Another Leap From Stage To Screen

Dueling Mystery and Mirth in 1933's Whistling In The Dark

MGM was like Warners, and, I suspect, all of the majors, in wanting to bleed as much value as possible out of bought properties, in this case a play lately on Broadway (1932) and ready-equipped with players (Ernest Truex and Edward Arnold) who could transpose their work to film, both having had screen in addition to stage experience. Most of action is confined to one room in a house taken over by would-be assassins of an honest brew-maker, their scheme to arrange a perfect murder with forced assist of a meek police consultant. Does this sustain over 74 minutes? Barely so by my estimate, Arnold being most help toward that. Among highest censor barriers were ones erected to stop movie detailing of crime plans, lest those misguided among an audience duplicate same in real life. It was known to happen, and local gentry came down hard where inspiration for lawbreak traced back to pics a suspect had gone to see. Whistling In The Dark was an arresting enough yarn to re-use for a Red Skelton feature of the same name in 1941, the latter more often shown on TCM and available from Warner's Archive.