Film Summary DCCII (Meet Nero Wolfe)

It's the great elusive film.
Or at least it has been to me.
For several years I've been trying to find this semi obscure 1930s Nero Wolfe story.
And finally somebody uploaded it onto the internet. I don't know how long it'll last, but it's there to be seen.


This is quite the strange Nero Wolfe film.
Popping up in the mid thirties and being one of the first adaptations of the character, both in and out of the book series.
It works surprisingly well as a straightforward detective film but is ultimately a bad Wolfe adaptation.

Hollywood attempted a few times in the thirties and early forties to create a Nero Wolfe films. Most of the time it completely misses the mark on the characters.
They portray Wolfe as a overly eccentric, nitwit of a man who's completely deprived of any social understanding and has a fear of the outside world.
Now it's true that Nero Wolfe isn't the biggest people person, and he would rather spent countless hours inside of his Orchid Greenhouse than ever step outside of his lovely Brownstone apartment. But he's not a complete and utter buffoon.
He's sidekick Archie Goodwin is completely Miss cast in this movie as well.
Archy is supposed to be this Suave, very sarcastic kind of guy, who's a little odd but ultimately smart and (surprisingly) cunning for his veneer and less than serious attitude.
But in this movie he's just a complete and utter fool.

Now you could look at this as a interesting study on how the character portrays himself in the story. In the books Archie Goodwin is seen as the main protagonist and is ultimately the character that we get our information from.
So you could make the argument that he's trying to depict himself and even his boss as more intelligent and straitlaced than they really are.

Whereas the movie would have us believe that Archie is in fact kind of gullible fool who just follows Nero Wolfe's instructions to the letter and is in a lot of ways quite clueless without his master's Direction.
Something that I think his fiancé can kind of see.

In fact that might be the most interesting thing about this film. Artie has a love interest and a proper one at that. A very New York stereotypical girl who ends up marrying at the end of the film. I kind of feel sorry for her. All she wants to do is marry this slub, and he keeps going on about his assignment and putting off their marriage until the case is done.
Ultimately I don't think she's too bothered about it one way or another. But it seems like she gets the short end of the stick in this relationship. Still it's interesting to see an aspect of Archie Goodwin that you'll never see in the novel's here.
It's also neat to see a Nero Wolfe that laughs an awful lot.
As stated above, he's seen as a more jolly and fun with this film. Which is quite the contradiction to how he acts in the books 90% of the time.
As time goes on Nero Wolfe becomes kind of sour in a way, with his personality and a very particular sarcastic form of humour. That very few people could actually appreciate it if they had to live with him.
But in this story he's just happily content about everything. He even conducts business in the orchard room!
Which if you were a fan of Nero Wolfe, you'd know that he would never do unless forced in a most extreme circumstance.
But here he's just running around in his Orchid room conducting business every which way you can possibly imagine.
Which admittedly does work out quite well for the film.

The movie as an incredibly weird story when you get down to it.
It's a strange homemade involving a Golf Club gun laced with poison. But the murder was bunched and the wrong guy ended up getting killed.
So now there's this huge mystery as to who killed the guy, who accidentally was killed in the assassination, who do they want to kill next. And what their motive was to begin with.
There's also this incredibly strange reference to a make-believe idol God that one of the wealthy Elite is obsessively pondering over.
This weird woman seems to think that her entire life is led by this God, You'd think it was a major plot point of the film. But it's picked up a few times and then never acknowledged again.

Still it's a really good setup for a new a wolf story and is one of the key reasons that the whole thing works out so well.

It's just such a weird movie to me. It's not a great Nero Wolfe film but it's a decent detective flick. It's fun, entertaining, well-paced. The characters are enjoyable and you can't get too hard on anybody as Nero Wolfe hasn't existed that long.

Also this movie might have the earliest reference to Monopoly. Not sure if that's true but it could be.

Nero Wolfe:

Why do you have to go anyplace?

Archie you are a victim of the nomadic instincts of the tribal age.

In this twentieth-century it's a waste of time to go out.

If you want to talk to someone you pick up a telephone, if you want to find out what's going on in the world you read a newspaper.

If you want to listen to find music, you tune in your radio on a Symphony concerts.

If you want sunlight you turn on the ultraviolet-ray.

If it's a hot day and you want to be cool, press a button and turn on a fan.

If you're foolish enough to believe in exercise, you can always ride a mechanical horse.

Food, meat, and drink are brought to your door.

You can even buy your clothes by mail.

Look at those fools!

The streets are always full of people, hopping back and forth, back and forth. Tiring themselves, rushing to nowhere.