The Black Widow (1947) – Chapter 10: The Stolen Corpse

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?

“Hey—you’re right!  I guess that’s why you’re the faux gumshoe and I’m just the…law-talking guy.”  Mark explains to Colt that he’ll have to have positive proof before he can get the grand jury to indict…and Steve explains that he’ll need time to dig up more dirt, so the D.A. posits that they can hold “Ms. Arnold” without bail for attempted murder.

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.”

But this is just plain dumbassery: both Steve and Joyce crossed paths with Sombra the fortuneteller at her establishment in Chapter 7—do you really mean to tell me he’s forgotten all that since then?  (Granted, he’s taken a few hits to the head in the interim…but he couldn’t have suffered all that much brain damage.)  No, the reason why the writers had to resort to these shenanigans is because after Colt and Mark leave (along with the jailer, who comically tells the prisoner “If you want anything, just ring for the bellhop”) Sombra pulls a compact out of her purse, which turns out to be a nifty communications device.  She contacts Dr. Z.V. Jaffa (I. Stanford Jolley) back at the hideout.

JAFFA: Go ahead, Madame Sombra…

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.

SOMBRA: Surely, Mr. Bradley, something can be done…

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.

STEVE: It really got me…I never saw two people look so much alike as that fortuneteller and the girl we’ve got in jail…

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!

But Steve and Joyce are going to be too late.  Two men, one of them Ward and the other identified as “Smith,” are wheeling Sombra’s “corpse” out of the morgue and to a nearby morgue wagon.  Smith is played by legendary Republic stunt man Dale van Sickel, who’s already turned up in this thing on two occasions—once as “Bill” in Chapter 4, and as “Hodges” in Chapter 7.  He was quite the industrious water rodent…we’ll see him one more time before this thing is over.

When Steve and Joyce do arrive at the morgue, they find an attendant (William Bailey) recovering from the pummeling he took from Ward and Smith.  “Two…two men…beat me up…they…they stole the body of…Mary Arnold…they…they got away on the morgue wagon…”  All right, ya crybaby—you’re okay, rub some dirt on it.  So our hero tears off in the direction of the fleeing morgue automobile, leaving Joyce behind…and there’s a reason for this.

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…