Wed 13 Dec 2017
A PI Movie Review by Walter Albert: BLUE, WHITE AND PERFECT (1941).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[5] Comments
BLUE, WHITE AND PERFECT. 20th Century Fox, 1941. Lloyd Nolan (PI Michael Shayne), Mary Beth Hughes, Helene Reynolds, George Reeves, Steven Geray. Based on the character created by Brett Halliday and a story by Borden Chase (see comments for more information). Director: Herbert I. Leeds. Shown at Cinevent 26, Columbus OH, May 1994.
In addition to Chandu (reviewed here ), I was also looking forward to a film I remembered with great pleasure from ts original release, Blue, White and Perfect.
Lloyd Nolan is a wise-cracking Michael Shayne hired to follow the trail of industrial diamonds hijacked from an aircraft factory. This crime comedy of international war-time intrigue finds him on a liner bound for Honolulu where he teams up with George Reeves (as “Juan Arturo O’Hara”), an FBI Investigator traveling incognito to continue the investigation. Shayne is a fast talker and situation improvisor, and Nolan is fine in this role, although the film was not as fleet of foot as I remembered it.
After the convention as I was watching The Shadow in another film as he was on the point of drowning in a chamber filling with water, I recalled the scene in Blue where Nolan and Reeves are trapped in a baggage compartment by a bad guy. A similar ploy taken from the matinee chapter-play thriller, the room in which the walls are closing in was effective in Star Wars and demonstrates the continuing reliance of movies on their history.
With delectable Mary Beth Hughes as Shayne’s long-suffering girl friend.
December 13th, 2017 at 5:22 pm
The Nolan Shayne series always had a certain charm, and here Reeves proves a good foil for Nolan’s take on Shayne. This isn’t the best of the series, but the series was so good that even a mid level entry was superior to most B series programmers.
Fox always seemed to shine at this compared to Columbia.
December 13th, 2017 at 7:51 pm
Fritz Lang’s The Spiders Part II: The Diamond Ship (1920) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) have classic “trapped in a chamber” scenes.
December 14th, 2017 at 9:00 am
This was based on a book by Borden Chase. The comedy is a bit forced, but like all the Shayne’s it’s very watchable.
December 22nd, 2017 at 9:22 pm
The Borden Chase story, also titled “Blue, White and Perfect,” was serialized in the pulp magazine ARGOSY in 1937. The protagonist was U. S. Treasury agent “Smooth” Kyle, who figured in several other Chase serials for ARGOSY. It wasn’t printed in book form until 1947, when it was retitled “Diamonds of Death.”
I’ve always found it interesting that Fox’s Mike Shayne series adapted so many books written by other authors — Chase, Raymond Chandler, Frederick Nebel, Clayton Rawson, etc. Only the first entry, MICHAEL SHAYNE, PRIVATE DETECTIVE, was based on a “Brett Halliday” novel.
December 23rd, 2017 at 8:03 pm
Dan and Ed
Thanks for the information about Borden Chase story this movie was based on. And Ed, you’re certainly correct that it’s strange that only the first Shayne film was actually based on a Mike Shayne story. Ours to wonder why!