavor.
Wolfe's meals generally include an appetizer, a main course, a salad served after the entrée, and a dessert course with coffee.
Many of the dishes referred to in the various Nero Wolfe stories and novels were collected and published, complete with recipes, as The Nero Wolfe Cookbook by Rex Stout and the Editors of the Viking Press, published in 1973. All recipes are prefaced with a brief excerpt from the book or story that made reference to that particular dish.

Beer

Nero Wolfe's first recorded words are, "Where's the beer?"
The first novel, Fer-de-Lance, introduces Wolfe as he prepares to change his habits. With Prohibition at an end, he can stop buying kegs of bootleg beer and purchase it legally in bottles. Fritz brings in samples of 49 different brands for him to evaluate, from which he ultimately selects Remmers as his favorite. Several times during the story, Wolfe announces his intention to reduce his beer intake from six quarts a day to five. "I grinned at that, for I didn't believe it", Archie Goodwin writes.
Like most other things in Wolfe's life, his beer drinking is bound by ritual. Seated at his desk, Wolfe presses the button twice to ring for beer, and Fritz delivers the bottles unopened; Wolfe uncaps the bottles himself, using an 18-karat gold bottle opener given to him by a satisfied client. He never drinks directly from the bottle, but instead pours the beer into a glass and lets the foam settle to an appropriate level before drinking. He keeps the gold opener in the center drawer of his desk, where he also keeps the bottlecaps as a means of tracking his daily/weekly consumption.
In Plot It Yourself, Wolfe makes an unprecedented vow after Archie tells him the killer they seek has killed again. Wolfe hits the desk with his fist, bellows in a language Archie does not understand, then coldly orders Fritz away when he enters with the beer: "Take it back. I shall drink no beer until I get my fingers around that creature's throat. And I shall eat no meat."

Reading

Reading is central to Nero Wolfe's life, and books are central to the plots of many of the stories. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining Wolfe's office contain some 1,200 books —the size of Stout's own library.
In the first paragraph of Plot It Yourself, Archie relates his own method of grading what Wolfe is reading, on a scale from A to D. If Wolfe picks up a book before he rings for beer, and if he has marked his place with a thin strip of gold given to him by a grateful client, the book is an A. "I haven't kept score, but I would say that of the two hundred or so books he reads in a year not more than five or six get an A," Archie writes. In The Red Box, Wolfe uses a thin strip of ebony to mark his place as he re-reads Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Archie indicates in various stories that Wolfe prefers to finish a paragraph before acknowledging an interruption in his reading. He often dog-ears a page to mark his place.

Select reading list

's summary of Wolfe's library was incorporated with contributions from others into an annotated reading list created by Winnifred Louis.
AuthorTitleReference in Nero Wolfe corpusChapter
''2
African GenesisGambit3
''4
Science: The Glorious Entertainment'11
'Too Many Clients5
'"Fourth of July Picnic"5
Under Cover"Booby Trap"4
Silent Spring'7
'"Murder Is Corny"6
Grant Takes CommandPlease Pass the Guilt2
and Louis B. SohnWorld Peace Through World LawChampagne for One7
''1
But We Were Born Free'3
Party of OneBefore Midnight12
Inside EuropeToo Many Cooks1
Inside Russia Today"Method Three for Murder"1
'Death of a Doxy9
''2
''8
Beauty for AshesBefore Midnight9
The Sudden GuestToo Many Women16
Seven Pillars of Wisdom'12
Incredible Victory'2
'Too Many Women16
'Might as Well Be Dead8
EssaysBefore Midnight19
My Life in Court"Murder Is Corny"5
and Gary Gates''2
William Shakespeare: A Biography'3
and Miriam SchneirInvitation to an InquestDeath of a Doxy2
'"Kill Now—Pay Later"3
'Death of a Dude7
Travels with Charley3
StoriesPlease Pass the Guilt14
PoetryAnd Be a Villain1

Orchids

Known for rigidly maintaining his personal schedule, Nero Wolfe is most inflexible when it comes to his routine in the rooftop plant rooms. From 9:00 to 11:00 in the morning, and from 4:00 to 6:00 in the afternoon, he looks after his orchid collection with help from Theodore Horstmann.
"Wolfe spends four hours a day with his orchids. Clients must accommodate themselves to this schedule", wrote Rex Stout's biographer John J. McAleer. "Rex does not use the orchid schedule to gloss over gummy plotting. Like the disciplines the sonneteer is bound by, the schedule is part of the framework he is committed to work within. The orchids and the orchid rooms sometimes are focal points in the stories. They are never irrelevant. In forty years Wolfe has scarcely ever shortened an orchid schedule."
"A dilly it was, this greenhouse", wrote Dr. John H. Vandermeulen in the American Orchid Society Bulletin.
Entering from the stairs via a vestibule, there were three main rooms—one for cattleyas, laelias, and hybrids; one for odontoglossums, oncidiums, miltonias, and their hybrids; and a tropical room. It must have been quite a sight with the angle-iron staging gleaming in its silver paint and on the concrete benches and shelves 10,000 pots of orchids in glorious, exultant bloom.

"If Wolfe had a favorite orchid, it would be the genus Phalaenopsis", Robert M. Hamilton wrote in his article, "The Orchidology of Nero Wolfe", first printed in The Gazette: Journal of the Wolfe Pack. Phalaenopsis is mentioned in 11 Wolfe stories, and Phalaenopsis Aphrodite is named in seven—more than any other species. Wolfe personally cuts his most treasured Phalaenopsis Aphrodite for the centerpiece at the dinner for the Ten for Aristology in "Poison à la Carte". In The Father Hunt, after Dorothy Sebor provides the information that solves the case, Wolfe tells Archie, "We'll send her some sprays of Phalaenopsis Aphrodite. They have never been finer."
Wolfe rarely sells his orchids—but he does give them away. Four or five dozen are used to advance the investigation in Murder by the Book, and Wolfe refuses to let Archie bill the client for them. In The Final Deduction, Laelia purpurata and Dendrobium chrysotoxum are sent to Dr. Vollmer and his assistant, who shelter Wolfe and Archie when they have to flee the brownstone to avoid the police.
In The Second Confession, the orchid rooms are torn apart by gunfire from across the street. The shooters are in the employ of crime boss Arnold Zeck, who wants Wolfe to drop a case that could lead back to him. Wolfe and Archie call men to take care of the plants and repair the windows before notifying the police.

Eccentricities

Wolfe has pronounced eccentricities, as well as strict rules concerning his way of life, and their occasional violation adds spice to many of the stories:
, chapter 14
The books frequently mention brands that do not exist: for instance, Wolfe owns a Heron automobile, which Archie drives, and Wethersill automobiles are also mentioned. A Marley revolver is Archie's weapon of choice. A semi-fictional revolver brand is the Haskell. The Rabson lock likewise does not exist; the name was borrowed by Lawrence Block and used in his Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries. Wolfe serves Remisier brandy or Follansbee's gin to guests and drinks Remmer's beer. Archie goes dancing at the Flamingo Club, which is now the name of more than one place in the New York City area, but the one in the books antedates them. Archie also frequently goes to Manhattan addresses that do not exist, for instance, 171 East 52nd Street in Might As Well Be Dead. Wolfe's address, as mentioned above, is also fictional.
On the other hand, real names and places also occur in the text, presumably for verisimilitude; Wolfe serves Bar-Le-Duc to a visitor on one occasion. The "Churchill Hotel", mentioned many times, is a real hotel in Manhattan, and Sardi's is a real restaurant. Real people, for example, J. Edgar Hoover, Walter Winchell and Texas Guinan are also mentioned.

Narrator

is the narrator of all the Nero Wolfe stories and a central character in them. Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, critics and scholars of detective fiction, summarized the unique relationship between Wolfe and Archie:
First, Archie is not a friend but a paid employee, who acts as secretary, chauffeur, and legman to the mountainous and sedentary Wolfe. Then they differ in all important respects—age, background, physique, and education. Finally, it is impossible to say which is the more interesting and admirable of the two. They are complementary in the unheard-of ratio of 50–50.... Archie has talents without which Wolfe would be lost: his remarkable memory, trained physical power, brash American humor, attractiveness to women, and ability to execute the most difficult errand virtually without instructions. Minus Archie, Wolfe would be a feckless recluse puttering in an old house on West 35th Street, New York.

Like Wolfe, Archie is a licensed private detective and handles all investigation that takes place outside the brownstone. He also takes care of routine tasks such as sorting the mail, taking dictation and answering the phone. At the time of the first novel, Fer-de-Lance, Archie had been working for Wolfe for seven years and had by then been trained by Wolfe in his preferred methods of investigation. Like Wolfe, he has developed an extraordinary memory and can recite verbatim conversations that go on for hours. But perhaps his most useful attribute is his ability to bring reluctant people to Wolfe for interrogation.
Archie's bedroom is one floor above Wolfe's, and his room and board at the brownstone are part of his compensation. On several occasions, he makes it a point to note that he owns his bedroom furniture. Except for breakfast, Archie takes his meals at Wolfe's table, and has learned much about haute cuisine by listening to Wolfe and Fritz discuss food. While Archie has a cocktail on occasion, his beverage of choice is milk.
Archie has frequent reason to note that he needs at least eight hours' sleep each night, and prefers more. He reacts bitterly when his sleep is interrupted or otherwise shortened by events, such as late-night interrogations at Homicide headquarters or a precinct, or a 1:45 a.m. phone call from a client who has lost her keys, or driving a suspect to her home in Carmel and returning to Manhattan at 2:30 a.m.
Archie's initial rough edges become smoother across the decades, much as American norms evolved over the years. Noting Archie's colloquialisms in the first two Nero Wolfe novels, Rev. Frederick G. Gotwald wrote, "The crudeness of these references makes me suspect that Stout uses them in Archie to show their ugliness because he uses them unapologetically." In the first Wolfe novel, Archie uses a racially biased term, for which Wolfe chides him, but by the time that A Right to Die was published in 1964, racial epithets were mostly used by Stout's antagonistic characters.
Many reviewers and critics regard Archie Goodwin as the true protagonist of the Nero Wolfe corpus. Compared to Wolfe, Archie is the man of action, tough and street smart. His narrative style is breezy and vivid. Some commentators see this as a conscious device by Stout to fuse the hard school of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade with the urbanity of Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. But there is no doubt that Archie was an important addition to the genre of detective fiction. Previously, foils such as Dr. Watson or Arthur Hastings were employed as confidants and narrators, but none had such a fully developed personality or was such an integral part of the plot as Archie.

Supporting characters

Household

Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books are listed below in order of publication. For specific publication history, including original magazine appearances, see entries for individual titles. Years link to year-in-literature articles.

Robert Goldsborough

After the death of Rex Stout's widow in October 1984, the Stout estate approved the continuation of the Nero Wolfe series. In 1986 journalist Robert Goldsborough published the first of seven Nero Wolfe mysteries issued by Bantam Books. Goldsborough's approach was faithful to the Rex Stout works, but he added his own touches, including an updated frame of reference. Goldsborough's first effort, Murder in E Minor, was published in 1986. Goldsborough often drew on his own background in advertising, education and journalism for color and detail.
Goldsborough resumed the series in 2012 with Archie Meets Nero Wolfe, a prequel to Stout's novels. The books are published by the Mysterious Press.

Awards and recognition

Film

After the publication of Fer-de-Lance in 1934, several Hollywood studios were interested in the movie rights. In one of many conversations with his authorized biographer, Rex Stout told John McAleer that he himself had wanted Charles Laughton to play Nero Wolfe:
In 1974 McAleer interviewed Laughton's widow, Elsa Lanchester. "I seem to remember Charles being very interested in the character of Nero Wolfe," she told him. "I always regretted I did not get to play Dora Chapin."
"When Columbia pictures bought the screen rights to Fer-de-Lance for $7,500 and secured the option to buy further stories in the series, it was thought the role would go to Walter Connolly. Instead Edward Arnold got it", McAleer reported in Rex Stout: A Biography. "Columbia's idea was to keep Arnold busy with low-cost Wolfe films between features. Two films presently were made by Columbia, Meet Nero Wolfe and The League of Frightened Men. Connolly did portray Wolfe in the latter film, after Arnold decided he did not want to become identified in the public mind with one part. Lionel Stander portrayed Archie Goodwin. Stander was a capable actor but, as Archie, Rex thought he had been miscast."

''Meet Nero Wolfe''

Columbia Pictures adapted the first Nero Wolfe novel, Fer-de-Lance, for the screen in 1936. Meet Nero Wolfe was directed by Herbert Biberman, and featured a cast led by Edward Arnold as Nero Wolfe, and Lionel Stander as Archie Goodwin. A young Rita Hayworth portrays Maria Maringola, who sets the story in motion when she asks for Wolfe's help in finding her missing brother, Carlo.
"Meet Nero Wolfe is an above average minor A picture, a solid mystery, and unfailingly entertaining", reported Scarlet Street magazine in 2002 when it revisited the film. "No, at bottom, it's not Rex Stout's Nero and Archie, but it's a well-developed mystery with compensations all its own—and an interesting piece of Wolfeana."

''The League of Frightened Men''

In 1937, Columbia Pictures released The League of Frightened Men, its adaptation of the second Nero Wolfe novel. Lionel Stander reprised his role as Archie Goodwin, and Walter Connolly took over the role of Nero Wolfe.
"He drinks beer in the novel but hot chocolate in the picture. That's the best explanation of what's wrong with the film", wrote Variety.
After The League of Frightened Men, Rex Stout declined to authorize any more Hollywood adaptations. "Do you think there's any chance of Hollywood ever making a good Nero Wolfe movie?" biographer John McAleer asked the author. Stout replied, "I don't know. I suppose so."

Radio

Nero Wolfe has been portrayed in four radio drama series on five different networks.

''The Adventures of Nero Wolfe'' (ABC)

Three actors portrayed Nero Wolfe over the course of the 1943–44 radio series, The Adventures of Nero Wolfe. J. B. Williams starred in its first incarnation on the regional New England Network. Santos Ortega assumed the role when the suspense drama moved to ABC. Luis Van Rooten succeeded Ortega sometime in 1944. Louis Vittes wrote most of the scripts for the 30-minute episodes, basing none of them on Stout's original stories.
Only one episode of the series is in circulation. "The Last Laugh Murder Case" was chosen for rebroadcast by the Armed Forces Radio Service's Mystery Playhouse series.

''The Amazing Nero Wolfe'' (MBS)

starred in The Amazing Nero Wolfe, a 1945 radio drama series on the Mutual Broadcasting System. Broadcast July 17 – November 30, 1945, the series was a product of the Don Lee Network, a California affiliate, and may have been broadcast only in that region.
Louis Vittes wrote the scripts for the 30-minute program, based on Stout's principal characters but not his stories.
Although 21 episodes were produced, the series finale, "The Case of the Shakespeare Folio", is the only episode that has survived in radio collections.

''The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe'' (NBC)

starred in The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe, a 1950–51 series that aired on NBC October 20, 1950 – April 27, 1951. Produced by Edwin Fadiman and directed by J. Donald Wilson, the show was written by Alfred Bester.
Biographer John McAleer reported that Stout enjoyed Greenstreet's portrayal. The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe was the first radio series that, like the Stout stories themselves, stressed characterization over plot. With all but one episode in circulation, it is regarded as the series that is most responsible for popularizing Nero Wolfe on radio.

''Nero Wolfe'' (CBC)

starred in the 1982 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation series Nero Wolfe, broadcast January 16 – April 10, 1982. Don Francks portrayed Archie Goodwin, and Cec Linder played Inspector Cramer. The series was produced and directed by actor Ron Hartmann, who spent two years writing the hour-long radio adaptations of Stout's original stories. The 13-episode series was praised for its high production values and faithful presentation.

"The Boy Who Cried Wolfe"

The Post Meridian Radio Players, a radio theater troupe in Boston, presented a gender-swapped staged radio drama titled "The Boy Who Cried Wolfe" July 20–28, 2018. An adaptation of a December 1950 episode of the NBC radio series, the production changed the genders of all of the characters; Nero Wolfe became Vera Wolfe, and Archie became Audrey Goodwin. The piece was performed along with an Arsene Lupin story and an adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story "The Final Problem" as part of the troupe's summer mystery series, "Moriarty's Mysteries".

Television

''Omnibus'', "The Fine Art of Murder" (ABC)

Rex Stout appeared in the December 9, 1956, episode of Omnibus, a cultural anthology series that epitomized the golden age of television. Hosted by Alistair Cooke and directed by Paul Bogart, "The Fine Art of Murder" was a 40-minute segment described by Time magazine as "a homicide as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe Rex Stout would variously present it". The author is credited as appearing along with Gene Reynolds, Robert Eckles, James Daly, Dennis Hoey, Felix Munro, Herbert Voland and Jack Sydow. Writer Sidney Carroll received the 1957 Edgar Award for Best Episode in a TV Series. "The Fine Art of Murder" is in the collection of the Library of Congress and screened in its Mary Pickford Theater February 15, 2000.

''Nero Wolfe'' (CBS)

On September 15, 1949, Rex Stout wrote a confidential memo to Edwin Fadiman, who represented his radio, film and television interests. The memo provided detailed character descriptions of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, and a physical description and diagram of Wolfe's office. Stout's biographer John McAleer inferred the memo was guidance for the NBC Nero Wolfe radio series that began in October 1950, but in summarizing the memo's unique revelations he remarked, "A TV producer could not have hoped for more specifics."
On October 22, 1949, Billboard reported that Fadiman Associates was packaging a television series featuring Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe characters. When CBS-TV's Perry Mason went into production, Stout received some 50 offers from film and TV producers hoping to follow up on its success with a Nero Wolfe series. By April 1957 CBS had purchased the rights and was pitching a Nero Wolfe TV series to advertisers. The series had Stout's enthusiastic cooperation.
In March 1959, The New York Times reported that Kurt Kasznar and William Shatner would portray Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin in the CBS-TV series. Both actors were then starring on Broadway—the Vienna-born Kasznar in Noel Coward's Look After Lulu! and Shatner in The World of Suzie Wong.
Nero Wolfe was co-produced by Gordon Duff and Otis L. Guernsey, Jr., with Edwin Fadiman as executive producer. The theme music was composed by Alex North.
The pilot episode, "Count the Man Down", written by Sidney Carroll and directed by Tom Donovan, was filmed in Manhattan in March 1959. The half-hour program concerned the mysterious death of a scientist during a guided missile launch at Cape Canaveral. Guest stars include Alexander Scourby, Phyllis Hill, George Voskovec, Eva Seregni, Frank Marth, John McLiam, John C. Becher, Eileen Fulton, and Rene Paul.
The series was to air Mondays at 10 p.m. ET beginning in September 1959. But in April, CBS announced that the new comedy series Hennesey would occupy the time slot.
In June 1959, Baltimore Sun critic Donald Kirkley reported that the Nero Wolfe pilot had been, "in a way, too successful... Everything seemed to point to a sale of the series. A facsimile of the brownstone house in which Wolfe lives in the novels... was found in Grammercy Square. But when the film was made and shown around, it was considered too good to be confined to half an hour." In October 1960, William Shatner was reportedly still working to sell the first television adaptation of Nero Wolfe to the networks.
The 1959 Nero Wolfe pilot episode was released on DVD and Blu-ray in October 2018 by VCI Entertainment, in Television's Lost Classics: Volume 2. The four rare pilots on the release were digitally restored in high definition by SabuCat Productions from the best archival film elements available.

''Nero Wolfe'' (Paramount Television)

In an interview May 27, 1967, Rex Stout told author Dick Lochte that Orson Welles had once wanted to make a series of Nero Wolfe movies, and Stout had turned him down. Disappointed with the Nero Wolfe movies of the 1930s, Stout was leery of Nero Wolfe film and TV projects in America during his lifetime: "That's something my heirs can fool around with, if they've a mind to", he said. In 1976, a year after Stout's death, Paramount Television purchased the rights for the entire set of Nero Wolfe stories for Orson Welles. Paramount paid $200,000 for the TV rights to eight hours of Nero Wolfe. The producers planned to begin with an ABC-TV movie and hoped to persuade Welles to continue the role in a mini-series. Frank D. Gilroy was signed to write the television script and direct the TV movie on the assurance that Welles would star, but by April 1977 Welles had bowed out. Thayer David was cast as Wolfe in the 1977 TV movie.
In March 1980, Paramount was planning a weekly NBC-TV series as a starring vehicle for Welles; Leon Tokatyan was to write the pilot. Welles again declined because he wanted to do a series of 90-minute specials, perhaps two or three a year, instead of a weekly series. William Conrad was cast as Wolfe in the 1981 TV series.
''Nero Wolfe'' (1977)
In 1977, Paramount Television filmed Nero Wolfe, an adaptation of Stout's novel The Doorbell Rang. Thayer David and Tom Mason starred as Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin; Anne Baxter costarred as Mrs. Rachel Bruner. Written and directed by Frank D. Gilroy, the made-for-TV movie was produced as a pilot for a possible upcoming series—but the film had not yet aired at the time of Thayer David's death in July 1978. Nero Wolfe was finally broadcast December 18, 1979, as an ABC-TV late show.
''Nero Wolfe'' (1981)
Paramount Television remounted Nero Wolfe as a weekly one-hour series that ran on NBC TV from January through August 1981. The project was recast with William Conrad stepping into the role of Nero Wolfe and Lee Horsley portraying Archie Goodwin. Although it was titled "Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe", the production departed considerably from the originals. All 14 episodes were set in contemporary New York City.

''A Nero Wolfe Mystery'' (A&E Network)

Independent producer Michael Jaffe's efforts to secure the rights to the Nero Wolfe stories date back to his earliest days in the business. In the mid-1970s he was working with his father, Henry Jaffe, a successful attorney turned producer, when the Nero Wolfe rights came on the market. Warner Bros. wanted to adapt the Zeck trilogy for a feature film and approached Henry Jaffe, who traveled to New York to negotiate with the agent for Rex Stout's estate but lost out to Paramount Television.
"We finally got this opportunity", said Michael Jaffe. "I had chased the rights numerous times. One of the reasons that I never actually tried to make it as a series was that I didn't believe a network would ever let us make it the right way. Then A&E came along, and Allen Sabinson. I've known him for years and years. He swore he'd let me make it the right way.
In March 2000, Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton starred in , a Jaffe/Braunstein Films co-production with the A&E Network. High ratings led to the original series, A Nero Wolfe Mystery.
Hutton had a strong creative hand in the A&E series, serving as an executive producer and directing four telefilms. A Nero Wolfe Mystery adapted the plots and dialogue of the Stout originals closely; unlike previous Wolfe adaptations, the series retained Archie Goodwin's first-person narration and did not update the stories to contemporary times. The episodes were colorful period pieces, set primarily in the 1940s–1950s. The production values were exceptional and critics responded favorably.
Other members of the principal cast were Colin Fox, Conrad Dunn, Fulvio Cecere, Trent McMullen, Saul Rubinek, Bill Smitrovich and R.D. Reid. In a practice reminiscent of the mystery movie series of the 1930s and 1940s, the show rarely used guest stars in the roles of victims, killers and suspects, but instead used the same ensemble of supporting actors each week. An actor who had been "killed off" in one show might portray the murderer in the next. Actress Kari Matchett was a member of this repertory group while also having a recurring role in the series as Archie Goodwin's girlfriend Lily Rowan; other frequent members of the troupe included Nicky Guadagni, Debra Monk, George Plimpton, Ron Rifkin, Francie Swift, and James Tolkan.
Production of A Nero Wolfe Mystery coincided with Rex Stout's becoming a top-selling author some 30 years after his death. The series was released on Region 1 DVD as two sets, and as a single eight-disc thinpack set.

International productions

German TV miniseries (1961)
A German TV adaption of Too Many Cooks—Zu viele Köche —starred Heinz Klevenow as Nero Wolfe, and Joachim Fuchsberger as Archie Goodwin. After he protested that his story was used without permission, Rex Stout received a $3,500 settlement.
Italian TV series (1969–71)
"The name Nero Wolfe has magic in Italy," wrote Rex Stout's biographer John McAleer. In 1968, the Italian television network RAI paid Stout $80,000 for the rights to produce 12 Nero Wolfe stories. "He agreed only because he would never see them," McAleer wrote.
From February 1969 to February 1971, Italian television broadcast 10 Nero Wolfe TV movies. These are the episodes in order of appearance:
  1. Veleno in sartoria
  2. Circuito chiuso
  3. Per la fama di Cesare
  4. Il Pesce più grosso
  5. Un incidente di caccia
  6. Il patto dei sei
  7. La casa degli attori
  8. La bella bugiarda
  9. Sfida al cioccolato
  10. Salsicce 'Mezzanotte'
In the Best Families and The Final Deduction were among the titles for which RAI also bought the rights, but were not filmed.
The successful series of black-and-white telemovies star Tino Buazzelli, Paolo Ferrari, Pupo De Luca, Renzo Palmer, Roberto Pistone, Mario Righetti and Gianfranco Varetto. The whole series became available on DVD in 2007.
Russian TV series (2001–02, 2005)
A series of Russian Nero Wolfe TV movies was made from 2001 2005. One of the adaptations, Poka ya ne umer , was written by Vladimir Valutsky, screenwriter for a Russian Sherlock Holmes television series in the 1980s. Nero Wolfe is played by Donatas Banionis, and Archie Goodwin by Sergei Zhigunov.
The first season comprises five episodes, listed in order of appearance:
  1. Poka ya ne umer '
  2. Letayuschiy pistolet '
  3. Golos s togo sveta '
  4. Delo v shlyape '
  5. Voskresnut` chtoby umeret` '
The second season comprises four episodes, listed in order of appearance:
  1. Podarok dlya Lili '
  2. Poslednyaya volya Marko '
  3. Shlishkom mnogo zhenschin '
  4. Taina krasnoy shkatulki
    Italian TV series (2012)
On April 5, 2012, the RAI network in Italy began a new Nero Wolfe series starring Francesco Pannofino as Nero Wolfe and Pietro Sermonti as Archie Goodwin. Produced by Casanova Multimedia and Rai Fiction, the eight-episode series, which ran for a single season, began with "La traccia del serpente", an adaptation of Fer-de-Lance set in 1959 in Rome, where Wolfe and Archie reside after leaving the United States.
MHz Choice began streaming the series with English subtitles in North America in November 2017 and released it on DVD in January 2018.
The series comprises eight episodes, listed in order of appearance:
  1. La traccia del serpente '
  2. Champagne per uno '
  3. La principessa Orchidea '
  4. Il patto dei sei '
  5. Scacco al Re '
  6. Parassiti '
  7. La scatola rossa '
  8. Coppia di spade '

    Stage

''Festa di Natale'' (Italy, 2009)

The Teatro del Stabile del Giallo in Rome presented a stage adaptation of "Christmas Party" November 14 – December 20, 2009.

''The Red Box'' (2014)

Park Square Theatre in Saint Paul, Minnesota, commissioned a world-premiere stage adaption of The Red Box, presented June 6 – July 13, 2014. Written by Joseph Goodrich and directed by Peter Moore, the two-act production starred E.J. Subkoviak, Sam Pearson, Michael Paul Levin, Jim Pounds, Nicholas Leeman, Rebecca Wilson, Suzanne Egli, James Cada and Bob Malos.
"For audiences who might not be familiar with Wolfe and his trusty assistant Archie Goodwin, it's a terrific introduction to the characters and the milieu", wrote the Saint Paul Pioneer Press.
The stage production was authorized by the estate of Rex Stout; Stout's daughter, Rebecca Stout Bradbury, attended the opening. "It's something of a surprise that none of the Wolfe novels have been adapted for the stage before", wrote the Twin Cities Daily Planet. "If The Red Box is any indication, many more will be."

''Might as Well Be Dead'' (2017)

Park Square Theatre in Saint Paul, Minnesota, commissioned a world-premiere stage adaptation of the Might as Well Be Dead to be presented June 16 – July 30, 2017. The second stage production to be authorized by the estate of Rex Stout, the play was written by Joseph Goodrich and directed by Peter Moore. They were also responsible for a successful adaptation of The Red Box, presented at Park Square Theatre in 2014.