THE SCARLET CLUE. Monogram, 1945. Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, Benson Fong, Virginia Brissac, Ben Carter, Janet Shaw, I. Stanford Jolley [uncredited]. Director: Phil Rosen.

Tommy Chan: You know Pop, I’ve got an idea about this case.
Charlie Chan: Yes, well?
Tommy Chan: Well, I had an idea, but it’s gone now.
Charlie Chan: Possibly could not stand solitary confinement.

   My brother and I used to watch these Monogram entries in the Charlie Chan series on television every Friday night when we were kids, and we sure got a hoot out of them — even, I’m sure, the earlier ones with Warner Oland as well. We had to keep the sound down, since our parents were sleeping in the downstairs bedroom then, so we sat as close to the screen as we could, and enjoyed the heck out of staying up late, because it didn’t happen often.

   The funny thing is, I don’t remember any of them, only some general impressions. The crimes, the oddly stiff Sidney Toler, the interchangeable actors who played the number two or number three sons, and we wondered why Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland) wasn’t in all of them.

Poster

   A major clue in this one is a bloody footprint found at the murder that occurs in the opening scene. The plot has something to do some radar plans that foreign agents want to steal, but because the scientific laboratory is in the same building, most of the action centers around a radio station where a relatively bad soap opera production has their on-the-air studio. (When Charlie visits the lab and is shown a wind tunnel with temperature and wind effects, we know immediately that the this same wind tunnel is going to play a large part of what happens later on. We are correct.)

    The detection is minimal. I was steered to the most obvious guilty suspect as being the killer, but I didn’t have my head screwed on too carefully, I’m afraid. There are spies, stooges, blackmailers, and people in funny masks, enough to keep your eye off the fact that, as one obvious question among others, how was the elevator with its deadly surprise constructed? It must have been quite a feat, especially with nobody noticing.

   I mentioned Mantan Moreland, the black comedian who later on got a bad rap, or so I’m told, for playing such broad comic relief in movies like this one. Actually, I think that he and Tommy Chan have more screen time than does Mr. Chan himself, and never a serious part of the investigation are they ever. (One wonders why a great detective like Mr. Chan would put up with … but, oh well, never mind.)

    Moreland and fellow comedian Ben Carter do a couple of great turns in an old vaudeville bit called the “infinite” routine, wherein both men carry on a conversation something like this, with neither one ever quite completing all of their sentences:

    “Why if it isn’t …”

    “Yes, and I haven’t seen you since …”

    “No, it was longer than that. Last time I saw you, you were …”

    “Well, I’ve lost weight! And you lived in …”

    “No, I’ve moved to …”

    “That’s a bad neighborhood. How can you live there?”

      and so on, and so on …

   Afterward, a thoroughly befuddled Tommy Chan asks, “Who was that?”

   Birmingham’s answer: “He didn’t say.”

   Well, my brother and I thought it was funny. We also woke our parents up and we were sent to bed.