There Weren't Enough Of These!

Thatcher Colt Investigates The Circus Queen Murder (1933)

Adolphe Menjou should have played detecting Thatcher Colt more than just twice, here and in previous Night Club Lady, for Columbia release. This might have been the sleuth series to beat in that event, coming as it did before MGM merged mystery with screwball in The Thin Man and consigned straight-ahead whodunits to "B," or worse, category. Director Roy William Neill makes his fairground sinister as dark houses he'd march Sherlock Holmes through a decade later. Neill could step on the gas to horrific effect when needed; this big top might have been comfortable crib for Johnny Eck, (my beloved) Schlitzie, and the whole Freaks gang once they shook off Metro sawdust. Neither a title-promised, nor any murder, takes place until near Circus Queen's end, suspense as to who'll die perked by escaped loony Dwight Frye, his extended face time a treat for we who can't get enough of this singular talent.

Menjou/Colt and his secretary share a lip-reading trick that helps unmask killer intent, and there's Menjou being casually multi-lingual when occasion demands (as was case in foreign language versions of Hollywood pics the actor top-lined during the early 30's). I confess to boyish crush on Ruthelma Stevens, who plays Colt's helpmate to fetching and most unconventional effect. Why didn't this low-key delight become a major star? Ruthelma popped up a year after this in The Chases Of Pimple Street as Charley's obnoxious sister-in-law, and terrific there too. What unjustly ignored talent! Columbia had to make programmers cheap, but The Circus Queen Murder never looks so, thanks to moody lensing and Neill's crisp direction. The pic realized but $150K in domestic rentals, enough perhaps to break even assuming costs kept low, but maybe not sufficient for the Thatcher Colt series to continue.