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.

 

Law of the Pampas (1939)

Just lately I’ve discovered the pleasures of a new-to-me TV channel, “Silver Screen”, whose mission seems to be, “Let’s keep the programming budget as close to zero as possible.” So I’ve been experiencing the pleasures of a lot of rubbishy old films that few people other than me take seriously.

I’ve been enjoying a lot of elderly Westerns of no particular merit, including entries in the long-running Hopalong Cassidy series. In 1939, when Law of the Pampas was made, there were no fewer than four Hoppy movies (there were SEVEN made in 1943, which must have been exhausting), and in total there are sixty-six of them. Say what you will about their quality, 66 films equals a long-running and durable brand — and you knew who Hopalong Cassidy was without being told, didn’t you? That’s what interests me.

William Boyd plays Hoppy, and Russell Hayden is along for the ride as sidekick Lucky Jenkins. Hoppy always had two sidekicks; one handsome young cowboy, and usually the grizzled old Gabby Hayes as comedy relief. Here Hayes is absent and the comedy relief role is filled by “Argentinian” Sidney Toler.

The story is simple enough. Our heroes to go Argentina to deliver some prize bulls to rancher Pedro DeCordoba; Pedro has been having troubles, what with two of his children dying in “accidents”. Nobody pins down the source of trouble to Sidney Blackmer’s evil American son-in-law “Ralph Merritt”, who is eliminating other potential heirs to the estancia, until Hoppy’s suspicions are aroused. Steffi Duna plays Chiquita, Blackmer’s misguided mistress who thinks she’ll marry Ralph and rule the roost, and Sidney Toler plays Fernando Ramirez, the ranch foreman. Hoppy remembers he’s seen the son-in-law’s face on an American wanted poster and brings him to justice, in an exciting finish that looks like every other Western chase sequence you’ve ever seen — but with bolas as well as six-guns.

William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy

Why is this oater worth your time? Well, you will probably not be intellectually troubled by the mystery plot, which has a kind of inevitability about it from the start. It’s not completely obvious, as is often the case in Hoppy’s outings, but it’s clear who the guilty party is from the start. (Sidney Blackmer could easily have had “Bad Guy” written on his forehead in Sharpie.) There is a tiny bit of originality in that it takes place in “South America” — although everyone speaks English and the sets look exactly the same as all the other American-set Hoppy films. “The King’s Men” do a turn as singing cowhands, which is silly and fun, and B-player stalwart Anna Demetrio has some nice moments as Toler’s big fat wife Dolores.

Russell Hayden, sidekick, and Steffi Duna

Neither will you be troubled by trying to decipher the characterization; there really isn’t any. Hopalong Cassidy at this point was so well known to his primary fan base of children that all he has to do is show up and not do anything evil or mean. The script is written so as to explain to you everyone’s role upon their first appearance and all you have to do is settle back and wait for the inevitable.

Anna Demetrio (L), Sidney Toler (R)

What really interested me was that this film was made in 1939; Sidney Toler was at that time deeply involved in headlining the Charlie Chan series. Essentially he played a South American cowboy and a Chinese-Hawaiian detective in the same year, and to my eye and ear he plays both roles with exactly the same facial expressions and accent, despite his Missouri origins. In fact Toler made eight films in 1939, playing ranch hands, gauchos, Charlie Chan, a shady lawyer, a Chinese racket-buster and an intrepid judge. Quite an accomplishment.

Sidney Blackmer (L), Steffi Duna (R)

Also of interest to me was the performance by Steffi Duna as the Chiquita of easy virtue. When she arrived in Hollywood in 1934 from Hungary — yes, Hungary — she played a long succession of Hispanic characters, slinky Euro-trash, and even an “Eskimo” (in 1934’s Man of Two Worlds). You really had to work hard in those days to submerge your origins and make a living as a B-movie actor!

This film is available in various places for free; it seems to have somehow fallen out of copyright. Free-Classic-Movies.com will let you watch as much of it as you can stand for nothing!

 

200 authors I would recommend (Part 2)

Another ten authors whose work I’d recommend. You’ll find Part 1 that explains this list here; Part 3 is found here.

11.  Bentley, E. C. You’ve got to like a guy whose middle name was used as the name for a style of verse (the “clerihew”). You’ve also got to respect his creation of Trent’s Last Case, which was written in 1913 and is an absolutely crucial volume in the history of detective fiction. There are two follow-up volumes from the 30s but Trent’s Last Case is just a necessary book. You have to read it and remember that it was written in 1913 — this writer invented things that we take for granted today.

12.  Berkeley, Anthony I’ve written about Mr. Berkeley elsewhere, in connection with his creation of an absolute classic of detective fiction, The Poisoned Chocolates Case. To my mind, the guy is just brilliant. Writing as Francis Iles, he pretty much invented the “open mystery”, where you know whodunnit from the outset but the story is still gripping.  I read a comment recently that said that Berkeley seems to specialize in “trick” stories, where if you know the trick the book is over. There is a little bit of truth in this, but honestly I’d rather try to figure out Berkeley’s tricks than those of a dozen other authors. He’s funny, he’s sardonic, and his puzzles are extremely difficult. Not To Be Taken is generally considered to be right up there with his finest work (Before The Fact, Malice Aforethought, Poisoned Chocolates) but few people have read it.

13.  Biggers, Earl Derr Biggers created Charlie Chan and wrote the six novels in the series between 1925 and 1932. So there are about six times as many movies as actual novels, and the movies were created as B-level commercial products. You’ll get a different idea of the Chinese-American detective if you go back to the source material and actually read the books, and I recommend it. The stories are clever and it’s nice to read something from the 1920s that treats Asian-Americans in a little more enlightened way. They’re approaching 100 years old, so don’t be surprised if you find them a bit creaky, but remember that these are the six novels that created a character whose name is still a household word.

14.  Blake, Nicholas Nicholas Blake was the mystery-writing pseudonym used by Cecil Day-Lewis, who late in life became Poet Laureate of England. I’ve heard it said that he will be remembered more for his politics — he was a Communist at a time when that was violently unpopular — and his detective fiction than his poetry. I can’t speak for his politics but his mysteries are exceptional, especially the ones featuring Oxford man-about-town Nigel Strangeways. His most famous mystery seems to be 1938’s The Beast Must Die, which has an excellent premise at its core, but I have liked nearly all of them (a handful of later ones I found a little disappointing). Malice in Wonderland is a witty portrait of a bygone English institution, the “holiday camp”, and a bygone profession, the “mass observer”; Minute for Murder is a favourite of mine. I understand that Head of a  Traveller and The Private Wound both draw heavily on his personal life. I’d recommend any of them, but the earlier the better as a starting point. (And yes, his son Daniel Day-Lewis is the famous actor.)

15.  Block, Lawrence In a long and distinguished career like Lawrence Block’s, you’d expect that there would be a bunch of clunkers among the gems. The gems are there for you — the brilliant and gritty and powerful Matt Scudder private eye series makes up for his beginnings writing “Lesbian confession” paperback originals, I hope — but Block is a master of so many styles and niches that you will certainly find things you love and things you don’t. I’ve found that Scudder fans tend to not like the lightly amusing Bernie Rhodenbarr novels, and vice versa, and that’s fine. Block writes a lot and publishes often, and has tried his hand at a lot of different things. He’s a damn good writer and you’ll find something to your taste, I think. Just don’t give up quickly if you don’t like the first one that comes to hand.

16.  Boucher, Anthony I’ve written about Boucher’s novels before, here and here.  He only wrote seven full-length mysteries, but every single one of them is worth reading and is important to the field. He was, in my opinion, the best reviewer of mysteries ever; he knew what to look for and what to point out, telling the reader just enough to pique curiosity without giving away too much. Boucher was frighteningly intelligent and knowledgeable in widely separated areas, from opera librettos to Sherlock Holmes to craft beer; his career spanned books, reviewing, radio scripts, and perhaps most importantly his role as a catalyst around whom other writers coalesced. Strangest of all, he had an equally strong presence in the nascent field of science fiction. I always recommend the Fergus O’Breen series, start to finish; if you’re interested in science fiction, Rocket to the Morgue is a roman a clef about west coast writers such as Robert Heinlein (and yes, the victim is apparently based on Adrian Conan Doyle, whom a lot of real-life people thought needed murdering).

17.  Box, Edgar Edgar Box was the pseudonym used by Gore Vidal for his three mysteries from the early 50s starring randy PR consultant Peter Cutler Sergeant II. It’s a shame he didn’t continue the series, but these three are acerbic, bitterly funny, clever, beautifully written, and fascinating looks at a bygone era. It’s hard to imagine at this remove that it was considered shocking to write about a gay ballerino as a minor character in Death in the Fifth Position, but it was even more shocking at the time that the protagonist didn’t find it shocking, if you follow me. Vidal was a great writer and these are a fascinating little sideline; I frequently recommend these to people who have a taste for “literary fiction” and consider genre works beneath them. Vidal knew how to say just enough to get his point across, and the books are smooth as silk.

18.  Brackett, Leigh Leigh Brackett gets wedged into this category because she ghosted an interesting mystery novel for George Sanders, and wrote a few non-series mysteries that are above average and screenplays for some famous movies, but really she’s much better known as a master of science fiction. Her science fiction is still very readable and has the delicious flavour of high adventure that appeals to adolescent boys of any age; the Eric John Stark series will appeal to 14-year-olds and lure them into reading in a painless and clever way. It seems as though she could write in any genre in both screenplays and print; she novelized Rio Bravo, wrote the screenplay for one of the early Crime Doctor mystery films, an episode of The Rockford Files, the screenplay of The Big Sleep — and has a screen credit for Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. That credential alone will hook your 14-year-old non-reader!

19.  Bradley, Alan Alan Bradley is one of the few writers who knows how to write from a child’s point of view; his series protagonist, teenage Flavia de Luce, is a brilliant creation and one of my T0p 10 Women Detectives in books. The stories are balanced on the knife-edge between sympathetic and twee; my opinion is that they never go too far, but I know some people find them cloying. Try The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and give it 50 pages. You’ll either set it aside, which happens occasionally, or you’ll immediately go and get the other six in the series and savour them slowly.

20.  Brand, Christianna I’ve been a champion of this writer ever since I first read the incredible Tour de Force — about murder on a package tour of the Mediterranean. The central clue is so squarely and fairly planted that it gave me the wonderful forehead-slapping moment I so often want but rarely find — I SHOULD have known whodunnit, but Ms. Brand slipped it right past me. She often does. Death of Jezebel is wonderfully difficult and satisfying, I think. Not all her works are perfect; Heads You Lose has a brilliant story hook but a truly disappointing finish, Death in High Heels has a few false moments, and I don’t personally care for Cat and Mouse much at all, although many people love it. Green for Danger is a well-known puzzle mystery that was made into an Alastair Sim movie, and many people come to her work via that classic. I recommend nearly everything she wrote; I even like Suddenly at His Residence where few others agree. One characteristic of her writing I enjoy is that she added characterization at a time when it wasn’t considered appropriate to detective fiction; the portrait of an adolescent hysteric in Suddenly at his Residence, for instance, is beautifully observed and rather unnecessary; she was writing like a novelist, not just a mystery writer.  She also tried her hand at other types of story; I think it’s almost funny that this great mystery writer may be more remembered for creating the children’s character Nanny McPhee.

Part 3 will be along soon.

PVR Overload!

It’s been a little bit more than a year since I got my first PVR, and in my usual way I’ve managed to fill more than half of it up with stuff that I’m absolutely sure I’m going to review “real soon now”. Unfortunately the backlog is such that I think I’m going to merely do one big recommendation, just in case you find some of these items passing by in your television feed and a brief recommendation will tip the balance, or perhaps get you to add a title to your Netflix list (I don’t have Netflix; I have boxes of DVDs LOL).

I should mention that these films have all been on Turner Classic Movies since March 2013. If you don’t get TCM and you like old mysteries, this might be a good investment for you; TCM is not reluctant about re-running movies once every year or so. I liked all these films enough to hold onto them in the hopes of reviewing them someday; I will suggest that any of them will fill an idle hour, although your mileage may vary. I’m one of those people who enjoys bad movies but I understand that that taste is not universally shared.

Here’s what about 40% of my DVR’s storage capacity looks like:

• Three Perry Mason movies with Warren William: TCOT Howling Dog (1934), TCOT Lucky Legs (1935), TCOT Velvet Claws (1936).  And with Ricardo Cortez, TCOT Black Cat (1936).
• Murder on the Blackboard (1934), and Murder on a Honeymoon (1935); Hildegarde Withers mysteries with Edna May Oliver. Murder on a Bridle Path (1936) with Helen Broderick as Miss Withers. The Plot Thickens (1936) and Forty Naughty Girls (1937), featuring ZaSu Pitts as Miss Withers
• The Thirteenth Chair (1937); Dame May Whitty plays a spiritualist who solves a murder.
• Detective Kitty O’Day (1944) and Adventures of Kitty O’Day (1944), where Jean Parker plays the titular telephone operator at a hotel who solves mysteries with her boyfriend, Peter Cookson.
• The Death Kiss (1933): Bela Lugosi is top-billed but only supports this story about an actor who’s killed while on set shooting a movie called “The Death Kiss”. I love backstage movies where the real camera pulls back to reveal a fake camera and crew shooting the movie within the movie!
• Having Wonderful Crime (1945): Pat O’Brien as J.J. Malone and George Murphy/Carole Landis as Jake and Helene Justus in a story based on a Craig Rice novel. And Mrs. O’Malley and Mr. Malone (1950), where James Whitmore plays J. J. Malone and, the script having been changed from Hildegarde Withers, Marjorie Main plays the earthy Mrs. O’Malley. (Her novelty song is worth the price of admission alone.)
• After the Thin Man (1936), Another Thin Man (1939), Shadow of the Thin Man (1941), and The Thin Man Goes Home (1944). Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy).
• Chained For Life (1952): Real-life conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton have a vaudeville act, but when one murders the other’s husband, they both end up on trial. Yes, seriously. They sing and dance, not very well. The kind of movie that it sounds like much more fun to watch than it actually is, unfortunately.
• The Dragon Murder Case (1934), with Warren William as Philo Vance; The Casino Murder Case (1935), with Paul Lukas as Vance; The Garden Murder Case (1936), with Edmund Lowe as Vance; Calling Philo Vance (1940), with James Stephenson as Vance. And The Kennel Murder Case (1933), with William Powell as the best Vance of all.
• The Murder of Dr. Harrigan (1936), with Kay Linaker as the multi-named Sarah Keate (in this case, Sally Keating — from the Sarah Keate novels by Mignon Eberhart). Ricardo Cortez as the love interest.
• Sherlock Holmes (1922), starring John Barrymore in the famous silent.
• Miss Pinkerton (1932), with Joan Blondell as a sleuthing nurse from the novel by Mary Roberts Rinehart.
• Guilty Hands (1931), wherein Lionel Barrymore kills his daughter’s sleazy boyfriend.
• The Scarlet Clue (1945), with Sidney Toler as Charlie Chan investigating a murder at a radio station.
• Before Dawn (1933), a good old-fashioned Old Dark House film with Stuart Erwin and Dorothy Wilson as a beautiful young psychic.
• We’re on the Jury (1937), with Helen Broderick and Victor Moore as jurors on a murder case who comically take the law into their own hands.
• The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936), with William Powell and Jean Arthur as a sleuthing couple.
• Welcome Danger (1929), a comedy with Harold Lloyd investigating murders in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
• They Only Kill Their Masters (1972), with James Garner as a small-town lawman solving a murder with the help of veterinarian Katharine Ross.
• Seven Keys to Baldpate (1935), starring Gene Raymond in another remake of the Earl Derr Biggers thriller.
• Lady Scarface (1941), with Judith Anderson chewing the scenery as a cruel mob boss.
• Fast and Loose (1939), with Robert Montgomery and Rosalind Russell in one of the “bookseller” trilogy, each of which featured a different pair playing Joel and Garda Sloane.
• The Verdict (1946), with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre solving a mystery in Victorian London.
• Secrets of the French Police (1932); Gregory Ratoff is a mad hypnotist who runs a scam with Gwili Andre as the bogus “Tsar’s daughter”.
• Moonlight Murder (1936), with Chester Morris taking time off from being Boston Blackie to investigate a murder case during a performance of Il Trovatore at the Hollywood Bowl.
• Nancy Drew, Detective (1938), with Bonita Granville as the plucky teenage investigator.

Are any of these cherished films for you — or are any of them over-rated? Your comments are welcome.

 

 

The Maisie series, starring Ann Sothern (1939-1947)

The Maisie series, starring Ann Sothern, is a series of ten films released between 1939 and 1947. They are as follows:

• Maisie (1939)
• Congo Maisie (1940)
• Gold Rush Maisie (1940)
• Maisie Was a Lady (1941)
• Ringside Maisie (1941)
• Maisie Gets Her Man (1942)
• Swing Shift Maisie (1943)
• Maisie Goes To Reno (1944)
• Up Goes Maisie (1946)
• Undercover Maisie (1947)

At the height of Sothern’s association with this role, she was also starring from 1945 to 1947 in The Adventures of Maisie on CBS Radio (and later with the down-market Mutual in 1952, and further in syndication, which I understand for so short a radio series indicates some exceptional quality that delivers an audience). The role seems to have determined the course of her entire career; after Maisie, she starred in two sitcoms for CBS, Private Secretary and The Ann Sothern Show, and garnered three Emmy nominations. Then she appeared as the voice of Gladys Crabtree in My Mother the Car, Gladys being the deceased mother whose spirit has somehow transmogrified into a 1928 Porter touring car.  This sitcom is generally considered to be either the worst or the second worst TV program of all time (first being Jerry Springer). Finally, Sothern was nominated for an Academy Award for best Supporting Actress for The Whales of August (1987), standing out among an exceptional cast, including Bette Davis and Lillian Gish.

Maisie’s (movie-based) character is that she’s a wisecracking burlesque showgirl from Brooklyn with a spirit as big as all outdoors, and a heart of solid gold. Perhaps the other way around. At any rate, Maisie mostly starts out having just lost her job and down on her luck. She meets a guy who annoys her, but for whom she appears to feel some kind of romantic attraction. Simultaneously, she enters a new environment in which she is a breath of fresh air in some respect — kind of like the plot of most Shirley Temple movies. Maisie’s plainspoken ways break down emotional reserves and misunderstandings that have been hampering progress, everything ends happily and Maisie gets the man, although he conveniently disappears before the next movie. Apparently during WWII this was more common than it is these days; well, no, I’m kidding. It’s just that, at the beginning of every Maisie movie, all previous plot developments get retconned out of existence and new ones freely take their place. So Maisie doesn’t really have a history; it’s more like an attitude.

I certainly understand why Maisie was career-making for Ann Sothern; it was a role that appears to have struck a chord with the public and heaven knows she made it hers. I think the fact that it started in 1939 had something to do with it, but it’s hard to say just what. We know that 1939 was an amazing year for films, perhaps the best year ever, and I think that was a year that formed people in the habit of going to the movies two or three times a week, because they were just so damn good. 1939’s list of movies includes Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach, The Women, Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and quite a few important mystery films, including Another Thin Man, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (yes, I’m serious), and Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (yes, I’m serious).  It was also the first rumblings of WWII in the United States, and I’ll suggest that Maisie’s plucky spirit and get-down-to-work attitude were felt to be a help to the war effort, if you know what I mean. Maisie does a lot of war work during WWII, alternating between riveting and entertaining the troops, etc. So I imagine she was a kind of symbol for women; Maisie had her priorities ostentatiously in order and didn’t mind going nose to nose with people who weren’t pulling their weight. After the war, as the series petered out, Maisie was more often the agent of Cupid, working to get two good-hearted young people back together after a romantic misunderstanding. It rather seemed like it had outlived its usefulness until it transferred to radio, where they essentially told the same set of stories again.

Warning: If you read beyond this point, you may find out more about the plot of the first movie in the series, Maisie (1939) than you want to know, and a bit about some others.  If you haven’t seen these films, you may wish to stop here and preserve your ignorance in favour of future enjoyment. Consider yourself warned. 

I originally became interested in the series because I happened to capture #1 on my PVR, from Turner Classic Movies, and found that it had some minor detective content. Maisie is stranded jobless in a small town in Wyoming and finagles her way into a position as live-in maid on a ranch, against the wishes of her soon-to-be romantic interest, cowboy boss Robert Young. She is the servant to the ranch owner’s wife (Ruth Hussey, who does a wonderful job), a slick city orchid who is superficially attentive to her wealthy husband but is really committed to her lover, city slicker John Hubbard.  Maisie finds the boss’s wife locked in the arms of her boyfriend by accident; the boss’s wife decides that Maisie must go, and she cooks up a story about how Maisie is romantically involved with the boss, which simultaneously torpedoes Maisie’s job and her engagement to Robert Young. So she leaves.

The boss then commits suicide but in such a way that it looks like homicide, and Robert Young is put on trial. Maisie is far away and only finds out about the trial in time to arrive barely before sentencing, but she can’t persuade the judge that Robert Young is innocent — until the boss’s lawyer comes up with an envelope that he had been told to deliver to Maisie. It’s a complete explanation, Robert Young goes free, and Maisie inherits the ranch and lots of money, to the well-deserved chagrin of the widow. We are meant to believe that Maisie is about to marry Robert Young, but as I said, he disappears before the next movie and all the money is gone.

This is really the only detective/mystery content I could identify in the whole series, worse the luck. I watched them, at least as far as #8, with an eye to a potential piece not unlike this about their detective content. Since that’s pretty much it for interesting content, I was going to put it aside. But I have to say this. I’m not sure I could have stood the final entries in this series; the whole thing is just too darn depressing.

Okay, not depressing at the level of UK kitchen sink drama or Russian expressionism or Italian postwar cinema. But depressing. Chillingly depressing. Ann Sothern is plucky, but man oh man, is that the knife edge upon which people like her used to balance? Not really knowing where their next meal was coming from if they didn’t finagle their way into a job? Because that’s what happens in the Maisie series, over and over. Maisie loses her job and is about to — well, I have no idea, unless it’s starvation added to prostitution or a similar life of crime. She never gets to it, thank goodness. But she is pretty much about to be what we would think of as a homeless person, and she finds herself among a group of people who are similarly down and out. There is one entry, 1940’s Gold Rush Maisie, in which she is taken in by what I believe is called a family of Okies; these people have nothing but an old car and enough food to make it through a day or so. No money, no education, no social services, and possibly not even a change of clothes. I admit it is not too hard to believe that Maisie is imminently going to rally people to work together to improve their collective lot, but still, I mean, good heavens! This is not a light comedy about a Brooklyn showgirl, this is more like The Grapes of fricken’ Wrath. Now, I don’t mind that kind of entertainment, when I sign up to see it.  What I do object to is being told that I am about to see light entertainment with occasionally a song and dance, and being taken to the depths of despair.

And once that became plain, each entry began to demonstrate an affinity for melodrama and pathos, followed closely by bathos. In Ringside Maisie, for instance, her boxer friend is knocked out and comes to blind; only his life’s savings will finance the brain operation he needs, and that will put paid to his ambitions to follow in his father’s footsteps and open a small country store. In the next one, Maisie Gets Her Man, everyone we meet is completely broke and desperate; everyone rallies together to follow a cherubic guy who turns out to be a con artist who cheats everyone out of the pittances they have, then leaves town. Maisie Was a Lady has her as a maid to the daughter of a wealthy but emotionally cold family who is so screwed up that she does her darndest to commit suicide. I think the last few entries in the series are a bit more lighthearted, but honestly, I just don’t want to take the chance.

I can’t think that this was meant to be light entertainment in the way it’s presented nowadays. I think the social context is missing that would tell us that this series is an entry in a different sub-genre, one that we don’t quite understand in the same way any more. What this appears to me to be is a kind of cross between Blondie (who started out the same, as a brash flapper) and the lush romantic entanglements of Douglas Sirk’s 50s overwrought domestic melodramas. Perhaps this was a big-screen version of the exquisitely ridiculous radio soap operas of the day, like Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories or Backstage Wife, but I’ve never been able to listen to more than a few minutes of either of those before reaching my limit. Whatever it is, to my taste, and I suspect most 2013 viewers, it is a mix of sub-genres that contains far too much life-and-death drama and doesn’t adequately recompense the viewer with comic or musical relief. There is little or no detection content that would interest the majority of my readership. (The Wikipedia entry tells me that, in the final entry of the series, 1947’s Undercover Maisie, she becomes a Los Angeles cop, but an exceptionally incompetent one, and all detection is done by someone else.)

The way I see it, all these films are about a character, and that character never changes throughout the course of the films. In fact, the audience would be disappointed if Maisie did change in any way. Therefore, the natural story elements are preserved by having other characters change in an appropriate way around her, and usually on a simple and predictable path — poor to rich, bad to good, wrong to right. I have no data on the audience for whom these were designed, but I speculate that it was uneducated and primarily female; women with no money and no power who enjoyed Maisie wading into emotionally overwrought situations and sorting out people who were on the wrong track. Maisie was always just a little brassy and a little overdressed and a little florid, and I think this appealed more than lame evening gowns and brittle social comedy would have done.

So whether you will enjoy this series or not depends on your capacity to tolerate soap opera, pseudo-social commentary, overwrought romanticism, and/or Ann Sothern. Mine revealed itself to be limited to eight-tenths of the oeuvre; your mileage may vary.

Rocky Mountain Mystery (aka The Fighting Westerner) (1935)

Rocky Mountain Mystery (also released as The Fighting Westerner)

Author: An adaptation by Ethel Doherty of an unpublished novel (Golden Dreams) by Zane Grey. Screenplay by Edward E. Paramore Jr. Ms. Doherty’s writing career went back to 1925 and this was, in fact, her last screen credit. Mr. Paramore wrote a long list of films including perhaps his most famous, The Bitter Tea of General Yen. And Zane Gray, of course, was a best-selling and extremely prolific writer of Westerns who became an overnight success in 1912, with “Riders of the Purple Sage”. He has 116 writing credits in IMDB alone, his own TV series (Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theatre from 1956-1961) and a long, long list of published books — which makes me wonder, just what on earth is he doing with an unpublished novel? However, this story appears to have been updated to 1935, regardless of when it was first written, and this seems to have been the work of Mr. Paramore. No source suggests that Zane Grey had anything to do with this film personally.

The unpublished novel Golden Dreams was filmed under that title in 1922 of the silent era; IMDB says nothing about it beyond the cast, but merely by the characters’ names I can tell that it has little or nothing to do with this plot about a radium mine. At least, it seems to be vaguely about Spanish aristocrats in early California.

Other Data:  63 minutes long. March 1, 1935, according to IMDB.  Directed by Charles Barton, who won an Academy Award for best assistant director in 1933 — no, I didn’t know there was such a thing either — and started his directing career in 1934 with a different Randolph Scott/Zane Grey feature, Wagon Wheels. His career included The Shaggy Dog, for Walt Disney, and 106 episodes of the execrable Family Affair on CBS, 1967 to 1971.

All extant prints that I’ve seen bear the title The Fighting Westerner. There is no reason cited for this title change that I can find; frequently it has something to do with the sale of the film to a television packaging company in the 1950s, such as Favorite Films, here cited above the title with a credit to Paramount, whose original production this was. I suppose they mean that the hero is a fighting Westerner but really he’s more of a detective than a fist fighter.

Cast: Chic Sale as Deputy Sheriff Tex Murdock. Mrs. Leslie Carter as sinister housekeeper Mrs. Borg. George Marion, Sr. as the invalid father; Ann Sheridan as his daughter Rita, Florence Roberts as his long-lost wife, Kathleen Burke as her daughter Flora, Willie Fung as the mysterious Ling Yat, and finally, at the end of the credits, Randolph Scott as broad-shouldered, clean-limbed hero Larry Sutton.

It seems odd to me but, omitting a few supporting players near the end, this is the order in which the credits were run. If so, Chic Sale had a much larger following than I’d thought. His Wikipedia entry here makes fascinating reading; at one point around this time referring in conversation to his name meant that you were making a euphemism for an outhouse, and there’s actually a reference to him in the Marx Brothers’ film Animal Crackers. He specialized in “backwater hicks”; in this film he’s mainly the comedy relief.

Mrs. Leslie Carter also had a more interesting career than I’d ever heard of, a précis of which is found here. Frankly, she sounds like a character from the musical Chicago — she used her married name to spite her husband — and they made a movie about her in 1940, The Lady with Red Hair. This is one of her few film appearances and OMG, does she ever look like a drag queen, with a huge jaw, unplucked furry eyebrows, and a deep serious voice. Ann Sheridan of course went on to become the “Oomph Girl” and made The Glass Key the same year; and about a dozen other films, all in 1935. They worked ’em HARD in those days. Even the barely-seen Willie Fung has an interesting biography and resume. All things considered, this would have been a high-powered cast without Randolph Scott, but with him, it’s quite a bit above the usual level of the Westerns of the period.

And of course Randolph Scott is a well-known Western hero who was just getting his career off the ground in 1935 — this film is cited as a turning point for his promotion from B films to the A level. Between 1932 and 1935, he made ten Zane Grey westerns in a loose series for Paramount and this seems to be the last.

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. 

I originally decided to investigate this film for a peculiar reason. I mentioned idly elsewhere in this blog that “I can suggest there are a couple of Western series characters whose films were primarily mysteries with Western trappings and characters, albeit at the general level of mystery of Scooby-Doo and those meddling kids.” Of course, when I sat down and tried to think of some, well — I had had the vague idea that what I think of as the “Radio Ranch” genre of movie cowboy series frequently dipped into the standard mystery plot structure as a basis for their activities. For instance, Riders of the Whistling Skull from 1937, featuring The Three Mesquiteers, qualifies as a “weird western” and has both a murder mystery element and a mummy. But I do remember one plot structure that recurred over and over. The kindly old owner of Ranch A was found dead and it shore did look like the owner of Ranch B made good on his threats. Luckily the lovely orphaned daughter of the victim managed to attract the attention of a gallant Western hero, who solved the crime, shot or arrested the perpetrator and kissed the girl. (My recollections here are based on a misspent youth in front of the television in the 60s.)  I may still find some of these; however, I got sidetracked when I found Rocky Mountain Mystery.

To me, this is a fairly standard Western, but I gather from my reading that there are significantly different elements. To begin with, this all takes place against the background of a radium mine — radium being worth an enormous amount per gram in 1935 — and there is barely a horse to be seen, but quite a few automobiles and telephones. We begin as Randolph Scott (playing “Larry Sutton”) arrives at the Ballard radium mine to take over as chief engineer (not ranch foreman, as is more usual) because his brother-in-law has disappeared after the death of the ranch caretaker, Mr. Borg. Randolph Scott teams up with deputy sheriff Tex, the comedy relief, to investigate Borg’s death — gruesomely, crushed in a gigantic piece of mining equipment used to crush rock. Elderly paterfamilias Jim Ballard is bedridden, and his niece Flora and nephew Fritz have arrived to secure their inheritance from his radium mine and accompanying ranch. (His other niece Rita (Ann Sheridan) has also arrived, but she’s only there to provide a love interest for Randolph Scott.) Borg’s widow Mrs. Borg and her scrawny son John, and “mysterious Chinaman” Ling Yat, keep the household running.

After Randolph Scott arrives, things heat up. Soon Fritz is found crushed in the same piece of equipment, and a dark cloaked figure runs around and stirs things up; but everyone seems to have an alibi.  Next John Borg is shot, Randolph Scott is attacked by the cloaked figure, and Flora is murdered by having her throat cut. All these events take a toll on the invalid, it seems. Randolph contacts his ex-wife, who hasn’t been out at the ranch in 30 years, and tells her to come quickly to say good-bye.  When she does, she reveals that the invalid isn’t her ex-husband at all, but Mr. Borg — who crushed the ranch’s owner into unrecognizability and took his place. In an exciting finish, the Borg family and Ling Yat run for the hills, and a number of chase scenes result in the Borgs and Ling Yat being sentenced to 20 years in prison, Tex becoming the sheriff, and Randolph Scott marrying Ann Sheridan and buying a ranch in Hawaii.

Indeed, this is a strict-form puzzle mystery, as I have elsewhere defined it. The film is careful to show us people at the precise moment in time when things happen — for instance, when Flora screams her final scream, we see Randolph Scott amid three or four other suspects, all of whom look up. Everyone is carefully alibied except the invalid, who clearly must be guilty. If you get that far, it’s easy to figure out that the central clue is that someone spirited away the dead body that had been identified as Mr. Borg, and thus the murderer has changed places with his victim.

This did hold my attention. Every once in a while it veers into the cliche-ridden B-movie Western, notably with the “by cracky” antics of  Chic Sale — and yet we see him taking the hoof prints of horses to identify the one ridden by the murderer, which is hardly silly at all. Similarly the black-cloaked villain seems to be a hangover from the fast and dirty days of the B movie, but this movie, with a cheerfully uncaring attitude towards any possible disbelief, offers us all kinds of cliches with an air of not knowing that they are indeed cliches. So we have the swarthy suspicious Chinese servant and the brooding housekeeper and her weird, weakling son. We’ve seen everything here before, more or less, and if the director is not ashamed to include it, I’m not ashamed to enjoy it.

It’s interesting to see how the film changes with the introduction of cars, automobiles and radium; as if there has been some sort of time warp that leaves half the script in the 1890s and the other half in 1935. I imagine they must have had rudimentary identification in 1935 and that it would have been a lot easier to take over someone’s identity in 1895. Similarly, villainous Chinese servants were all the rage in 1900 or so, but rather old hat in 1935, what with the introduction of Charlie Chan and all.

And it’s rather fun to watch this weird crossover between mystery and Western. The director is apparently convinced that there are no problems inherent in fulfilling the requirements of each genre, and he seems to be right. (If you’re interested in seeing how cross-genre Westerns can occasionally fail spectacularly, check out The Terror of Tiny Town some day.) The merging of mystery and Western is quite good here; enough detective work to satisfy the crime fan, and enough Western action for Western devotees. I have to say that the final solution is precipitated by the arrival of the long-lost ex-wife, and it’s not clear that Randolph Scott has invited her to attend with any detective motivation in mind; so the solution is kind of accidental, I think. Not as strict-form a mystery as the purists among us would like, but fun nevertheless.

Notes For the Collector:

This film is apparently in the public domain and can be found here.

Mystery Movie Series of 1930s Hollywood/Mystery Movie Series of 1940s Hollywood, by Ron Backer

Mystery Movie Series of 1930s Hollywood & Mystery Movie Series of 1940s Hollywood

Author: Ron Backer, whom the jacket describes as “an attorney who has previously written for law reviews and other legal publications.  An avid fan of both mysteries and movies, he lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania”.

Publication Data:  The 1940s volume is copyright 2010 and the 1930s volume, 2012.  I imagine the delay is because the 1930s volume is somewhat larger and covers more material.

About these books:

I’m at the stage of life where, rather than waste money and effort by buying me a book I read two years ago and already own two copies of, my family and close friends ask me what I want for Christmas and birthdays. I was glad to advise them that I was aware of these two volumes and would they kindly show up under the tree?

I’m glad I asked for them.  This is an area about which I can claim to be well-informed, and to me these volumes were an interesting gloss on my own collection and even extended my knowledge a bit. I think for the less experienced collector they would represent an excellent way of systematically approaching the viewing/acquiring of this sub-genre. And, as the TV pitchman says, “Makes a great Christmas gift!”

The 1930s volume covers 22 series, including some major series like the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series, Charlie Chan, Philo Vance, Nick and Nora Charles, Perry Mason, Mr. Moto, and some decidedly minor efforts like Bill Crane and Barney Callahan. The 1940s volume discusses 19 series, most of which are by now at the B level: series like The Saint, The Falcon, Boston Blackie and Michael Shayne. There is a significant body of work presented in the two volumes. I have to say that Mr. Backer has done an enormous service by not only collecting information about these films but giving us his opinions. To be sure, I disagreed with some of what he had to say. But Backer approaches these films in the same way I do, and so I found these volumes provoked me into deeper thought. Not content to merely passively absorb, he follows the plot and thinks about it afterwards, trying to notice if the plot is taut or holey, if characterization is consistent and believable, even whether the mystery is fair or unfair. Then the reader who has himself seen these films has the luxury of agreeing or disagreeing.

One excellent focus that Backer has brought to the books is that he has gone to some trouble to trace source materials. His observation is that series of the 1930s were usually based on books, whereas series of the 1940s were frequently based on other source material; comic books, radio programmes, even original screenplays. I agree with this and it’s a fascinating little eddy in the broader stream of branded product that was coming into being, the beginnings of characters like Ellery Queen and Simon Templar who existed across multiple media platforms. And of course Sherlock Holmes, the original portable media brand, and we see here one of its most famous extensions discussed extensively here with the dozen Basil Rathbone films using the character.

Backer also has some skill at working out the relationships among films in a series; when he says that such-and-such is the best or worst in its series, he gives reasons and I tended to agree with them. My problems are concerned with the very limited amount of thought he gives to how these series compare as series — there is little or no attempt to compare the merits of one to another, which would have been an interesting exercise.  I think the thing that was the largest stumbling block for me was at the very outset, as I immediately hit the assertion that the Golden Age mystery finds its modern equivalent in the cozy. (I regret that I cannot identify precisely where in the volumes I found this; I was too horrified to make a note.) Sorry, sir; I’m prepared to dispute your opinions about the relative merit or a film, but that assertion is simply indefensible. It’s like suggesting that the tigers of old are the same as the housecats of today; Golden Age mysteries and the modern cozy are two different species entirely. I had to conclude that the author had misunderstood one genre or the other, and that left me a little bit less willing to accept his views on filmic subgenres.

There are also a couple of omissions that I noted — although he excludes non-Hollywood mysteries in a series, I do think Wilfred Hyde-White’s appearance in the lost Philo Vance film The Scarab Murder Case is worth a mention. And there is not the depth of rich detail that I have come to appreciate about the ways in which actors morph and segue within and without such series; there’s possibly a book in itself, tracing the paths of actors like Nat Pendleton, Patricia Morison, or Howard Huber as they appear in many mysteries in different roles. Here he merely observes that so-and-so appeared in two different series, without appreciating how genre-based typecasting meant that Nat Pendleton could appear as different policeman-sidekicks in different series without having to do any characterization work to differentiate himself, because the audience “knew” Pendleton’s image as an earnest, hardworking doofus.

One aspect I really appreciated was the exhaustive research that’s gone into the details of some very obscure films. I have to confess that although I have seen almost all of the films mentioned in these volumes, and lack access to the same handful that Backer was unable to screen, I was delighted to find a reference to a little-known series that I had never heard of, and pointers to the existence of a couple of films in small series of which I was not aware. (I have now completed my Thatcher Colt collection and thank Mr. Backer for informing me of the existence of The Night Club Lady; to me, immediately the best of the series and a darn good mystery to boot.)

Backer restricts his efforts to series containing three or more films, and I can’t say that’s wrong; every author of a reference book has to draw the line somewhere. By and large this policy excludes little of value, but the few mandated omissions of significant films truly seem to me to harm the scholarship. It might have been wise to include such short-run series as Nero Wolfe, whose two films are significant in the early history of mystery films, as are the two Jim Hanvey films. (I add some months after this post was initially mounted that I would like to have seen Mr. Backer take on the 12 mystery short films written by S.S. Van Dine, whose series characters would have benefited from his interest.) I do wish the author had turned his attention to Batman, which franchise seems to me to qualify. It took me a while to come up with the name of a franchise that did well in other media platforms but only generated one movie: Mr. and Mrs. North. I suggest that even this singleton movie might be worthwhile in a book devoted to series. But without thinking hard, I can suggest there are a couple of Western series characters whose films were primarily mysteries with Western trappings and characters, albeit at the general level of mystery of Scooby-Doo and those meddling kids.  Perhaps the crossover mystery movie series of the 1930s and 1940s will be Backer’s next topic. I’d like to see him tackle the light-comedy-married-couple-as-detectives sub-genre in more detail, but perhaps only because I’m interested as of late. He does good scholarship and I’d like to see more of it.

All things considered, if you are interested in mystery film series of this era, these two volumes will form the cornerstone of your understanding. I think they’re currently the definitive work.

Notes For the Collector:

These trade paperbacks were ordered as Christmas gifts for me, as noted above, and cost about $55 each to get from the U.S. to Canada. Abebooks gives a range of 25 roughly equivalent prices for “new” and “as new” copies. Yes, that seems expensive, but over a lifetime of having books come and go through my hands, I have to say that the only books I will now not part with are reference books; they’re always, always worth whatever I paid for them and more.  I can’t imagine that these volumes are scarce at the present moment, but like most such offerings they may disappear and not attain reprint. (There is certainly no prospect of an updated edition since there is almost no chance of new material coming to light.) The publisher is McFarland, a large and well-known company, and I am slightly less sanguine about the continued availability of these volumes because of it. Had the publisher been the author himself, as is more common these days, these might be printed upon demand and available as first editions indefinitely. So if this sort of material is important to your scholarship, I urge you to get these books before you have to pay double their cover price in the aftermarket.

Charlie Chan in Rio (1941)

I have to admit, I love almost all the Charlie Chan movies.  Certainly they vary in complexity and difficulty, and the occasional one (mostly from among the later ones with Roland Winters) doesn’t make very much sense. But I enjoy the character and the situations in which he finds himself.

Charlie Chan in Rio, a 1941 entry in the long series is, I’ve always thought, a particularly good one. Chan (Sidney Toler) is accompanied by number two son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung) to Rio as he visits Harold Huber, whose clones are apparently police officials everywhere from Monte Carlo to Rio.  Singer Lola Dean  does a musical turn on a nightclub stage, gets engaged to a wealthy young man, then visits a sinister hypnotist, then invites all her frenemies back to her home to celebrate and to provide plenty of suspects when she turns up dead.  It all goes back to Lola’s boyfriend’s murder in Honolulu, which is how Charlie Chan comes in — and, indeed, this is a remake of 1931’s The Black Camel, which takes place on Honolulu and goes back to a murder case in Boston.

They find Lola laid out on the floor with an array of clues helpfully provided, neatly arrayed to one side.  The plot itself is quite intelligent and tricky, and you won’t be solving this one unless you keep a sharp eye on the characters’ comings and goings from the moment they arrive at Lola’s mansion.  And if you think the butler did it — sorry, no, he’s victim #2.  Mary Beth Hughes is particularly good as a drunken socialite, and Iris Wong is charming in a small role as a Chinese maid with whom Jimmy Chan falls in instant lust.  Kay Linaker (in blue, bending over Lola’s body), as Lola’s assistant, is so omnipresent that she should have had higher billing, and is quite convincing when she delivers her lines with an air of amused hyper-confidence.  Victor Jory is so wonderfully sinister as the mysterious hypnotist that he makes the rest of the suspects look bland every time he’s on screen.

I have to admit that the ending of this is a bit weak, and the film stops every once in a while for either a musical number or a bit of  “comic” racist/sexist byplay between Jimmy and the maid.  But part of the charm of these old films is their attempt to leaven the action with levity, however mishandled (the later Chan films are responsible for bringing Mantan Moreland to prominence, which set race relations back ten years, and one early one, Charlie Chan in Egypt, features Stepin Fetchit, about whose performance the less said the better).  Here, there are no comic Negroes and Harold Huber keeps the eye-rolls to a minimum.  And one or two of the situations are actually funny.

It’s reasonable to assume that this high-concept film got greenlit easily (It’s a remake, we’ve already got the script, and this will cash in on the samba craze!)  Frankly, the samba part of it won’t be of much interest to a modern audience, whereas contemporaneous Americans were being encouraged to support South American culture.  And the central premise of hypnosis assisted by drugs is just unworkably silly.  But as both a piece of filmic history and an interesting mystery, it’s a diverting way to while away an hour.  And as the big running gag at the end — Jimmy Chan gets drafted!!  Which must have been hilarious in 1941, I guess, but the reactions to which are just incomprehensible to the modern viewer.  But everyone laughs, and the movie ends, and then they play a hot-cha-cha samba over the closing credits!!  Just the thing to burn the theme song into your brain and let you forget the plot immediately.

I’d recommend this one over a number of contemporaneous Chans, but there are better ones.  I’ve come across my archives of the old Chan films and I’ll be reviewing them sporadically here.