Wed 29 Apr 2009
A Movie Review by Walter Albert: SUPER-SLEUTH (1937).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[8] Comments
SUPER-SLEUTH. RKO Radio Pictures, 1937. Jack Oakie, Ann Sothern, Eduardo Ciannelli, Alan Bruce, Edgar Kennedy, Joan Woodbury. Director: Benjamin Stoloff. Shown at Cinevent 20, Columbus OH, May 1988.
Jack Oakie plays a popular film sleuth who tries to repeat his success on screen in an off-screen mystery, abetted by studio publicist Ann Sothern (trying to cover up his almost constant mishandling of his amateur sleuthing).
Edgar Kennedy was good as James Gleason’s flat-footed assistant in the delightful Murder on the Blackboard, the second of the Hildegarde Withers/Inspector Piper collaborations with Edna Mae Oliver (1934), shown earlier in the day, but he was even better in Super-Sleuth.
For once, Kennedy comes off as a sympathetic, even competent professional undone by an incompetent amateur, even though the bumbling “Edgar” character lurks somewhere not too far from the surface.
The heavy is Eduardo Cianelli, the unforgettable “assassin” of Gunga Din, and the comic/suspenseful climax has a wax museum as the perfect setting for the conclusion of a film about on- and off-screen detecting.
[EDITORIAL COMMENT.] My usual sources have come up dry as far as finding suitable images to show you. Even more unexpectedly, the movie itself has proven to be elusive, although not impossible to find in the usual collector-to-collector markets. The photo of Edgar Kennedy, a standard publicity shot, source unknown, is not from Super-Sleuth, or at least I’m fairly sure it’s not. — Steve
April 30th, 2009 at 1:00 am
Kennedy was without question the movies king of the slow burn. That hand that would cover his forehead and slowly work its way down his face as his exasperation grows is as iconic as Billy Gilbert’s sneezes or Tom Kennedy’s dull witted police sergeants.
There are still fine character actors today, but during the golden age of the cinema they provided directors with a short hand for characterization and the audience with certain entertainment. S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall, Porter Hall, Eugene Pallette, Walter Connally, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, William Frawley, William Demarest, Gene Lockhart, Frank McHugh, Charles Coburn, James Burke, Donald Crisp … some of them were as much stars as the leading man — and in some cases their faces better known.
Try to imagine Casablanca without that cast of impressive character actors, or The Maltese Falcon without Greenstreet, Lorre, Cook, Jerome Cowan, Ward Bond, and Barton MacLane, and where would gangster films have been without Allen Jenkins, Marc Lawrence, Eduardo Cianelli, Ricardo Cortez, and Jack La Rue?
Of course sometimes they were the only reason to watch the film, and a few of them even starred in their own B films, while a few flirted with stardom (Henry Wilcoxin, Patric Knowles) and still others suddenly found themselves stars after years in the shadow (Anthony Quinn), but they were one aspect of the studio system that is sorely missed today.
April 30th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
SUPER SLEUTH is regularly shown on TCM. Before that, it used to be shown regularly on AMC.
My web site has an article about Benjamin Stoloff, and it includes material on SUPER SLEUTH: http://mikegrost.com/stoloff.htm
Stoloff was a fun director, especially of musicals and comedies. His films also benefited from the wonderful sets and costumes of Golden Age Hollywood.
SUPER SLEUTH is more successful as a back-stage comedy about Hollywood, than as any sort of rigorous detective story.
April 30th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Mike
I’m sure I taped Super Sleuth during one of the times it was shown on TCM, but of course I don’t have any means now of locating it. My filing system has been long neglected, with many VHS tapes stacked and boxed up in the basement.
One of these days.
I do not believe that I have seen any of the Stoloff films you comment on. He started directing with silent films, with his career all but ending in 1947. In an impressive list of movies found on IMDB, I see one, Bermuda Mystery, that I recently obtained on DVD that I’ve been meaning to find time for.
There’s been such an influx of movies I’ve taped this month from TCM that the backlog has gotten bigger and bigger, not smaller.
— Steve
April 30th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Though it isn’t listed as such at IMDB, Bermuda Mystery is a remake of the Crime Club Mystery film The Last Warning based on Jonathan Latimer’s The Dead Don’t Care that starred Preston Foster as Bill Crane. Ironically Foster also starred in Warning, though not as Crane. Mystery is something of a Thin Man style romantic mystery, though in some ways so is Latimer’s novel.
Bermuda Mystery has a screenplay by John Larkin (Quiet Please, Murder!)who wrote several good screenplays and directed a bit too.
May 1st, 2009 at 12:41 am
Well, I certainly made that unclear. Foster played Crane in the Last Warning. In the remake Bermuda Mystery he plays Steve Caramond (sic) who is also a private eye, this time in a Thin Man type situation. There, now it makes sense, or as much sense as I’m likely to make.
May 1st, 2009 at 6:21 am
Glad you unearthed this old review of a minor classic. Enjoyable for its sheer unpretentiousness.
May 1st, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Dan
Good to hear from you, especially since it was you who touted Walter onto this film in the first place, at the very beginning of Cinevent 20, as per his full commentary in that old issue of Mystery FANcier.
Here are the opening few paragraphs of Walter’s report:
“The first person I ran into at the Columbus (Ohio) annual Memorial Day weekend film festival was Dan Stumpf — the best writer on American film noir whose work I am familiar with — who was smiling contentedly in the way we confirmed film junkies do after a particularly happy film experience. ‘You’re going to like Super Sleuth,’ he whispered to me. (Film junkies never talk during film showings and, when they recommend a film, talk in a low voice so that the privileged information does not reach unfriendly ears.)
“‘I hope so,’ I muttered distractedly, giving the appearance of receiving the tip without attaching undue importance to it since a film junkie would never want to appear to accept a recommendation for a film he might discover he loathes.
“Film junkies are generally skeptical before the fact and reticent after it. After all, we spent much of our formative movie years in a monogamous relationship with the silver screen and to admit a third participant to our rites has something of the adulterous about it.
“But the film junkie is, at heart, an honest sort and I want to acknowledge publicly that Dan was right about Super Sleuth. I did like it and this 1937 RKO release was one of the high points of a convention I have been attending since 1980.”
June 10th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
[…] well as some early discussion of Bermuda Mystery, see the comments following Walter Albert’s review of Super-Sleuth, which he also […]