Wed 26 Apr 2017
Movie Review: THE MURDER OF DR. HARRIGAN (1936).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[8] Comments
THE MURDER OF DR. HARRIGAN. Warner Brothers, 1936. Clue Club #6. Ricardo Cortez, Kay Linaker, John Eldredge, Mary Astor, Joseph Crehan. Based on the novel From This Dark Stairway, by Mignon G. Eberhart. Director: Frank McDonald.
Murder in a hospital has always been a staple of detective fiction, but perhaps even more so in the Golden Age of Detection, and here’s a prime example. Even before Dr. Harrigan’s body in found in a jammed elevator, there are all kinds of signs that this is a hospital to stay out of, no matter how sick you are.
Doctors light up cigarettes wills-nilly, for example, no matter where they are in the building, patients get up and wander around, including to each other’s rooms. Even worse, the sick man that Dr. Harrigan was going to operate on — and was last seen wheeling down the hall to an operating room — in a suit and tie yet — has completely disappeared. He’s nowhere in the building.
In the book, the detective of record is Sarah Keate, a nurse who was in seven of Mignon Eberhart’s novels, the last one appearing in 1954. In the movie, though, renamed Sally Keating (Kay Linaker), she doesn’t really do any detective work.
That’s left to the police and her would-be boy friend, Dr. Lambert (Ricardo Cortez) — he seems a lot more interested in marrying her than she is the other way around — and there are plenty of suspects to choose from, whether doctors, other nurses, patients, family members of all of the above, all acting very mysteriously.
Unfortunately, there’s no particular reason for picking on the actual killer to be the killer. I’m willing to wager that the book was a whole lot better in this regard. You watch the movie for non-stop action and banter, not for niceties of clues and actual detective work.
PostScript: The TCM website says that “Some of the other titles bearing the Clue Club stamp are The Florentine Dagger (1935), While the Patient Slept (1935), The White Cockatoo (1935), The Case of the Velvet Claws (1936) and The Case of the Black Cat (1936).”
April 27th, 2017 at 9:15 pm
The interesting thing here is the presence of Mary Astor in the cast, albeit third billed.
Two of this Crime Club titles are Perry Mason, another Everhart, and FLORENTINE DAGGER an odd film based on Ben Hecht’s novel
April 27th, 2017 at 10:21 pm
I read somewhere, perhaps on IMDb, is that Mary Astor was assigned the leading role, she refused, and they gave her a nothing part. In my opinion, she stood out more in that role than Kay Linaker did as the lead.
April 27th, 2017 at 10:40 pm
And she did not refuse the nothing part because…?
April 27th, 2017 at 11:00 pm
That’s a good question. I’ll see if I can’t find out more.
April 27th, 2017 at 11:04 pm
From http://celluloidclub.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-b-hive-murder-of-doctor-harrigan.html:
“For The Murder of Doctor Harrigan the studio originally cast Mary Astor as Sally Keating, but Astor refused the role. So, with its usual sensitivity, Warners signed Broadway actress Kay Linaker to make her film debut as Keating and forced Astor to take a supporting role as another nurse in the hospital. With Linaker making her debut, top billing went to Ricardo Cortez, playing a doctor with whom Nurse Sally is romantically involved.”
Which does not exactly answer your question, Barry. Perhaps the next possible punishment was even worse.
April 27th, 2017 at 11:35 pm
Not an answer. If she can turn a lead down, she can turn a small part down the same way. Nothing wrong with Kay Linaker, who wrote the screenplay for The Blob. And nothing to do with Warner’s insensitivity. They helped a lot of people to be successful. And could she have gone on suspension for the shooting schedule? Certainly. So what. A few weeks and the ‘insensitive’ money starts rolling back in.
April 27th, 2017 at 11:40 pm
Just checked TCM in the article department for this film, and there is a softer explanation with no mystery at all.
April 28th, 2017 at 12:31 am
These must be the paragraphs you’re referring to. If so, you’re right. No story there.
Mary Astor had already appeared in about 75 films at this point, in a career stretching back to 1920. She later described this and her other pictures of the time as “all enjoyable for me in a sort of social way: congenial people, no problems — set it up and shoot it. Lunch and jokes in the commissary. No sweat. No nothing.”
She also wrote that during this period in her career, she was simply grinding out movie after movie, doing her job and building up experience: “In the beginning I had a bit of enthusiasm — I usually did at the start of a picture — but after awhile I got to the point where I’d come on the set and ask, ‘Which door do I come in, where do I stand, and what do I say?’ And it showed. I was as two-dimensional as the screen itself: cool, indifferent, looking lovely in close-ups. Period. Period. Period. When was I ever going to learn to act! You can’t learn if you can’t experiment and find what works, and doesn’t work. But the hours are long, the schedule rigid, so I did what I was told and saved time and money for the front office. And got a lot of jobs that way.”