Well, after all the hassles with my health and the health of
my computer,
Thrilling Days of Yesteryear
returns with our critically-acclaimed dissections of the two-reel shorts in
MGM’s long-running
Crime Does Not Pay series. (
Spoiler: they are not
critically-acclaimed.) This week’s
entry,
Foolproof (1936), comes to us
via the team of Marty Brooks (story) and Richard Goldstone (screenwriter); both
men collaborated on previous entries in the
CDNP
series (
Alibi Racket,
A Thrill for Thelma) but Goldstone
had the more prolific show bidness career in that he made his way through the
ranks of MGM’s shorts department as a producer (he’s credited with several
Our Gang one-reelers) before graduating
to feature films like
The Yellow Cab Man
(1950) and
The Tall Target (1951). Dick later went to work for 20th Century-Fox,
and in the 1960s was a producer on programs like
Adventures in Paradise
and
Peyton
Place.
Oh, and director Edward Cahn gets a separate screen
credit. That should count for something.
Our MGM Reporter (William Tannen)—the man known cryptically
as…Jim—is also back with us; they
decided to stick him behind a microphone so he would look more reporter-ish. (He needs it, as you’ll learn in a few.)
JIM: A few months ago, I was
seated in the office of Frederick Halliday—who is Captain of Detectives in a
large middle Western city…
Even the names of the burgs have been changed to protect the
innocent. The (always reliable) IMDb
doesn’t technically identify the actor who portrays Cap’n Halliday, but since
Alonzo Price is listed among the players I’m gambling it’s him because a) his
name is also listed prominently among the cast in the entry for Foolproof in Leonard Maltin’s Selected Short Subjects, and 2) the IMDb
does list his place of birth as
Boston, MA (me sainted mother’s birthplace!) …and Alonzo has an accent as thick
as clam chow-dah.
JIM: Captain Halliday, I’ve been
sent to you to obtain a case history of crimes from your files for presentation
to the motion picture public…
HALLIDAY: I think I can do
better than that, Jim…the coroner’s jury is just doing an investigation of a very interesting case down the hall…maybe
we can sit in on the proceedings…
“But…I’m not properly dressed!”
JIM: Fine—what case is it?
HALLIDAY: The Anderson case!
JIM: Say—that sounds like a
mystery thriller…
Or something Anderson drank.
Halliday and his guest are lucky to find a couple of seats up front as
the inquiry gets underway. The actor
playing the part of the judge at the inquest is easily identified…
…it’s Stanley Andrews, the character veteran (
Meet John Doe,
The Ox-Bow Incident) best remembered as “The Old Ranger” on the
long-running TV western
Death Valley Days. Andrews’ judge is questioning one of the
major witnesses in “the Anderson case”—another TV favorite…
…George Cleveland, who played George “Gramps” Miller in the
early seasons of
Lassie before his passing in July of 1957. Cleveland also had plum roles in such
TDOY faves as
It’s in the Bag! (1945—“Compliments
of the management!”) and
The Wistful
Widow of Wagon Gap (1947), and he turns up in the
Crime Does Not Pay series often, notably in 1941’s
Sucker List…which I covered
previously on the blog. Here’s the
thing: at the time I wrote about this short in December of 2010, Cleveland’s
credit at the IMDb hilariously read: “Old Man Not Beaten Up.” I
swear
I’m not making this up—except
if you look at the entry
now, the “Not Beaten Up” portion has been removed. I don’t know if I had anything to do with
this or not…if on the off-chance I
do
have that much influence on the Internets, I offer my sincerest mea culpa because
I thought it was funny as hell.
Back to the particulars of “the Anderson case.” Cleveland, as Mr. Hanson, testifies he was
mowing his front lawn when a moppet named Frances came running up to report
that her mother Rita (Donrue Leighton) had been hurt. Hanson finds Mrs. A bound and gagged in the
bedroom, and after untying her he runs to another room to discover her husband
Frank is really most sincerely dead.
(And someone’s responsible!)
The coroner identified the presence of “anesthetic in the
victim’s lungs” as a contributory cause of his demise… “though not in
sufficient quantity to kill him.”
“Apparently the drug was administered to stupefy him…after which, the
murderer strangled him,” he remarks.
Further study showed that traces of that anesthetic were present on the
gag in Rita’s mouth, which apparently put her out for about six hours (the
marks on her wrists and ankles bear this out as well). Detective Whalen testifies further:
WHELAN: A routine checkup
revealed no fingerprints—nor any other clues…Mr. Anderson’s pockets had been
emptied…his watch and wallet were both missing…so were Mrs. Anderson’s
jewels…all windows and doors were in perfect order, except the front door—where apparently the burglar
made his entry by filing through a chain lock…
The Widder Anderson then testifies as to her version of
events—she and husband Frank returned home from an evening soiree and as she
prepared for bed in front of her dressing table, she was attacked by the
assailant from behind and (presumably) chloroformed with the anesthetic (she
doesn’t remember anything that happened afterward until Hanson came to her
rescue). That screen grab above reminds
me of the lyric in Tom T. Hall’s
Ballad
of Forty Dollars: “You know, some women do look good in black.”
The dowager who threw the affair that the Andersons
attended, Mrs. Layton, is identified at the IMDb as an actress named Lelah
Tyler—but you can’t tell me that’s
not
Esther Howard (Leonard Maltin thinks so, too).
(The comments section awaits dissenters.) Anyway, Layton’s testimony reveals that there
was a small disagreement during her party between Frank Anderson and a
sebaceous individual named Terry Spencer (Stephen Chase), who starts to get a
little handsy where Mrs. Anderson is concerned.
SPENCER: Come on, Rita…how’s
about a little kiss?
RITA: No, no, Terry…please…Terry, please stop…
FRANK (approaching the couple):
What’s the idea, Spencer? That’s my wife…
SPENCER: Yeah…I’ve often wondered about that…
(He turns his back to Anderson)
FRANK (spinning him around):
Just what do you mean?
SPENCER: I’d bet you’d like to
know…or maybe you wouldn’t…
The donnybrook is just about to commence when a party guest (Niles
Welch) who’s been watching the argument starts to step in and settle things…before
being stopped by Rita. He’s later
identified as “John Harwood,” though I should strenuously point out he is
not the same guy who’s CNBC’s
editor-at-large. Mrs. Layton, who
describes Mr. H as “a friend of Rita’s,” assumes that’s to whom Spencer was
referring when he made that cryptic “maybe you wouldn’t” statement. Judge Ranger presses her a little more, and
gets her to reveal that “John thought a lot of Rita…but so did Terry Spencer!”
What amuses me about the above screen grab is that Halliday
is furiously taking notes while Jim—who claims to be a “reporter”—does nothing
of the sort. The first name in
Halliday’s notebook, by the way, is “Spencer Walden”—the third suspect in
la affaire
Anderson due to his uncomfortable encounter with the victim earlier at the
party:
WALDEN: Frank…I…I just haven’t
got the cash to meet your note…can’t you give me a little time?
FRANK: Why, I’ve given you
enough time already…
WALDEN: But you don’t understand…I’ll be wiped out!
FRANK (finishing his drink and
getting to his feet): Sorry, Walden…I didn’t come here to talk business…
He seems nice. As you
can see by the headline, the inquest turns out to be a bust…but that doesn’t
mean that Cap’n Halliday can call it a day.
(Particularly since he now appears to be doing Jim’s reporter job for
him.) He questions all three suspects…
…and learns that “getting that note extended” was of vital
importance to Mr. Walden—providing plenty of motive for Stew to croak
Frank. Walden claims he was home in bed:
 |
| Jim will have to leave the room as soon as Halliday breaks out the oranges and pillowcase. |
WALDEN: …I came home early that
evening…
HALLIDAY: Can you prove that?
WALDEN (after a pause):
Certainly I can…if I’d have come home later than midnight the clerk would have seen me…I would have
had to waken him to get in…
Next up is non-CNBC Washington correspondent John Harwood,
who works for some sort of chemical outfit as head of the sales division. Halliday has difficulty pronouncing John’s
last name due to his Boston accent; it sounds as if he’s saying “Howard”
throughout most of this short.
HALLIDAY: Harwood…do you know of
any reason Frank Anderson should have
been jealous of you?
HARWOOD: I most certainly do
not…
“Well, unless you want to include the fact that I was shtupping
his wife.” Johnny’s got an alibi, too—he
was staying at a hotel the night of Anderson’s murder, and the next morning he
went over to his company’s warehouse to supervise a shipment. When the greasy Terry Spencer is brought in
for questioning, he, too, has a story—he was in a poker game at a roadhouse
outside of town, one that broke up at 3:30am.
JIM: They certainly all have
airtight alibis, haven’t they?
HALLIDAY: Well, I didn’t expect
them to come unprepared…
Yes, I chuckled at that.
JIM: What are you going to do
next?
HALLIDAY: Let’s see…I think we’ll
assign a man to check on Walden…I
want to find out exactly what shape
his business affairs are in…as for Terry Spencer…I want to know just who he
plays poker with every Sunday night…
As for “Howard,” Halliday assigns a couple of
plainclothesmen, Finney and Jorgensen, to pose as salesman so that they can
infiltrate Harwood’s “sales force.” Two
more detectives (one a female who watches Spencer with her makeup mirror)
shadow Spencer in a nightclub, where’s he witnessed paying off a couple of
goombahs from a large wad o’money…
As for Walden, still another dick gets the information on
Walden’s business from a mousey bookkeeper who’s told not to mention anything
to the boss. Walden becomes the chief
suspect after Cap’n Halliday has had a look at his records:
HALLIDAY: In going over his
books, we find that his business is going
to the wall…a thirty-day extension on the Anderson note might have saved
him…a delay, for example—caused by Anderson’s death and the settlement of his
estate…and that isn’t all…Walters reports that he’s been putting his affairs in
order…it looks as if he’s going to blow town…
I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your
police work there, Lou. The only thing
Walden is going to blow is his brains out, a delicate little matter that
Halliday stumbles upon when he and Jim (I guess he’s going out on police calls
now) pay Walden a little visit at his modest digs. While it looks at first glance as if Stewie
committed suicide, Halliday soon rules that out since the bullet hole was in
his forehead and the Captain believes it’s a little awkward shooting yourself
that way (most suicide attempts occur at the temple, he tells Jim). “Guess that’s
why he was putting his affairs in order,” notes Jim
inappropriately. (The Walden family is
gonna love him at the funeral.) Halliday
also observes that Walden was killed at nearly the same time on the same day as
the unfortunate Frank Anderson—“I don’t think that’s a coincidence at all.”
So, the finger of suspicion is redirected back to Spencer
and Harwood. Halliday has a funny line
when talking to the detective who’s been birddogging Spencer; the dick tells
him that everyone in the suspect’s poker game will swear he was there the
entire time and the Captain cracks: “That don’t mean much—those guys will swear
to anything.” (Terry is quite friendly
with “the mob” …though that could also describe the Chamber of Commerce, to be
honest.) But “Jorgy,” in conversing with
Halliday, mentions that Harwood’s first stop on his sales route is in a town
with an airport…and that gives Freddie an idea…
Halliday and Jim pay the Widder Anderson a visit, where the
Cap’n tells Rita that they’re closing in on the man responsible for killing her
husband. “I can assure you an arrest
within 24 hours,” he informs her. Rita
is concerned that the assailant will get away, but the cocky Halliday tells her
not to fret. “He’s completely
surrounded.”
He had a reason for telling her this—he now knows it’s
Harwood, and he further knows that Rita was in on the caper from the beginning
when she foolishly calls John to tell him to be careful and your friendly
neighborhood police department has tapped her phone.
Harwood is picked up in the same fashion he utilized when he
murdered Anderson and Walden. He snuck
out of his hotel room and hid in the back of one of the company’s truck,
covering himself with a tarp that he instructed the warehouse guys to place
over the shipment beforehand. When the
truck made its first stop, he exited the back of the vehicle and took a plane
from the airport to Marion, where both Anderson and Walden lived. In the case of Frank, he instructed Rita that
he would knock her out with the anesthetic so it would look like a home
invasion—though when she’s confronted by the police she swears she had no idea
John was going to send her hubby to The Happy Hunting Ground. So why did he kill Walden? “Like all criminals, you couldn’t stop at
your first crime,” sneers Halliday. Just
like Lays’ Potato Chips—you can’t eat just one.
(Rita and John killed her husband for the insurance—the oldest game in
the Big Book O’Crime.)
JIM: Rita Anderson was sentenced
to twenty years in the Women’s State Penitentiary…
JIM: …John Harwood is in the
death house now…
When he’s not hosting Speakeasy
with John Harwood on CNBC Digital.
JIM: …waiting for the law to
exact the final penalty for his foolproof crime…for foolproof it was, only in
the sense that it proved an ingenious criminal…a fool…
Sorry I cut this one so short this week…but my ass was
starting to get numb. Next time,
Crime Does Not Pay goes to the Academy Awards with the first of two Oscar-winning
entries in the series,
The Public Pays (1936). G’bye now!
