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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 8, No. 27 |
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TWO CLASSIC MYSTERY SERIES
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Overdue for video revival?
You bet these gems are!
of TheColumnists.com
In my youth, I was privileged to be able to follow the mysterious travels of two favorite mystery characters--Dr. Robert Ordway, the criminal psychologist known as "The Crime Doctor," and that deeply mysterious character known as "The Whistler"--both on radio...and in the movies.
Prime time radio in the 1940s--the decade during which I grew to the wise old age of 10--was packed with mystery shows from "Dick Tracy" and "Sherlock Holmes" to "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar" and "The Fat Man." If they were in long-running radio shows, these mystery characters also had a good chance of turning up on the movie screens, too.
Radio mystery shows had a lot in common with the TV shows that would succeed them in the 1950s, except for one basic element: You had to use your imagination to know what these characters looked like when their adventures were on radio.
Columbia Pictures had great success with both "The Crime Doctor" and "The Whistler" as series of feature films. Each film averaged just a little more than an hour in length, making them much like the later one-hour TV episodes that most mystery TV programs evolved into by the 1960s. They also could be filmed in black and white on fairly low budgets, which meant they didn't have to earn a fortune at the box office to stay in production.
Created by Max Marcin, "The Crime Doctor" ran on CBS Radio on Sunday nights from 1940-47, filling pretty much the same "cozy" mystery formula that "Murder, She Wrote" fit into when it was on CBS television on Sunday nights in the 1980s.
Dr. Ordway was originally a crime boss known as Phil Morgan. Left for dead by his criminal associates, he came to his senses unaware of his past. Yes, he was an amnesia victim! As he recovered his memory, Morgan decided to reverse the course of his earlier life and went to college, determined to study criminal psychology and start a new life helping his fellow man rather than taking from him.
During its long run on CBS, four different actors played Dr. Ordway on radio--where, by the way, his first name was Benjamin instead of Robert. Ray Collins was the first and those that followed were House Jameson, Everett Sloane and John McIntire. But when Columbia went looking for a screen "Crime Doctor," they settled on veteran character actor Warner Baxter, the second man to win the Best Actor Academy Award (remarkably, for playing The Cisco Kid in the 1928 western "In Old Arizona."), but probably best known for playing the leading male role of the stage producer in Warner Bros. 1932 musical extravaganza "42nd Street."
Baxter was then in his 50s, gray-haired and slightly overweight, but he brought an aura of great intelligence to the persona of Dr. Ordway and made the character an immediate success with his first try at the role in "The Crime Doctor" in 1943. In that first movie, the filmmakers played a neat little "in-joke" by having radio's original "Crime Doctor," Ray Collins, play the kindly Dr. Carey, who helps Ordway recover and leads him into a new life as a crime psychologist who helps the police solve cases.
Despite the hard-to-swallow original premise, "The Crime Doctor" movies are neat and efficient little mystery movies, loaded with familiar and future stars. Altogether, Columbia made 10 feature films with Baxter. Had he been younger, Baxter very likely would have taken the character into television. But two years after he did the final film in the series, Baxter, who suffered from severe arthrities, died after cranial surgery in 1951.
In the second series film, "The Crime Doctor's Strangest Case," Ordway helps a murder suspect played by future star Lloyd Bridges. Many "B" movie horror stars had roles in "Crime Doctor" films, among them George Zucco, Martin Kosleck and Lupita Tovar, the leading lady in Universal's Mexican version of "Dracula." The films, in order, were: "The Crime Doctor," 1943; "Crime Doctor's Strangest Case." 1943; "Shadows in the Night," 1944; "Crime Doctor's Warning," 1945; "Crime Doctor's Man Hunt," 1946; "Just Before Dawn," 1946; "The Millerson Case," 1947; "Crime Doctor's Gamble," 1947, and "Crime Doctor's Diary," 1949.
None of the "Crime Doctor" films is currently available on commercial home video, although most of the titles can be obtained through the unofficial "collectors' market" on the Internet. Turner Classic Movies recently showed almost all the series, in order, in early Saturday morning time slots. A DVD boxed set of all the films would be a marvelous gift to mystery film fans everywhere, so let's hope Columbia, Turner or someone gets on the ball soon.
"The Whistler" movies--Columbia made eight between 1944-1948--are considered the superior series by most film mavens. They, too, are not available commercially except through the "collectors' market" and would make a most attractive DVD set that I hope somebody gets around to doing real soon.
"The Whistler" radio show was
"must" listening in our house, not only because it
was one of the best--and spookiest--radio shows on the air, but
because my dad worked for the show's sponsor, Signal Oil Co.
I remember coiling up into a tight little knot of tension while
listening and, if in bed with my own radio on, sliding completely
under the covers with just one ear exposed. It was creepy.
"The Whistler" ran for 14 years on CBS--from 1942,
in the heyday of radio’s Golden Age, through 1955. Along
the way it became such an iconic radio mystery series that it
was lampooned and parodied time after time. Yet it may have been
the best of all radio mystery shows.
It opened with its trademark "Whistler" theme, whistled
for most of its long run by Dorothy Roberts, who was one of the
few professional whistlers who could consistently handle the
challenging two-octave theme.
Then The Whistler would speak his familiar opening lines--usually
in either the voice of Bill Forman, Marvin Miller or Everett
Clark: "I…am The Whistler…and I know many things
for I walk by night. I know many strange tales hidden in the
hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes,
I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak!"
Only "The Shadow" with his "Who knows what evil
lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" rivaled "The
Whistler" for creepiest opening narration.
But The Whistler was not a crime-fighting hero we followed from episode to episode like we did Lamont Cranston aka The Shadow. He was something completely different--a shadowy presence who guided us each week into the life of someone who was about to "step into the shadows." He played no part in the drama, but was always there, watching and making wry comments as fate went about its business.
When Columbia decided to make a film series from the radio show, it wisely followed the radio format, using the familiar intro and keeping The Whistler as a shadowy presence we never actually see except as a shadow. But, in order to give some kind of feeling of continuity to the series, they used the same leading actor in all but the last of the series--Richard Dix, the heroic star of "Cimarron," the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 1930-31, and many other westerns and contemporary dramas.
Dix never played the same character, but was always the man who "steps into the shadows." In the first film, for instance, Dix is a man who has taken out a contract on his own life--then decides he wants to live and desperately attempts to cancel the contract. The leading lady is a radiant Gloria Stuart, leading lady from "The Invisible Man' (1933), but now best remembered to the current generation as the elderly survivor in "Titanic," the aged edition of Kate Winslet. The villain is J. Carrol Naish, later to play the title role in radio's "Life with Luigi" comedy series.
That first film was directed by William Castle, later to become the publicity-seeking maker of schlock horror movies like "Homicidal," "The Tingler" and "The House on Haunted Hill." Castle was, in the 1940s, a superb director of "B" mysteries and films noir and he brought great finesse to the "Whistler" films he made.
In the second of the series, "Mark of the Whistler" (1944), Castle directed a version of Cornell Woolrich's story "Dormant Account" in which Dix plays a tramp who attempts to prove he's the owner of a long dormant trust account. This film, like most of those in the series, is laced with irony and peopled with creeps who walk in what we like to call "dark corridors."
The complete series, in order: "The Whistler," 1944; "Mark of the Whistler," 1944; "Power of the Whistler," 1945; "Voice of the Whistler," 1945; "Mysterious Intruder," 1946; "Secret of the Whistler," 1946; "The 13th Hour," 1947, and "The Return of the Whistler," 1948.
I'm encouraged that home video marketers recently have released all the Warners "Nancy Drew" films as a DVD boxed set, sensing a tie-in with the new "Nancy Drew" feature film, and that other archival gems finally are being trotted out for eager collectors of classic mystery films. There are scads more waiting for someone to figure out a marketing ploy and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one waiting to snap them up.
But "The Crime Doctor" and "The Whistler" series are the creme de la creme of the radio mysteries not yet available and, in a perfect world, should be high on somebody's list of things to do.
©2007 by Ron Miller. This column first posted July 9, 2007.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
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