The Crimson Canary

Noah Beery Jr and his group are playing to great reception at Steve Geray's jazz club. Their next stop is San Francisco, and Geray says he'll call a friend in the area to give them a gig. But before they can vacate, they find the corpse of singer Claudia Drake. They argue a bit over what to do, and decide to split. When Geray finds the corpse, he notifies the police, and jazz-loving John Litel takes off after Beery and pals.

It's a very nice little mystery, with not only a goodly number of standard red herrings to distract the audience, but some good music, too. Coleman Hawkins shows up, and see if you can spot Mel Torme as a drummer. Best of all is Josh White playing the guitar and singing two songs in a row.... probably structured so he could be cut out of the movie at the Whites-only houses down South. John Hoffman may be better remembered as an editor than a director, but this is a nifty little B picture.

Jazz saxophone pioneer Coleman Hawkins plays in the background of this fun mystery in which a jazz-mad detective secures his dream assignment: investigating a murder in a jazz cabaret. The detective's musical passion is infectious and the film stimulated my interest in jazz of all periods. For me the refreshing depiction of detective as music enthusiast raised the film above the level of most B-mysteries then prevalent.

1945's "The Crimson Canary" was a Universal mystery with a twist, the main suspects are jazz musicians, allowing for about 20 minutes of music to detract from the investigation. Noah Beery Jr. heads the cast as the trumpet playing bandleader, who discovers the body of their flirtatious singer (Claudia Drake), dead from a fractured skull, in the same back room as her unconscious fiancée, the group's drummer. With a young Mel Torme dubbing the drums, the music holds more intrigue than the whodunit angle (the killer's identity is hardly a surprise), but John Litel steals it as the detective with a fine ear. This film aired twice on Pittsburgh's CHILLER THEATER, although it was never included in Universal's popular SHOCK! package of classic horror films first issued to television in the late 50's, which still featured a number of non horror titles. Also shown on CHILLER THEATER was another whodunit with music, 1944's "Murder in the Blue Room" (also with John Litel), but at least that one featured an actual ghost, albeit a comic one. Other non SHOCK! Universals to air on CHILLER THEATER included 1934's "The Crosby Case," "The Man Who Reclaimed His Head," and "Rendezvous at Midnight," 1938's "The Black Doll," "The Crime of Doctor Hallet," and "The Missing Guest," 1939's "The House of Fear," 1940's "The Invisible Woman," 1941's "The Black Cat," 1942's "Invisible Agent," and 1944's "Jungle Woman."

I saw this movie for the first time today and while the plot had next to nothing in it and the jazz was lots of fun to hear, there was one thing that lit me up. While I haven't heard "One Meat Ball" played or sung for at least 70 to 75 years when I was still a pre-teen, when I heard Josh White's rendition of it today, I was able to sing about 90% of it along with him as if I sang it just yesterday so that the little man would still know for sure the waiter's words that "you got no bread with one meat ball." That in itself is worth two extra points in my rating.

I first saw "The Crimson Canary" in the early 1970's when I was getting really interested in 1930's and 1940's jazz and swing, and contrary to dadoun-1's review, the sequence featuring the Coleman Hawkins-Oscar Pettiford band on screen DOES include Hawkins, Pettiford and the other musicians in the group (trumpeter Howard McGhee, pianist Sir Charles Thompson and drummer Denzil DaCosta Best) on the soundtrack as well. The musicians dadoun-1 mentions were actually the off-screen doubles for the white actors playing the members of the band at the heart of the film's story. (These are the only recordings I know of by tenor saxophonist King Guion, whom critic George T. Simon predicted would become a star. Too bad he didn't, as he's quite good even if not at Hawkins' level.) I've been in love with this movie ever since and I only wish Universal Home Video would do a proper DVD or Blu-Ray version instead of the lousy splice-ridden copy I just got from a grey-label source that omitted the opening song, "I Never Knew I Could Love Anybody." And I'm amused that the original ads promised a sleazy exploitation movie - "Rhythm Cults Exposed!" - when the film actually treats the jazz world of 1945 with unusual respect and even love.