Mystery movie: Alibi For Murder (1936)

Alibi For Murder, 1936

Alibi For Murder (1936), produced by Columbia Pictures, directed by D. Ross Lederman, starring William Gargan and Marguerite Churchill, with Gene Morgan, Wade Boteler, Dwight Frye, and John Gallaudet. Written by Tom Van Dycke. Approximately 61 minutes (depending upon the print you see). Originally released September 23, 1936. Note that its working title was apparently Two Minute Alibi but I don’t believe the movie was ever released under that title.

Briefly: This film is not all that interesting, but it does have one feature that may be of interest to my readers; it attempts to bring an “impossible crime” to the screen.

Please be warned that this essay concerns a work of detective fiction; part of its potential enjoyment is based on surprising the reader. If you read any further, you will learn something about the titular film and perhaps some others. I do not reveal whodunit, but I do discuss elements of plot and construction, including revealing the secret of the “impossible crime” shown here. If you haven’t already seen this film, it will have lost its power to surprise you to greater or lesser extent, and that would be a shame. So please go and watch this movie before you spoil your own enjoyment. If you proceed past this point, you’re on your own. 

What’s this movie about?

Alibi For Murder, 1936 (title card)

William Gargan plays an intrepid radio reporter, Perry Travis, who is trying to get an interview with a reclusive Nobel Prize-winning scientist, John J. Foster, as he disembarks from the Hindenburg in New Jersey. Perry’s comedy-relief assistant Brainy Barker (Gene Morgan) assists him in his quest. The scientist’s beautiful secretary Lois (Marguerite Churchill) misdirects him as to Foster’s whereabouts, but Perry reads a luggage label and learns that the scientist has gone to his Long Island home. He speeds out there and bluffs his way into the front hall, but as he’s trying to get past the household to interview the scientist, a shot rings out and Dr. Foster is found dead in his library. The library door is under observation and yet no one is in the room.

Scene in the “murder room” from Alibi for Murder, 1936

Perry reveals the murder as a scoop on the air, and he reveals (for no very good reasons) that he thinks it’s murder. There are plenty of suspects, including Foster’s wife Norma (Drue Leyton), his business manager E. J. Easton (Romaine Callender), and Mr. McBride (Dwight Frye). McBride is Foster’s assistant but his function is to be overwrought, to cast aspersions on the rest of the household and Foster’s business associates, and to reveal that the victim was not the selfless scientist everyone thought. He’s also seen very, very briefly in the victim’s office just before the household breaks in (and gets to say the classic line, “But he was dead when I got here!”).

There’s also a large subplot concerning Foster’s discoveries as they apply to munitions. All sorts of people are after Foster’s latest discovery, which has some important but unstated use in war-related chemicals. Sir Conrad Stava (Egon Brecher) (whom Lois has seen going through Foster’s desk) comes to visit Perry and Brainy and then some shots are fired through Perry’s office window. Perry finds a listening device in his office; everyone’s trying to find out how close he is to learning Foster’s final secret.

Skippy (aka Asta) the wire-haired terrier

When Perry heads out to Long Island, he’s just in time to rescue the butler, Lois, and Easton from a garage that is rapidly filling with deadly gas. (He’s assisted in this rescue by an uncredited dog I believe to be Skippy, the wire-haired terrier who played Asta in the first four Thin Man movies.) Later that night the detectives figure out that because of a ventilator in the garage roof, the gas victims were never in any real danger … A couple of thugs (Norman Willis and Edward McWade) promise violence to Perry and Brainy, but Perry manages to get them taken into custody by enlisting a traffic cop.

Perry convinces Lois to gather all the suspects in the victim’s library and demonstrates how the victim was killed. (Foster was killed with a silenced gun and the murderer planted a bullet cartridge in the fireplace that exploded when the room was empty.) Then Perry reveals that the killer was about to run away with Foster’s wife … the murderer then tries to escape, shoots it out with police, and dies in the process.  Perry broadcasts his latest scoop and, in the traditional romantic ending, announces that he plans to marry Lois.

Is this a good mystery movie?

You know, it’s not too bad. There are a couple of sophisticated mystery elements in this movie that are a bit above the regular run of B-movies … principally the idea that some of the suspects may have looked like they were in danger in the gas-filled garage but the detectives realize they never really were. And, of course, that the murderer plants a cartridge in the fireplace that goes off after he’s left the room. In B-movie terms, that’s quite an intellectual stretch for this film; it’s carried through properly by having Perry be seen to pick up a cartridge case by the fireplace, early in the film, and justify its presence in the blow-off finale.

Of course, there are the usual plot holes — it’s hard to tell a fast-moving story like this in a mere 61 minutes without them. But there are actually some moments of genuine deduction; for instance, around the use of a silencer. And the detective tests a hypothesis by investigating the gas-filled garage.

Who’s in this movie and in what other mysteries have I seen them?

Links to the names of individuals are to their IMDb listings.

It is somewhat distressing that most people who see this review and the movie will really only recognize Skippy the wire-haired terrier, who appears for about sixty seconds over two shots.

Dwight Frye

A possible second-most-recognizable would be character actor Dwight Frye, who plays a small but pivotal role here — he played Renfield in Dracula (1931) and Wilmer, the gunsel, in The Maltese Falcon (1931). In terms of other period mysteries, he’s also in The Circus Queen Murder and Who Killed Gail Preston?, both of which are worth your time, and played small, often uncredited roles in a host of other A and B movies.

William Gargan (not from this film)

William Gargan should be more familiar to mystery movie fans than he actually is — he did a good job playing Ellery Queen in three B movies in 1942, and the title character in television’s 1949-1951 TV series Martin Kane, Private Eye and the sequel 1957 series, The New Adventures of Martin Kane. He’s also in 1946’s Murder in the Music Hall, 1945’s Midnight Manhunt and 1942’s Who Done It? All these films would qualify for inclusion in my analysis of mystery movies and you may see me talk about them here some day.

Marguerite Churchill

Marguerite Churchill‘s film career seemed to sputter to a halt in 1936, three years after her marriage to actor George O’Brien — I’m not sure why. She has striking features and a great figure, and given the material, she’s quite a competent actor. Before this film, she has some excellent mystery movie credentials — she plays Sally Keating in 1936’s Murder by an Aristocrat and appears in Charlie Chan Carries On (1931). I’ve talked about the “Sally Keating” character in my discussion of another early mystery movie from 1935, While The Patient Slept. Churchill is also in 1936’s The Walking Dead (a Karloff horror movie) and Dracula’s Daughter the same year, where she is seduced into vampirism by Gloria Holden.

Gene Morgan (not from this film)

Gene Morgan has a lot of uncredited roles as second banana, or worse, dating back to the silent days.  He too was in Who Killed Gail Preston? (1938), Murder in Greenwich Village (1937), and 1936’s Meet Nero Wolfe (as officer O’Grady). He’s also the lead in a piece de merde from 1932 called Tangled Destinies which is a mystery I hope to look at for you some day.

Wade Boteler

Wade Boteler doesn’t have much of a role here but you can see him in an Old Dark House classic I discussed some time ago, The Hidden Hand (1942), and lots of other uncredited appearances in mysteries like 1942’s Blue, White and Perfect and 1941’s Footsteps in the Dark. He’s definitely from the B-movie end of the spectrum but he did play Inspector Queen in 1936’s The Mandarin Mystery and Lt. Macy in Charlie Chan At The Circus (1936), and a sheriff in 1936’s The President’s Mystery. Once you get a good look at his face, you’ll recognize him in a lot of old movies, usually as a gruff cop.

Shadows on the Stairs (1941)

The director, D. Ross Lederman, was primarily a B-movie director of westerns and action movies, but he has a good few mysteries in his resume; 1936’s The Final Hour and Panic on the Air, for instance, and 1934’s The Crime of Helen Stanley. My fellow members of the excellent Facebook group Golden Age Detection will remember a reference within the last few days to my fellow GAD blogger Jamie Bernthal-Hooker’s analysis of Murder on the Second Floor by Frank Vosper; Lederman directed one of the two filmed versions of this novel, 1941’s Shadows on the Stairs.

Not With My Neck, Tom Van Dycke & Ben Kerner (Handi-Books #80, 1948)

And finally, the screenwriter, Tom Van Dycke, appears to have had not very much of a career in mystery novels or films.  His novel, Murder at Monte Carlo, was made into a movie of the same name from 1935, starring Errol Flynn — no, not Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo, that was quite a different story and 1937 to boot. ABE doesn’t offer a copy of this book but there are a number of copies of another mystery by him — Not With My Neck (1947), which was a fairly lurid paperback from Handi-Book in 1948.

How can I see this movie myself?

I’ve been told this movie is in the public domain — I’m never sure about these things, so confirm for yourself. I bought a copy over the internet years ago for $5. These days if you want to get a copy you can do so via Amazon. Experienced film buyers will know that the usual range of crazy prices (here from about $20 to over $100) is meant for the unwary and you can probably find a copy at a much lower price if you look around.

I don’t remember ever seeing this film on television; I would start by looking at TCM and similar old-movie services to see if they offer it.

 

Dangerous Crossing (1953)

Dangerous Crossing

Author: Screenplay by Leo Townsend, based on the radio play “Cabin B-13” written by John Dickson Carr. Leo Townsend was a prolific writer of TV episodes in the 1960s and apparently cut his teeth on adaptations like this one. John Dickson Carr, of course, is the Grand Master of the Locked Room Mystery, and his Wikipedia page found here will tell you all about him. 

Other Data:  75 minutes long. August, 1953, according to IMDB.  Directed by Joseph M. Newman, a minor director whose best-known picture might have been 1955’s This Island Earth. This film was also remade in 1992 as Treacherous Crossing starring Lindsay Wagner, Grant Show, and Angie Dickinson.

Cast: Jeanne Crain as attractive newlywed Ruth Bowman. Carl Betz as her not-very-much-seen husband, and Michael Rennie as the ship’s doctor attending their honeymoon cruise.

About this film:

Spoiler warning: I must announce at this point that the concepts I wanted to discuss about this film cannot be explored without revealing the ending of the film, and the twist that underlies some events.  If you have not yet seen this film and wish your knowledge of it to remain blissfully undisturbed, stop reading now and accept my apologies.  If you read beyond this point, you’re on your own. 

There’s not very much to this film, and there will not be very much to this review. I took note of this film because it’s one of the few times that the work of John Dickson Carr was made into a film. The Man With a Cloak (1951) and That Woman Opposite (1957), and the French-language La chambre ardente (1962) form the principal four. There was a television adaptation of Colonel March of Scotland Yard, starring Boris Karloff, and occasionally Carr’s stories were adapted for episodes of series without recurring characters.  But by and large Carr’s work did not suit itself to the screen, large or small.

Radio, however, was quite another matter. Carr’s short stories are often based on a single trick, and sometimes this trick can be ably communicated in a visual way that’s suited to radio. And when Carr came up with a radio script called “Cabin B-13”, he seemingly hit the jackpot. This was reworked and repurposed and remade a number of times, with a few differences each time, but all keeping the central premise. When I was much younger, I wanted to read my way through all of Carr and managed to do so, by and large, except for a few things. But “Cabin B-13” always defeated me because it had never been a short story or a novel, only a radio programme. I should probably have realized that because it had been repurposed into different media, it had to be a simple premise, nothing of the delightful (to me) complexity of, say, The Three Coffins.

In fact, this is a simple story with a simple underlying premise. Jeanne Crain is a newlywed who boards a transatlantic liner with her new husband. They check into their stateroom and he promptly vanishes. She spends most of the rest of the film trying to convince people that, yes, she had a husband, he did come aboard, and she’s not crazy. She has discerned that some kind of plot is operating against her because a stewardess out-and-out lies about what happened when she saw the newlyweds in their cabin. The ship’s doctor, Michael Rennie, doesn’t quite know what’s going on but, in the way that films work, he has apparently fallen in love with her at first sight.

One odd thing about this film is that the newly-minted Mrs. Bowman appears to fall in love with the doctor at first sight also. And that is weird, because she just met and fell in love with Mr. Bowman at first sight and was married after a whirlwind courtship of a mere few days. She’s not even completely sure where precisely she got married. If you look at this logically, there is something mentally wrong with this woman, and it’s not necessarily what everyone is thinking, that she’s invented a husband for herself and is engaged in some bizarre attention-getting behaviour. Carl Betz is pretty much a greasy little thug in a horrible suit, and Michael Rennie is sensitive, intelligent, and has wonderful manners. And he’s occasionally in naval uniform. What’s odd is not that Mrs. Bowman falls in love with the doctor at first sight, but that for all we know she has fallen in love with some random guy every six weeks or so for a long, long time. Carl Betz is not shown to be anyone with whom this pretty, well-dressed woman has anything in common. She certainly cares about her new husband enough to put herself through considerable anguish looking for him and trying to urge others to do the same. But the relationship between her and the doctor is … weird.  It’s like they’ve known each other for years and the only thing left to do is tidy away the missing husband and run away together. And of course by the end of the movie you’re wondering about her sanity for having fallen in love with Mr. Bowman in the first place.

Anyway. The stewardess looks guiltier and guiltier, but it’s not clear why, since our heroine has no idea who she is or why she would be inimical. Larger numbers of people start to think that Mrs. Bowman is crazy, and even the doctor seems to be being convinced. Then she gets a phone call from her husband. He’s aboard, he’s in hiding, and she has to keep her mouth shut about it, because danger and stuff. (This is a part of the film where your suspension of disbelief will be somewhat strained. It’s like the actors themselves don’t believe this particular part, and the screenplay has an air of “it is because we say so, so let’s move forward”. She’s relied crucially upon the assistance of the doctor, and all of a sudden she doesn’t trust him enough to give him a phone call and say, “Oh, BTW, found my husband, thanks so much.” This definitely has had-I-but-known aspects to it.) Anyway, it turns out that, surprise, her husband married her for her money. His plot is to make people think she’s crazy, came aboard alone with a hallucinated husband, and killed herself when her dementia really took over. Then the husband would run away with all her money to join, of all people, the stewardess, whose job has generated this whole scenario.

So this is pretty much Gaslight on a ship. I think this worked for Carr in film, radio and print because the setting was a well-known cliche, and most of the plot could be carried in dialogue. There’s a big flaw in the way that this particular adaptation is presented, though. Since the screenplay makes it perfectly clear that the husband exists — she has conversations with him in public and no one makes a move to put her into care after watching her get kissed by the invisible man, as it were — we know she is not crazy, and the husband exists, and the stewardess is part of a plot against her. It’s apparent from the beginning that there is a plot against her, in fact. And so, since the big revelation in Act III is, yes, there IS a plot against her, all the life has been sucked out of that particular element already. Her husband is the ringleader? Um, well, yeah, since he’s the only person in the entire universe whom we know has anything to gain from her death.

I have to say, this is about the least interesting work from John Dickson Carr I’ve ever encountered, unless you count the massive historical true-crime snorefest that is The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey. It doesn’t have any of Carr’s hallmarks, wonderful series characters or anything, indeed, except a straight line of plot, three main characters, three minor ones, and the backdrop of an ocean liner. (Carr set a couple of his books on board a ship, The Blind Barber and Murder in the Submarine Zone (aka Nine … and Death Makes Ten), and seemed to find the location innately interesting.) It’s noteworthy, though, that Carr never did manage to sell his great series characters in other media, unless you count simple audio-book readings and inexpensive radio-play productions of his printed works. Apparently Hollywood couldn’t handle presenting Dr. Fell — Sydney Greenstreet being the only actor who could have played him contemporaneously — and television was willing to settle for the relatively boring Colonel March. So we have this film, and a couple of adaptations of his non-series works. I suspect his mystery plots are too Byzantine for producers to feel that filmic audiences will grasp them at all, and his historical plots are — honestly, though I enjoy his work, they’re just nonsensical. It’s as though Carr specialized in “way too smart” but occasionally veered into “way too stupid”, and the few non-series contemporary novels are the only things that will translate to film as being “just right”.

The acting is of a slightly higher quality. Jeanne Crain works very hard to sell the plot and does her difficult job well.  Michael Rennie is painfully restrained and Carl Betz changes from Prince Charming to evil conspirator effectively. There are a couple of minor character actors who contribute a lot, particularly a tiny turn by Marjorie Hoshelle as a man-hungry female.  Everything else is relatively undistinguished, although Crain’s character wears an incredible full-length mink coat that looks amazing even in black and white. Occasionally there are clever camera angles and interesting backdrops (the liner’s swimming pool is a nice period piece). But there is nothing here that lifts this film above the level of “programmer”, at a time when Hollywood was beginning to wake up to the imminent threat of television.

Now, if they had made a film of The Judas Window … <sigh>.

Notes For the Collector:

Copies of the film seem readily available.  It was broadcast by Turner Classic Movies in August, 2013 and they aren’t usually shy about repeating their offerings every once in a while.