The Studio Murder Mystery (Paramount, 1929)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2022 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night my husband Charles came home from work at quarter to 10 p.m. and I looked for another movie on YouTube we could watch together: a 1929 film called The Studio Murder Mystery, based in a magazine serial by a married (straight) couple billed just as “The Edgintgons.” His name was A. Channing Ediignton and hers was Carmen Ballen Edgington, and their serial was adapted for the screen by Frank Tuttlle, who also directed, though Ethel Doherty was credited with “scenario.” (More recently, in the 1960’s, a similarly named husband-and-wife team called “The Gordons” published a comic novel called Undercover Cat, which the Walt Disney Company filmed as That Darn Cat! In that case, “Gordon” was his first name as well as his last name – what were his parents thinking? – and her name was Mildred.) The style of the title indicates that the producing studio, Paramount, was trying to concoct a follow-up to their successful series of films based on Willard Huntington Wright’s “Philo Vance” character (as I’ve mentioned before, Wright wrote the Vance stories under the pseudonym “S. S. Van Dine” to combine the two things he was hoping to do more of if the Vance stories made money: eat and travel), down to using Frank Tuttle as director and copying Wright’s titling strategy for the Vance books: The ______ Murder Case, with the blank filled in by a six-letter word – only they called this one … Mystery instead of … Case so Wright wouldn’t give them any legal trouble.

This film was also apparently shot in both sound and silent versions, since imdb.com lists future producer-director-writer Joseph L. Mankiewicz as a title writer. As Charles pointed out, though the film as we have it is an all-talkie, there are some scenes which have the dull … pauses in line delivery the early sound engineers in Hollywood insisted on in the belief that no one would understand human voices recorded the way people actually talk, including interrupting each other and stepping on each other’s lines (though there were plenty of spoken-word comedy records from the 1920’s to prove that wasn’t true). Fortunately, director Tuttle chose to use quote a few overhead shots – especially in the opening reel – to alleviate the boredom induced by staging dialogue scenes in that horribly unnatural fashion, and he also had some scenes with “wild” crowd noises dubbed in, a common ploy of earl–talkie directors aiming to put some voices into films without having to re-shoot scenes that didn’t originally contain dialogue. The Studio Murder Mystery is actually a fairly intriguing story despite the longueurs of early sound production: the film casts real-life married couple Fredric March and Florence Eldridge as a married couple on screen, though their marriage is strained, to say the least, by his long history of extra-relational activities.

Narch plays Richard Hardell, and in the opening scene on Stage 10 of “Eminent Studios” (”eminent” = “paramount,” get it?) he’s being rehearsed late at night by a particularly nasty Stroheim-esque director named Rupert Borka (Warner Oland, using his Charlie Chan voice even though the character is supposed to be Eastern European, presumably Hungarian). We’re dropped the hint that he won a magazine contest to appear as the lead in Borka’s new movie, though later we get the impression that he’s been around Hollywood for a few years and has racked up at least some previous credits, both on film and in various women’s bedrooms. Borka makes it clear he doesn’t like Roicjard., doesn’t think he can act and would like to replace him, and his hatred is compounded by jealousy because Borka is convinced that one of the women Richard was having an affair with was Mrs. Borka. At present Mrs. Borka is in Europe, until Borka receives word that his wife has died and the rumor was that Richard’s name was on her lips when she died. Richard says he has a letter from Mrs. Borka that will prove to the skeptical director that he wasn’t interested in her but when Borka demands to see the letter, Richard first says it’s in his dressing room and then says it’s at his home.

Meanwhile, Richard’s dressing room is inhabited by both his latest paramour, Helen MacDonald (Doris Hill, who judging from her work here should have had more of a career than she did), and his wife Blanche (Florence Eldridge). Reversing the usual iconography of films like this, it’s Blanche who’s wearing her hair bobbed and dressed like a 1920’s vamp, while the innocent Helen – who believed Richard when he told her and Blanche were getting a divorce until Blanche basically told her he says that to all his girlfriends – has long hair and dresses in plain outfits. Eventually Richard is found stabbed to death on a deserted movie set and police detective Lt. Dirk (Eugene Pallette, yet another member of this film wio’d also been involved in the Philo Vance movies, though his character is considerably more intelligent here than in the Vance films) focuses on three main suspects: Helen, Blanche and Borka. Also involved in the proceedings are Helen’s father, the studio night watchman (Guy Oliver); Helen’s scapegrace brother Ted (Gardner James), who shows up drunk in the taxicab he drives for a living (given today’s far different attitudes towards DUI it’s amazing that his dad confiscates his flask but tells him to drive his own cab home instead of calling himself another cab); and the comic-relief part of MacDonald’s assistant, studio gatekeeper George (Chester Conklin, one of the original Keystone Kops).

The “sleuth” character is a bozo named “Tony” White (Neil Hamilton) – the quotes around the character’s first name are part of the opening credits, much like Boris Karloff’s role as “Terry” in the Universal film Graft a year later – who’s given to telling ancient jokes that weren’t all that funny to begin with and his would-be audiences keep beating him to the punch lines Given the later careers of both of them, it’s hard not to think that The Studio Murder Mystery would have been a better movie if they’d switched roles – if ht nad been Hamilton playing the scapegrace actor who’s killed in the first 15 minutes or so and March who went on to solve the crime (and, it’s h inted, end up with Helen as his live interest). But in the end, not to anybody’s surprise, it’s Borka who turns out to be the killer, and he’s successfully subdued ini a fast-motion climactic fight between him and “Tony” which was not only shot with both actors pretty obviously doubled but also was shot for the silent version, since the action is risibly fast and looks like it was shot at the 16-frames-per-second silent speed and no attempt was made to slow it down for sound. The Studio Murder Mystery seems like one of those mediocre movies with a potentially great movie trapped inside it struggling to get out, but at least the conflicts in it – between marital fidelity and extra-relational activity and between professionalism and egomania (the character of Borka is pretty obviously based on Erich von Stroheim – or at least the media image of Stroheim at the time – and it’s interesting to imagine this film with him playing Borka, and even more interesting to imagine it with Stroheim directing!) – are straightforward and the final resolution makes sense.