THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN

US, 1937, 71 minutes, Black-and-white.

Walter Connolly, Lionel Stander, Eduardo Ciannelli, Irene Hervey, Walter Kingsford, Ian Wolfe.

Directed by Alfred E. Green.

There are many brief supporting features of the 1930s available on YouTube, an opportunity to gauge something of audience tastes in those years, really films to support the main feature. The later equivalent of this kind of film was the television series episode.

Rex Stout was a popular crime writer of the period and created his Detective, Nero Wolfe. Columbia had made a small feature in 1936 with Edward Arnold as the Detective, a large and somewhat sedentary character. In this film it is Walter Connolly, jovial presence in supporting roles in many of the films of the period (but to die in 1940).

A feature of the two films was Nero Wolfe’s assistant, rehabilitated criminal with a tough exterior and local jargon at accent, played by Lionel Stander (some Rex Stout fans complaining that he was the opposite of the character in the novels - “less sophisticated” was a kinder comment). Wolfe also has a large very formal butler, once again a reformed criminal.

The film opens with the killing of several businessman and the revelation, very interesting to hear of about the 1910s, that they suspect a student at Harvard that they had hazed 20 years earlier, making him crippled, but now a successful crime writer – obviously looking for revenge. He is played by Eduardo Ciannelli, of the villain, so something of a sinister-looking hero here. The frightened gentleman are made up of character actors of the period. And, there is also a touch of romance.

Archie has to do a lot of the legwork, interrogations, pursuing characters… While Nero Wolfe does the thinking and theorising in his office.

And, as with any murder mystery, several suspects, some twists and the unmasking of the murderer.