Cosmo Jones in the Crime Smasher

I caught this movie at 5AM this morning on the Late Late Late Show on Movies TV! It turns up in that time slot on Movies TV quite often. From the title, it appears that it was meant to be the first of a series. Other titles could have been "Cosmo Jones in the Murder Stopper," or "Cosmo Jones in the Arson Extinguisher." But it was not to be. This movie was cheaply made and it shows. Frank Graham just isn't interesting as the correspondence school graduate in detective studies. A blonde Gale Storm is the girlfriend of police Sergeant Flaherty, played by Richard Cromwell. Edgar Kennedy as Police chief Murphy is a caricature of every Irish cop that ever showed up in a Jimmy Cagney movie. Tris Coffin plays one of the gangsters and Mandan Moreland comes off best as Eustace, a janitor who assist Cosmo in smashing crime. This plot involves two kidnappings, and a rivalry between two criminal gangs. Cosmo wants to be a detective in the worst way, but the police don't want his help. So he operates on his own, with Euastace's able assistance. It can be a fairly watchable movie as long as you don't expect too much. If you haven't seen Cosmo Jones yet, it might be worth setting the DVR the next time it turns up on Movies TV.

"Cosmo Jones" was a country-bumpkin type radio character detective created by writer Walter Gereing in 1941, that featured long-time CBS radio announcer Frank Graham in the title role. The character was originally introduced on a CBS series called "Nightcap Yarns", except in the eastern states of the U.S. where it was known as "Armchair Adventures."

CBS broadcast it as a network show in eleven western states, but not in the rest of the country. There, it was a 15-minute transcription show offered to radio stations on a sustaining basis for only the cost of the transcription records...until it could be sold to local sponsors. One of the reasons it may not have lasted very long was because some of the local stations may not have bothered to tell the producers of the program when they picked up a sponsor. It was offered as either a twice-weekly or three times weekly program, which meant some stations ran through the series 33% faster than others.

Frank Graham was the announcer in 1943 on the CBS program "Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou", which featured in regular roles well-known radio (and film) names such as Ken Christy, Verna Felton, Mel Blanc, Elvia Allman and Bea Benaderet.

In 1949, when Jack Webb left the CBS radio program "Jeff Reagan, Investigator" to play "Sergeant Joe Friday" on a new program called "Dragnet", he was replaced in the title role by Frank Graham. Webb had a little more success with "Dragnet" than Graham did with "Jeff Reagan, Investigator."

It didn't matter what the character of "Cosmo Jones" looked like on radio---television without pictures---but in this movie he was costumed nearly exactly as Bob Burns was in Universal's "Alias the Deacon", and his character makeup had him looking a little like "Abner Peabody" on the "Lum and Abner" program.

Two rival gangs start to declare war on each other, and an innocent bystander in the mix, Professor Cosmo Jones (a correspondence detective school graduate),decides to help the police stop the melee, much to the disappointment of the police captain. When a patrolman friend of Cosmo is investigated in a gang shooting and later kidnap of a key witness, Cosmo, friend Sgt. Flanagan, and Cosmo's partner Eustace unfold a plan to have the gang members wipe each other out. This one could have been somewhat better, but the plot outline for the movie probably didn't make for a long picture so a synopsis of the two gangs encounters with each other make for a 12-15 minute story where it would be at most a 90 second montage in a Warner Brothers movie of the same genre. Graham as Cosmo makes for an interesting character though, even I don't recognize what OTR program he ever appeared on. Kennedy & Moreland as usual make for good comic relief, but Cromwell's character seems to lifeless and usually halts the pace of the film in the scenes set around him. OK film for Monogram though. Rating- 4.

It's a Monogram film folks so don't expect too much. But if you're a fan of Harold Lloyd, lead character and creator of Cosmo Jones on the radio, Frank Graham, comes over like Harold Lloyd in one of his sound films.

Cosmo Jones, Crime Smasher did his smashing on radio originally. In this film our hero freshly graduated from correspondence school and now a detective happens to witness an attempted kidnapping of an oil heiress. He's with Sergeant Richard Cromwell who fires some shots and wounds a 'bystander'.

Cromwell gets no help from the victim who denies anything was going on and is demoted. That's when Graham goes to work with the aid of porter Eustace Jones played by Mantan Moreland on hiatus from Charlie Chan. It all becomes too real when the heiress is kidnapped for real.

Mantan and his shtick help this film along as does Edgar Kennedy playing a police captain with Irish brogue added to his slow burn.

Graham has a lot of screen credits, mostly however as voice only. This is one of the few times you'll actually see him on screen. I suspect Monogram wanted to do a series of Cosmo Jones films, but the demand was underwhelming.

Graham in his crime fighting mode has the talents of voice mimicry and ventriloquism at his command. But I suspect not in real life. His impression of Edgar Kennedy was too real, it had to be dubbed.

Sam Katzman over at Monogram had enough series with the East Side Kids and Charlie Chan. Another wasn't in the cards.