I've written here before about Stuart Palmer's Hildegarde Withers books, a series of mysteries about a spinster schoolteacher who bickers with a police captain while also helping him solve crimes. Tonight I watched one of the movies based on them. I saw Murder on a Honeymoon not on Prime, YouTube, or Dailymotion (which has way too many popups now to enjoy a movie), but on the Internet Archive.
Most of it is set on Catalina Island, which means that it's close to Hollywood but feels a little exotic. The first scene takes place on a plane, in the early days of commercial air travel, where a passenger dies and of course turns out to have been murdered. Leo G. Carroll, who would be Mr. Waverly on <i>The Man from UNCLE</i> three decades later, plays a preening movie director who's one of the suspects. Not among the suspects is the bellhop played by Willie Best. It's the kind of role that would be regarded with embarrassment even ten years later, but nothing he does or says is as bad as being credited under his "Sleep 'n' Eat" stage name.
In all it's a pretty good mixture of style and immediacy. Edna May Oliver does a good job of conveying the central character's acerbic intelligence.
2 comments:
I'd forgotten about the Hildegard Withers books but I see Palmer's wrote more than a dozen novels most of them in the 30s and 40s. They sound interesting enough that I'll definitely add them to my watch for list. I read a lot of old mysteries and missed these entirely - probably because I was focused on British novels. I've also bookmarked the Internet Archive as a good place to search for movies that may have slipped past the other sites. It's good to know there's such an old fashioned resource that still available.
Leo G. Carroll was always one of our favourite actors - especially in Topper and the Man From UNCLE.
It's a shame the way black actors were treated in Hollywood (and everywhere else in those days. When Willie Best was interviewed in 1934 he said: "I often think about these roles I have to play. Most of them are pretty broad. Sometimes I tell the director and he cuts out the real bad parts... But what's an actor going to do? Either you do it or get out."
I did find a trailer for the movie on youtube and you're right - Edna May Oliver has the demeanor of caustic wit and poker face in her scene with the sheriff and the doctor (I took you for the lifeguard). I imagine she carried on likewise.
People tend to equate American mysteries with the kind of hardboiled detective stories pioneered by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Even PD James, in her history of the genre, seemed unaware of the other side of early American mystery. So that's one of the reasons I'm interested in it. Not exclusively, though. I do enjoy British authors like Agatha Christie and Gladys Mitchell.
The Internet ARchive is a good Resource. I've mostly used it for short videos, but they have feature movies and they're also a good candidate when you're looking for a book that's out of print and that the library doesn't even have a copy.
Best had an interesting career. Sadly he died in 1962, so even Stepin Fetcht outlasted him. Really the both of them were just pursuing success in the way they were allowed to.
Yes, she's playing the kind of character who's not bothered if she rubs some people the wrong way, especially if it's the best way to find the truth. She's sort of part of a comedy team with James Gleason, who as far as I know wasn't related to Jackie.
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