Sun 26 Nov 2023
Movie Review: NANCY DREW… TROUBLE SHOOTER (1939).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[6] Comments
NANCY DREW… TROUBLE SHOOTER. Warner Brothers, 1939. Bonita Granville Bonita Granville (Nancy Drew), Frankie Thomas (Ted Nickerson), John Litel (Carson Drew), Aldrich Bowker. Charlotte Wynters. Based on the girls’ novels written by Carolyn Keene. Director: William Clemens. Currently streaming on You Tube (see below).
This was the third in a series of four Nancy Drew movies produced by Warner Brothers, and while this is the only one I’ve ever seen (so far), I think there should have been more. (After all, how many Andy Hardy movies were there?) I have no idea how fans of the series would rank Troubleshooter, but let me warn you (if you need warning), that this is a movie that’s as much a comedy as it is a detective story.
Nancy and her father go up in the country in this one in order for Carson Drew, a lawyer by profession, to represent a old friend of the family who’s been accused of murder, and the sheriff and all his buddies aren’t budging an inch.
Complicating things, as far as Nancy is concerned, is that her father is making eyes at their new neighbor, and when she calls on her boy friend Ted Nickerson for help in that regard, he starts making moon-eyes at her as well. (By some strange coincidence, Ted and his family are on hand as well.) Determined to show her father she can do the cooking for their dinner, Nancy is confounded by the difference between a wood stove and a gas one, and several minutes are spent (though not wasted) watching her make like Lucy Ricardo in the kitchen.
The whole thing hangs on coincidence, if you ask me, what with the murder victim found buried under a tropical flower Nancy happens to spot growing in a field, and then asking handyman Apollo Johnson (Willie Best) to dig it up for her.
Oops. Full apologies for telling you more than you want to know, and I haven’t even gotten to the best part, with Nancy and Ted up in the air in a crop-dusting plane at the end of the film with no pilot. No matter how silly all this may sounds, the players pull it off with plenty of panache, and Bonita Granville displays just the right amount of perkiness and young girl confidence to make the whole affair a most entertaining one.
November 26th, 2023 at 12:33 pm
Like all of the Granville Nancys, fun and frothy.I also liked the nice resolution of Nancy’s jealousy.
November 26th, 2023 at 5:03 pm
Yes. Frothy and fun. Exactly. She wears a neat sleuthing hat, too.
November 26th, 2023 at 9:58 pm
This is the weakest of the films in the series, IMO. My favorite is “Nancy Drew Reporter”. And you’re right that they are all comedies as much as detective stories.
I read somewhere that the series stopped at four because Bonita Granville wanted to do ‘grown-up’ parts and not be stuck as an onscreen teen.
November 26th, 2023 at 11:06 pm
I looked at her Wikipedia page. She had some good roles after Nancy, but in spite of some good roles at times, she didn’t seem to get away from making B-movies, including a couple of Andy Hardy movies. So she retired and went producing movies and TV shows (LASSIE was the big one).
November 27th, 2023 at 12:14 am
Granville’s best-known role after Nancy was the student whose lies almost ruin two women’s lives in THESE THREE based on Lillian Hellman’s THE CHILDREN’S HOUR.
John Litel who played Carleton Drew, was a former male model, best remembered in that profession as the model for Hubert Rogers oft-reprinted cover for the first installment of the serialization of GRAY LENSMAN in ASTOUNDING.
Granville was easily the best of the film and television incarnations of Nancy and the films are fun if more comedy than mystery. I never warmed to Pamela Sue Martin as Nancy and the recent movie was awful while the CW series turned Nancy into an angst ridden college age waitress turned supernatural sleuth with enough baggage for half a dozen soap operas.
November 27th, 2023 at 9:33 pm
I’ve seen all four twice. Great fun and all worth watching. I ranked Detective and Hidden Staircase above Reporter and Trouble Shooter.