Many apologies for having to skip out on Serial Saturdays last week, but sister Kat dropped in over the weekend and I thought it would be rude for me to be holed up in Casa del Boudoir working on an installment while she visited. So without further ado, let’s get right into this week’s action on The Black Widow (1947): criminologist and pretend detective Steve Colt (Bruce Edwards) was actually playing possum as far as his “injuries” went (faker!), enabling him to nab the delectably diabolical Madame Sombra (Carol Forman) before she injects a deadly poison in his ass. Plucky gal reporter Joyce Winters (Virginia Lindley), attending physician Dr. Harcourt (Larry Steers) and some no-name cop enter Steve’s room just as Colt captures Sombra.
STEVE: I’ve seen this woman before, and I have a hunch she’s the Black Widow!
SOMBRA: I don’t know what he’s
talking about!
STEVE (producing the hypodermic
needle): And that’s her stinger!
JOYCE: Steve! You sure take chances!
STEVE (to Harcourt): Have that
analyzed while we take her down and have her booked!
“Perhaps I should have made this clear—I’m the doctor. Analyzing is
what my flunkies do.” Seriously. Colt really ought to seek
professional help about this bossing-people-around habit of his. Sombra is hustled out of Steve’s room by the
cop, and as Steve heads toward the door Joyce makes a lame crack about his hospital
attire: “What the well-dressed man is wearing this season—according to Esquire…”
HARCOURT (laughing): Your hat and
coat’s in my office…come along…
STEVE: Thank you, Doctor…
JOYCE (on the telephone): Hello…is
this the Clarion? Give me the city desk please…
The scene fades as Joyce checks in with the paper, and then
fades up to show Sombra cooling her heels in a cell at the ol’ grey bar
B&B. She’s being grilled by Colt and
D.A. Mark (John Philips) as a turnkey looks on—the guard is played by Thrilling Days of Yesteryear villain
fave Robert J. Wilke, making his second appearance in this serial (he was a cab
driver in Chapter
1).
SOMBRA: How many times must I tell you—I’m Mary Arnold…trained nurse…!
Trained in the art…of
murder!
MARK: All her papers seem to bear
her out…
STEVE: Well, that may be…but I’m convinced I’ve seen this woman before in
a fortunetelling establishment…besides, her credentials could be forged—couldn’t they?
Now…I realize the plots of serials are incredibly farfetched
by design—but what happens next definitely takes an off-ramp into “Whatchoo
talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?” Steve tells the
D.A. he’ll need to check on all the fortunetellers in town (Mark humorously dismisses
this with “Now, Colt…it’s all very well and good for your storybook detectives to consult fortunetellers for their clues—we don’t
do these things in real life”) and
since there’s about a hundred in that berg (superstitious people, huh) it’ll
take a while to run them all down (fortunately, Steve informs the D.A. he and
Joyce have a list). By checking on all
the psychics, Steve will be able to determine if “Nurse Arnold” is telling a
big honking fib because when they find a missing fortuneteller it has to be her—“she
can’t be in two places at the same time.”
SOMBRA (on the device): I’m in the
Lincoln Street jail…tell Bradley, my lawyer, to come here at once—he knows what to
do…meanwhile, Steven Colt is checking on all the fortunetellers in the city…be
prepared…
JAFFA: I understand…
Jaffa then turns to Sombra’s number one henchie, Nick Ward
(Anthony Warde) and says: “What did I tell you?” “Now I’ve seen everything,” Ward assures the
doc. I have no idea what this dialogue
means. Jaffa walks over to a telephone
and begins to dial as an earlier montage of Steve and Joyce’s visits to various
fortunetelling establishments is rerun.
The couple then arrive at Sombra’s (next door to A. “Shish” Kabob’s Fine
Tobaccos) and as they make their way upstairs Jaffa gets a heads-up from
another of Sombra’s goons, Blinky the Stoolie (Ernie Adams). Steve and Joyce enter the parlor and find…
…what the…front yard?
SOMBRA: I’m glad to see you again…what
brings you here, Mr. Colt?
STEVE: Why…uh…just a routine
check-up for the District Attorney’s office…may I see your license to operate?
Sombra produces a certificate that attests her business is
legit, and our heroes—stunned, to be sure—mumble their apologies and
depart. Sombra then enters the back room
area of her hideout and is greeted warmly by Jaffa.
JAFFA: He fell for it!
SOMBRA: And why not?
Sombra then enters her wardrobe area and after closing the
curtains (she is modest, you know), sits at her makeup table and pulls at her
face to reveal…
Yowsah! A hot blonde! This woman (Laura Stevens) is addressed as “Trixie,” and exiting the wardrobe chamber she is paid off by Jaffa for her first-rate impersonation of her Wickedness.
JAFFA: Thank you, Trixie…you did
very well…
TRIXIE: It was a pleasure…call me anytime you’ve got a cinch job like that…
The serial doesn’t reveal what Trixie does for a living, so
I’m going to take a wild guess and say she’s employed in the entertainment
industry. (Wink wink.)
Meanwhile, back at the Lincoln Street Hoosegow, mouthpiece
Bradley (Forrest Taylor) confers with his malevolent client.
BRADLEY: They’re holding you on a
charge of attempted murder…it’s my advice that you throw yourself on the mercy
of the court when you come to trial…
“Or you could plead insanity…hey, tell them about the device
you use to summon your father—they’re sure
to think the cheese has slid off your cracker!”
GUARD: Time’s up, counsellor…
BRADLEY (rising): All right…I was
just leaving… (He stops) Oh…perhaps you’d like to read this…
Bradley starts to hand Sombra a newspaper, but Wilke the Turnkey stops him short—he needs to check the latest edition out to make sure it’s copacetic and all. He rifles through the newspaper, chuckles at the Dick Tracy strip, and hands it off to Sombra—content that there’s no funny business going on.
Oh, Wilke. You will
soon regret that action. For once
Bradley has left, Sombra peruses the paper until she hits upon this interesting
item in the classifieds:
The scene then shifts to Steve and Joyce, as they discouragingly tool along in the Coltmobile.
JOYCE: It’s amazing…as Ethel
Barrymore once said, “That’s all there is…there isn’t any more”…
What a strange, strange line. Any further odd dialogue is interrupted by
the car’s radio—a news announcer interrupts the music program with a bulletin
that “Mary Arnold, suspected leader of the Black Widow gang, was found dead in
her cell from heart failure.” Ye gods
and little fishes! Steve thinks there’s
something rotten in Denmark, and so he starts booking for the Lincoln Street
Lockup. “All I knew is what the doctor
said,” Turnkey Wilke tells them both when they arrive, “she died of heart failure, so they took
her to the morgue…”
And that’s when Steve picks a coffee cup from off the floor
and examines its strange contents…
STEVE (picking up the newspaper): Where’d this come from?
GUARD: The girl’s lawyer brought it
to her…there wasn’t anything in it—I looked through it before I let her have it…
STEVE: Was this torn out before you gave it to her?
It was not. And using his sensitive sense of smell, Steve has deduced something that would make even Sherlock Holmes mutter “GTFO.” “If what I suspect is true,” he tells Joyce and Wilke, “she merely drugged herself to simulate heart failure!” Twisted and evil. The next stop: the city morgue!
Astute members of the TDOY
faithful might have noticed that the title of this chapter, “The Stolen Corpse,”
is similar to the title of Chapter
2 in the last chapter play I tackled here on the blog, (Big) Government Agents vs. Phantom Legion
(1951). This is no coincidence: both
chapters rely on the same cliffhanger, but in this case it’s Sombra and Ward
fleeing Steve—Ward fires his gun at Colt until there are no more buwwets, and
then heaves a gurney out the back at Steve’s ride to slow him down. (That’s why Joyce isn’t riding shotgun—it would
be hard to match the footage, and even though Legion came after Widow
I’m pretty sure this footage was recycled from an earlier Republic serial—I’m
just not well versed on the subject to know which one.)
Anyway, Steve swerves to miss the gurney…and this happens…
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