Thu 1 Jun 2023
A PI Mystery Movie Review: THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T DIE (1942).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[17] Comments
THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T DIE. 20th Century Fox, 1942. Lloyd Nolan (Mike Shayne), Marjorie Weaver, Helene Reynolds, Henry Wilcoxon, Richard Derr, Paul Harvey, Billy Bevan, Olin Howlin, Jeff Corey, Charles Irwin (as The Great Merlini; uncredited). Based on the character created by Brett Halliday and the novel No Coffin for the Corpse by Clayton Rawson. Director: Herbert I. Leeds. Currently streaming on YouTube here.
This was the fifth of seven Michael Shayne movies starring Lloyd Nolan that were produced by Fox between 1940 and 1942, and to tell you the truth, right up front, this isn’t one of he better ones. To start with, to me, while he was a very fine actor, Lloyd Nolan is about 180 degrees the reverse of what Brett Halliday’s Miami- and New Orleans-based PI Michael Shayne should look and sound like.
That’s a handicap for all seven films to overcome, right from the start. But playing it to the extreme for comedy effect, as they do in this one is, to my mind, all but sacrilegious.
On the other hand, though, there are others in these early Nolan films which not bad. (Sleepers West is one I can easily recommend, but it is difficult to make a bad movie that takes place on a train.)
There is no train in this one, only a silly plot about a man (supposedly) coming back to life after being accidentally killed in an old manor house (one of those), then surreptitiously buried at the dead of night in a shallow grave.
Shayne is hired by the daughter of the man who owns the house after she is awakened at night by an intruder and a shot is fired at her. To explain his presence she introduces him as her newly obtained husband.
That the real husband shows up later, to much confusion and hilarity, needs not be mentioned.
Meanwhile the local cop, the kind of country lunkhead who seems to always show up in movies such as this, is obviously in way over his head, giving Mike Shayne all the room he needs to solve the case, which he explains in the end in great detail. When asked how he found out all the facts be brings up, he says, well, like a good magician, a good detective never reveals his secrets. Pfui!
A movie only for fans of comedy films, not hard-boiled detective movies. (And look, I didn’t even bring up the secret laboratory in the basement, much less the villain whose eyes seem to glow in the dark.)
June 1st, 2023 at 1:08 am
I always recall Henry Wilcoxon as the beefcake English king in ‘The Crusades’ dir by Cecil B. DeMille. Happily, he is one star who enjoyed a long and lively career. Nice to see his name in those credits.
I’ve been enjoying several Mike Shayne radio episodes this past month.
Jeff Chandler oozes so much charisma, he doesn’t need lights or cameras.
June 1st, 2023 at 5:42 am
I believe the Michael Shayne movies were all based (Loosely) on books by other Mystery Writers, as in TIME TO KILL, from Raymond Chandler’s THE HIGH WINDOW.
June 1st, 2023 at 7:14 am
Almost right, Dan. Luckily I didn’t have to work too hard to check all seven out. Only one of them was based on an original screenplay. Here’s the info, straight from Wikipedia:
Twentieth Century Fox films with Lloyd Nolan
Michael Shayne, Private Detective (1940; based on Halliday’s novel The Private Practice of Michael Shayne)
Sleepers West (1941; based on the novel Sleepers East by Frederick Nebel)
Dressed to Kill (1941; based on the novel The Dead Take No Bows by Richard Burke)
Blue, White and Perfect (1942; plot from the serial story Blue, White, and Perfect by Borden Chase)
The Man Who Wouldn’t Die (1942; based on the novel No Coffin for the Corpse by Clayton Rawson)
Just Off Broadway (1942; original screenplay)
Time to Kill (1942; based on the novel The High Window by Raymond Chandler)
June 1st, 2023 at 7:38 am
Wish I could get my hands on sleepers east (or any of nebel’s novels for that matter). None of nebel’s novels are available in any form and ain’t been for years.
June 1st, 2023 at 7:55 am
Despite the extremely low budgets and the fact that it’s hard to forget he later became Ward Cleaver, Hugh Beaumont actually comes close to being Dresser’s Mike Shayne in the movies he did.
June 1st, 2023 at 9:39 am
I like Richard Denning and therefore enjoy his work in the TV series, but I’m reading the Shayne novels in order and really I just have to say, they never got the casting right. My mental picture is of someone like John Bromfield – you know, those SHOULDERS. And indeed, he could have made quite a credible Michael Shayne.
June 1st, 2023 at 10:01 am
The right actor to play the part has come up several times before on this blog. Richard Denning in his TV show is certainly a fine choice, and I enjoy the series, too. My own personal choice, though, is Kenneth Tobey:
June 1st, 2023 at 11:05 am
As they say, mileage varies. True, Nolan isn’t the Shayne of the books but, along with Time to Kill & Sleepers West, this is a favorite of this series. I find it witty, amusing & well-directed.
June 1st, 2023 at 11:31 am
You aren’t alone, Stephen. The movie has a 6.6 rating on IMDb, which is solidly above average, with quite a few very positive user reviews. I’ll stand by my comments, but I may be the one out of step.
June 1st, 2023 at 2:20 pm
Kenneth Tobey has the red hair and the rugged looks, but I’m not sure he was physically imposing enough to be Shayne. Closer than Lloyd Nolan, though, certainly. I like the Shayne movies with Nolan but regard them more as generic PI movies. I never believed he was Mike Shayne.
June 1st, 2023 at 3:26 pm
I wonder who would know more about what Mike Shayne looks like other than you, James?
June 1st, 2023 at 5:36 pm
See, “physically imposingâ€, that’s exactly what I’m thinking with Bromfield. He looks like he could take punishment (and survive it), and dish it out. The movies would have been in black and white, so red hair is not a big issue.
June 1st, 2023 at 7:24 pm
Granted they aren’t Mike Shayne, but I love this series and Nolan in particular and I stand with Jon Tuska (HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVES) that the Shayne series established most of the major tropes of the private eye films of the later noir era so it is historically important as well. The Shayne adaptation of THE HIGH WINDOW is better than the Marlowe BRASHER DOUBLOON.
Outside of these rarified airs this is considered one of the outstanding entries in the series by many film historians.
Mike Shayne was just a name and a jaunty Irish tune to the producers of these. These films were about Lloyd Nolan and not Shayne, rather as the Bulldog Drummond films had almost nothing to do Sapper and everything to do with Ronald Colman or substitutes for Ronald Colman.
Even Sapper complained Hollywood had made Drummond a bigamist.
A handful of the Shayne’s are almost perfect examples of B programmers including this one, not perhaps if you are expecting Brett Halliday’s Shayne, but by the standards of B series entries they are breezy, witty, the dialogue and action move fast, and Nolan is on screen almost all the time. In fact the first one based on a Halliday novel is the weakest in the series.
They are strong on comedy because that was Nolan’s strong point, and because I can pretty well assure you that a more accurate Shayne would have been lucky to get a first movie much less a second as noted by the fact they only adapted one Halliday novel. Bogart aside the audience for B series entries wanted comfort, not challenge.
Nolan was a popular leading man in B’s with a string of more serious roles in better films and it was Lloyd Nolan that was the selling point here not Michael Shayne for audiences.
It’s not the studio that sabotages the Beaumont films though they are cheap, but they are flat, dull, and Beaumont, who was better in other films, has the screen charisma of a brown brogue in them thanks to the scripts and lackluster direction and production values. They are like watching early television without the production values.
The Mark Stevens Shayne pilot is a major misfire, and while the Denning series only lasted a short while it was played in the then style of less hard boiled than slick aimed to compete with 77 SUNSET STRIP and become a companion piece to Perry Mason from the same producers.
The thing about Shayne is he isn’t terribly likeable in many of the books, a factor that works well in print, but is much harder to sell on screen. He might have worked in the 80’s, but it was too soon for the full Shayne with his evidence and witness tampering ways in the 60’s.
I don’t think television in that era was ready for a character as challenging as Shayne, the same problem had happened with Nero Wolfe, and by the time Perry Mason hit the tube his rough edges were long gone.
But despite the hair, the best Shayne was Jeff Chandler on radio. That by far is the closest to Halliday’s tough redhead we have. I would have watched Chandler or Dennis O’Keefe as Halliday’s Michael Shayne.
June 1st, 2023 at 7:45 pm
Totally agree, David. Audiences in 1942 got exactly what they paid their 10 cents to see, and had a lot of fun doing so.
I still think that plotwise it’s a silly, insipid, sappy movie.
IMMHO, of course.
Call me Mr. Grumpy.
June 1st, 2023 at 7:47 pm
PS. Jeff Chandler as Michael Shayne on the radio. Now there’s where we agree, 100%, if not more.
June 2nd, 2023 at 7:32 am
Education thread above, pleasurable reading.
For me, Chandler’s Shayne beats out at least 5 –maybe even 10 –of all the other top radio PIs of the era.
He works hard in the role; and adds spin to every line he delivers. He’s directed well.
I only got into it starting last year or so, but it has proved itself mighty reliable listening. Sadly, I believe there are only 20-30 episodes?
Anyway Big Easy atmosphere is always lively in Chandler’s series. The b.g. varies from speakeasies, to swamps, to antebellum mansions with proverbial ‘creepers of Spanish moss’.
The writers inject other local color like hurricanes, floods, levees, Cajun Indians, peanut wagons, gators, cottonmouths, trappers.
And there’s also Jack Webb as his caustic, hard-nosed ‘frenemy’ on the force. Hilarious change of pace for Webb.
All in all, I’d even put the Chandler Shayne ahead of Mohr’s Marlow and Duff’s Spade. Certainly ahead of Diamond, Dollar, etc.
Shayne finds a neat niche between all of his competitors. First, he’s perpetually poor. Can’t afford a secretary. Then, he often loses his battle-of-wills with Jack Webb …often gets a thrashing without-being-able-to-pay-it-back …most surprisingly, he occasionally gets some genuine TLC from a doll at the end of a difficult case.
If I have any complaint at all it’s only that I wish the show had some more authentic dixieland jazz.
+1 more vote for Kenneth Tobey, In the 1940s he looks very physically fit to my eyes. A commanding presence.
June 2nd, 2023 at 12:13 pm
Interesting takes, Lazy.
Just for clarification, Dick Powell was Chandler’s cinematic godfather. Impressed after doing a Richard Diamond episode.