The League of Frightened Men

Members of the Harvard Club are convinced that one of their own is out to get them all after two deaths in their circle have occurred. Another disappears and is presumed dead. So some of the remainder want Nero Wolfe to find a case against a disabled novelist called Chapin who they believe is the murderer. They were responsible for Chapin's disability after a student prank had gone wrong 19 years earlier and feel that his bitterness over that is the motivation.

Wolfe takes on the case and names his own exorbitant terms as usual. He proceeds to read all the mystery novels that Chapin has written searching for clues regarding Chapin's mindset. Chapin gets arrested after a third murder occurs. The action involves the retrieval of a typewriter that has tell-tale signs among it's keys.

This film plays down a lot of the characteristic Nero Wolfe foibles. He's quite willing to go out more and do his own legwork instead of relying on his sidekick Goodwin all the time. The first Columbia Nero Wolfe mystery with Edward Arnold had made the character more housebound. I like Walter Connolly as Wolfe in this as he has something of the detective in his screen presence. He had already played Father Brown onscreen and was to play Charlie Chan on radio.

Back in the day some rollicking frat boys injured Eduardo Ciannelli and he now walks with the aid of two canes. he's a successful novelist and has menace in his voice as always when he talks.

The others of this fraternity occupy various rungs on the social scale, but they all get the same menacing message that revenge is on the horizon for that hazing incident at Harvard.

Seems open and shut except to Walter Connolly as Nero Wolfe. Someone else has decided to do some murders under this blanket threat.

Connolly is a bit nicer than Edward Arnold in the other Nero Wolfe film. Lionel Stander is less of a dunce as Archie in this film.

The League Of Frightened Men is a good B film from Columbia.

A "rare-films-on-DVD" seller has posted the first 7 minutes of this at Youtube as promotion. Their sales would improve if they took it down. They certainly won't get many fans of the Rex Stout novels picking up a copy any time soon, except for the 'must-have-everything' fanatics. I certainly have no interest in the remaining 67 minutes that I haven't seen.

It is said that Stout refused to have any other films made from his books because of gruff-voiced Lionel Stander's slightly pugilistic performance as Archie Goodwin. But the real disaster, screaming from his first appearance on screen, is Walter Connolly pretending to play the role of Nero Wolfe.

Don't get me wrong - Connolly was a fine character-actor of the old school. The problem here really isn't completely his - after all, he didn't cast himself in the role, and he is definitely miscast. So not only does Connolly apparently have no idea who Nero Wolfe might be or why his character is popular, but neither do the producer, the director or the scriptwriter - wow, could Stout have been unluckier in his choice of whom to sell his movie rights to? Let's get some basics straight: Nero Wolfe does not wear a smoking jacket; he does not have a mustache; he does not sit beside a fireplace that his office doesn't have. He does not have a 'butler' whom Archie views with some contempt, he has Fritz Brenner a Swiss chef whose cooking Archie really enjoys. He doesn't smile, he doesn't make light banter, he abhors bodily contact, he doesn't like to make any visitors feel welcome, because they're not - as clients they are a necessary burden to keep him in beer, good food, and orchids - speaking about which, the beer was noticeably absent from the first 7 minutes of this film - so obviously this couldn't possible have been about Nero Wolfe.

I thought the bearded William Conrad miscast in the old Nero Wolfe television show, but at least he was allowed to play Wolfe as smug and self- satisfied and somewhat overbearing, which Wolfe certainly is. And I thought Sidney Greenstreet's appearance as Wolfe on the old radio series was a bit of miscasting, too, but at least they had him drink plenty of beer.

But this film hasn't anything of Wolfe in it at all. A lot of literary series characters get rewritten for the screen, but nothing quite like this, short of open parody. And if this was meant to be parody - it ain't funny.

If you don't like the Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout, or haven't read them, you might like this; what I saw was the beginning of a pretty typical low-energy '30's B mystery. But if you have any admiration for Stout or his characters - STAY AWAY - you will certainly experience some frustration, or like me you will be flat outraged.

Twenty year ago, when a student at Harvard, Eduardo Ciannelli was hazed by his fellows and crippled. Now he needs two canes to walk about. He lived for decades in poverty, supported by the guilty men, until his career as an author took off. Once he now longer needed their financial support, they began to die, and the remainder come to Nero Wolfe, asking for him to find the evidence to put away the man they all know is guilty.

It's a far better movie than the earlier one; Alfred Green was a fine director, and there isn't the clangorous humor. Unfortunately Walter Connolly is the most un-Nero-Wolfe like detective you can imagine. He goes out to gather evidence himself. He's kind and courteous and even considerate. It's a fine mystery, and well shot and performed. It just ain't Nero Wolfe.

In 1936, Columbia made its first Nero Wolfe film and it starred Edward Arnold as the amateur detective. A year later, they brought Wolfe back but with Walter Connolly playing the dick. In both cases, unfortunately, they chose Lionel Stander to play Wolfe's right hand man, Archie. I say unfortunately because Archie in the Nero Wolfe books was sophisticated and smart....not an uncouth boob like he is in these two films.

In "The League of Frightened Men", a group of Harvard alumni are worried that one of their old classmates might be murdering them. And, if this is the case, the man in question had plenty of reason and justification for doing so. But it's not at all certain the man in question is a killer and it's up to Wolfe to get to the bottom of this.

I really disliked this film...more so than the first one. It's because it's one of the talkiest murder mysteries I've seen. It's also confusing (Wolfe sometimes seems to pull things completely out of thin air) and gimmicky at the end...where Wolfe invites everyone to his house in order to reveal the real killer....a trope used approximately 30452998 times in other films (give or take 3). Overall, a disappointment...and odd to see the agoraphobe, Wolfe, leaving his home repeatedly during the movie.