Displaying items by tag: Lionel Stander

MEET NERO WOLFE

US, 1936, 73 minutes, Black-and-white.

Edward Arnold, Lionel Stander, Joan Perry, Victor Jory, Nana Bryant, Dennie Moore, Walter Kingsford, Boyd Erwin, John Quayle and, Rita Hayworth, Frank Conroy.

Directed by Herbert Bibberman.

In the 1930s, the detective novels by Rex Stout were very popular. And is detective was Nero Wolfe, large, sedentary, fond of eating, drinking a particular kind of beer, not going outside, but always interested in the force of a mystery. His associate, Archie Goodwin, is played by Lionel stander (though there was complaint that this character was rough and ready, rasping voice, much less sophisticated than the original in the novels). And, Archie has a girlfriend who is forever asking when they are going to get married.

The film opens in a golf course, a professor having a heart attack and dying. There is a complicated background to this episode, events in Argentina, the wife of the professor formally married in blackness Iris and her former husband charged with murder. There is an industrialist, accused of murder of the time, years later returning to Argentina and bonding with his son.

Rita Hayworth makes her first screen appearance as a young woman who supplies Nero Wolfe and his beer but whose brother has mysteriously died. And, it emerges, that working in munitions, he has prepared a weapon in the golf club, reaction to release and.

Many suspects, especially Victor Jory who can always look sinister, a very haughty widow who loses in some kind of all knowing dignity, daughters and sons, the industrialist.

Comedy sequences with Lionel Stander, his all the footwork while Nero Wolfe stays at home, ease, drinks, thinks. And, of course a setup where everybody arrives and the killer is unmasked.

There was a sequel but Edward Arnold was not available and Walter Connolly, much more bubbly and grandfatherly, took his place.

The film is interesting in terms of the Dir, Herbert Bitterman, a writer making few films, comic best affiliations with his wife, actress, Gail Song to guard, accusations against him, his being one of the Hollywood 10 and imprisoned, blacklisted, but making a famous social criticism film outside the US, And of the Earth, in 1964. But when his principal accusers in the Hearings with the son of Bud Schoenberg, the producer of this Nero Wolfe film.)

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.