TOM (SELLECK) TURKEY: THE CHINESE TYPEWRITER (1979) – BAD MOVIE REVIEW

In honor of Thanksgiving Week, here’s a genuine turkey from Tom Selleck’s up-and-coming years.

THE CHINESE TYPEWRITER (1979) – It’s tough to remember the time before Tom Selleck was a tv megastar. His looks made him stand out and he had “future success” written all over him. He even showed he had a knack for comedy when he made two appearances on The Rockford Files as the annoyingly perfect and cliche-ridden detective Lance White. (“I’m okay, Jim. It’s just a flesh wound.”)

Television giant Stephen J. Cannell even used Tom’s second Rockford Files episode as a backdoor pilot for a potential series starring Selleck and James Whitmore, Jr. That didn’t work out, but Cannell still had faith in Tom and his unexpected chemistry with Whitmore.

And that brings us to The Chinese Typewriter, a 90-minute (with commercials) pilot movie for a different series to star Selleck and Whitmore. Stephen J. Cannell wrote and executive-produced the telefilm and tv veteran Lou Antonio directed.

With those writing and directing pedigrees behind the project you should have been able to smell several seasons, big money and some Emmy Awards in the offing. 

Instead, it was the most embarrassing production I’ve ever seen either Cannell or Antonio be connected with. The whole thing seems slapped together like the pair were told they had ten minutes to put together ideas for the tv-movie and fifteen minutes to start filming.

The Chinese Typewriter had a clumsy, rank amateur air from the minute it started til the end credits rolled. The opening credits and the accompanying library music seemed more fitting for an Aaron Spelling production than for one of Cannell and Antonio’s crime shows of the time period.

Tom Selleck and James Whitmore, Jr. were hyped as the stars and signage indicated global adventures of some sort punctuated by car chases. My expectations were immediately lowered the minute the opening music ended.

In filming techniques usually favored by low budget or talent-starved productions, we get a looong stretch of just seeing the outsides of buildings and people’s arms holding phones or the backs of their heads while dialogue is dubbed in so awkwardly that I genuinely started to wonder if this was an AI hoax and wasn’t a real tv movie after all.   

Considering the obscurity of The Chinese Typewriter that seemed like a legitimate possibility. Later, I saw that as of this writing there are only two user reviews of The Chinese Typewriter at IMDb. Not even Stephen J. Cannell’s Wikipedia entry mentions the telefilm.

At any rate, one of the voices dubbed in while we see nothing but the backs of heads or chairs belongs to the mellifluous William Daniels. The other voice, for a character Daniels calls “Tony”, speaks in such a stereotypical “Hispanic person struggling to speak English” manner that I half-expected him to say “My name Jose Jimenez” at some point.   

Arms, Hands and Backs of People’s Heads Theater continues for a while as the dubbed voices discuss Daniels’ character – clearly a tycoon – planning to flee the U.S. That at last segue ways into Second Unit Footage Showcase as we see exteriors of cars and buildings plus the backs of Air Traffic Controllers at Los Angeles Airport. All of it accompanied by more awkward expository dialogue more fitting for Old Time Radio shows.     

Next comes distant footage of a man we viewers can’t make out running to board a private plane while William Daniels’ voice continues to spout impatient bigwig remarks. I actually began wondering what an entire production consisting of such footage would be like. 

More hands and arms and backs of people’s heads provide thespian turns that let us know that Daniels’ character is named C. Donald Devlin and he has paid a flight crew to get him out of the country with no flight plan filed, angering the airport staff. 

Footage of vintage newspaper presses adds to the parade of tropes until we get the cheapest replica of a newspaper’s front page that I’ve ever seen. The page shows a photo of William Daniels (at long last we see his face) and clarifies that Devlin has fled the U.S. with millions of dollars in embezzled funds and with a stolen Tri-jet from Bellar Aviation. 

The Second Unit footage jumps back in to show us the outside of a building and an office door which reads Onitap Trust Company. Now we don’t even get to see arms or hands or the backs of heads. We just hear a presumed businessman discussing with colleagues about how badly Devlin ripped off several banks and that Onitap “got off lucky compared to others.”

Throughout this, the camera has taken to aimlessly filming the wall, on which hangs a portrait of Devlin which is the exact same black & white photo this tv movie used for the fake front page mentioned above. I guess TWO actual photos of William Daniels, one of them in color, might have broken the budget.

At the six minute and ten second mark we FINALLY get footage of one of this production’s actual actors as we see William Daniels standing around at a party in Devlin’s new mansion on a tropical island. Even though neither he nor the woman facing him are moving their lips, we hear their dialogue dubbed in discussing Devlin’s Robert Vesco-style fugitive status.  

I was really warming up to this imitation Doris Wishman reluctance to show sound-synched dialogue. But I’m kind of weird. Having spoiled us with this brief scene of full-bodied human beings, the director now takes us to another office door – this one saying Miriam’s Answering Service.

We now return to Back of the Head Theater for dubbed in dialogue of a woman asking for Boston and Kilbride (our heroes) but upon being told this is just their answering service the other woman – calling herself the secretary of Arman Bellar, owner of Bellar Aviation – huffily says she’ll find them herself and refuses to leave a message.

Cut to a Little League Baseball game. At long last, at the seven-minute mark, we finally get to see someone in this tv-movie speaking while being filmed. It’s Tom Selleck, whose character Tom Boston is coaching the team of his partner Jim Kilbride’s young son. 

This strange new element of full-bodied people reciting their dialogue on camera continues as Jim (James Whitmore, Jr.) cons Tom into making a coaching decision that results in his team’s immediate loss. Jim makes the excuse that he recommended “the percentage play”, much to the disgust of his ex-wife, who now takes their son home. 

Okay, I painstakingly detailed how cheap and awkward this opening was because the whole Hands, Arms and Backs of People’s Heads approach resurfaces several times throughout the film, but now I don’t have to describe it each time. Just know that such long stretches of similar awkwardness occur frequently, belying the participation of experienced creators like Cannell and Antonio.

The good news is that Selleck and Whitmore bring life to every scene they’re in. Their characters bicker about the Little League loss all the way to their combined home and office in the rundown Hollywood Arms hotel. Hey, it’s not Jim Rockford’s mobile home or Magnum’s boat house residence in Hawaii, but it would have made a nice, eccentric locale for the potential series about Boston and Kilbride. 

Our heroes are approached by Ms. Nash (Kathryn Leigh Scott), the brusque Bellar secretary who called the answering service above. She has the chauffeured limo of her boss Arman Bellar (Don Ameche) take them to a meeting with the tycoon, who is even wealthier than C. Donald Devlin.   

Amid much conversation, we learn that Tom is a former special forces operative with a list of accomplishments as long as any Steven Seagal character in one of his vanity projects. We also learn that Jim is a scientific genius who works for assorted think tanks. AND that Boston and Kilbride are NOT private investigators but are instead international trouble shooters.

For $100,00 ($446,000 in 2025) Bellar hires our stars to recover the Tri-jet stolen by Devlin when he fled the country. Tom recruits a female pilot to fly the plane out of the fictional Caribbean country where Devlin is hiding. That pilot is Jill Miller (Jaime Lyn Bauer), who flirts with Tom since Kilbride is uptight about using a pilot who is – GASP – a woman!

I will once again state that the scenes in which Boston and Kilbride interact with other characters do have a certain charm to them. Plus, the duo project a sort of lovable losers air at times, like when they suffer assorted mild indignities of the kind endured by Jim Rockford and, ironically, Thomas Magnum in the future.

The initial raid that our heroes carry out to try stealing back the jet is poorly put together and plays like a really bad episode of The A-Team. Seriously, Archer on his worst day wouldn’t try something so clumsy.

After that failure, Tom, Jim and Jill decide to instead run a con on Devlin involving a fake Chinese typewriter. Jim breaks down why, in 1979, the many characters and regional differences in Chinese made typewriters impractical and far too expensive for the language. 

Kilbride himself once prepared a detailed study regarding how to go about designing such a computerized typewriter however, and he uses some of his old documents from the abandoned project to sucker Devlin into a scheme to produce inexpensive Chinese typewriters. With dreams of making billions by breaking into the Chinese markets with the device, Devlin takes the bait. 

We get some lame antics in which Jim masquerades as a wealthy oil sheikh trying to outmaneuver Devlin for the typewriter and the very, VERY pointless involvement of some Soviet spies who don’t want China to get the nonexistent device. 

Our heroic trio manage to abduct Devlin and fly him back to the U.S. in the recovered Bellar jet. In a typical Rockford/ Magnum ending, Arman Bellar only pays Tom, Jim and Jill $10,000 instead of the $100,000 he promised, blaming it on the international incident they caused.

You’d think that would be the end, but nope. In footage that I’m not even sure Tom Selleck and James Whitmore, Jr. took part in, we get a boring, drawn-out finale.

Bizarrely, we’re back to Hands, Arms and Backs of Heads Theater with inserted dialogue from Don Ameche, William Daniels and Jaime Lyn Bauer accompanying the footage.  Bauer’s character Jill is irate over the way Bellar ripped off her & our stars. So, conveyed purely through the aforementioned footage of hands, arms and backs of heads combined with more Second Unit Showcase doings, we’re supposed to conclude that she helped Devlin escape federal custody, steal the jet AGAIN and fly off with her to another extradition-free nation.

Don Ameche apparently hires Tom Boston and Jim Kilbride to once again abduct Devlin and return the stolen jet but only Ameche’s voice says anything new. Facial reaction shots of Selleck and Whitmore from earlier in the film are edited into the other footage to make it seem like they are involved, but the unrelated reaction shots just make it seem like they’re idiotically making faces like the sidekick in Samurai Cop.

The Chinese Typewriter was a very weird item made only slightly bearable by Selleck and Whitmore’s performances. It’s easy to see why this did not get picked up as a series AND why Tom Selleck did NOT work with Stephen J. Cannell for his series Magnum, P.I. the following year.