The League of Frightened Men

First things first: available DVDs of this film do not have great picture quality. This is one of the Paramount films of the '30's now owned by another studio with no interest on issuing a "restored" version. So you can only get copies of films recorded on TV years ago. So you have to put up with all the flaws that such copies upon copies have.

Previous reviewers of this film have rightly pointed out the differences between the screen portrayal of "Nero Wolfe" and the depiction presented by Rex Stout in his many novels and short stories. Some might remember that the Saturday Evening Post used to publish some of the later Stout stories and provide illustrations of the detective which fed readers' imaginations. All portrayed a very large man, said in an early novel to be 1/6 of a ton and in later novels to be 1/7 of a ton. In any case like an NFL lineman today. Well, the actors who portrayed Wolfe on the screen all fell far short of the scale, and none conveyed the seriousness, dignity, and gravitas of Stout's conception. Wolfe was not a mirthful man given to jovial humor and feigned laughter. So Walter Connolly as Wolfe with his always cocked sideways head and chuckles does not meet the physical criteria.

Anyway, some reviewer mistakes a big fact about this movie: the league of men did make compensation to their injured classmate, paying his way through Harvard and providing a stipend afterwards. It's all there in the unrolling of the movie. Archie even castigates the accused for being "ungrateful."

There are two comments that have to be made from a motion picture perspective. 1. Stander, who would go on after his career blackball, played a much more sympathetic role as helper and associate to Macmillan and Wife. Here he is abrasive, small minded, and annoying -- totally unlike the smoother Lee Horsley and Timothy Sutton who would play "Archie" in later TV versions of Nero Wolfe. 2. Ciannelli was a very intense actor whose presence on the screen always compelled attention even in the minor but title role as villain in a Republic serial "The Mysterious Dr. Satan." Watch him as the riveting leader of the Thug rebels in "Gunga Din" (the Cary Grant movie) for one of his memorable roles.

Huge plot holes can be found, including the mystery of the box left in a bookstore, how a murder could be committed in a lights out room where the murderer grabbed a gun from the victim and shot him while knocking down a third person who inadvertently entered (err, wasn't there light from the hallway?), and exactly how did Wolfe solve the puzzle, other than guesswork, and why the crazy hoax was devised in the way it was since there was no foreseeable conclusion to it. Why hoax given the deaths that had taken place?

As a previous reviewer said, this movie is for those who want completeness in their search for dramatic portrayals of Nero Wolfe, but good luck in trying to track down English versions of the various Russian and Italian films which IMDb identifies.

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.

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.

"The League Of Frightened Men" gets off to a gripping start, with two murders in the first few seconds! Unfortunately, the story soon reveals itself to be both confusing and underdeveloped: several characters are difficult to tell apart (matters are not helped by the fact that the prints of this already bare-bones production have never been remastered). Walter Connolly is an adequate replacement for Edward Arnold as Nero Wolfe, though his character seems to have abandoned his trademark habit of never going outside his house. Lionel Stander reprises the sidekick role. Eduardo Ciannelli and Rafaela Ottiano have a few good (i.e., "bad") moments, but overall it's not really surprising that this film series never had a third chapter. ** out of 4.

Walter Connelly is Neto Wolfe in the 1937 League of Frightened Men. He's pretty bad but he's not really playing Wolfe, just an overweight detective as the film gives him nothing of Wolfe's personality. I liked Edward Arnold better. He was at least more lively.

A man, Professor Hibbard (Leonard Mudie) visits Wolfe and announces that he is about to be murdered, and that two previously reported deaths were not accidents, but murders.

When he was a sophomore at Harvard, he and these other men hazed a student, Paul Chapin (Eduardo Ciannelli) and left him a cripple who walks with the use of two canes. Now, 19 years later, he is extracting his revenge.

Excuse me - 19 years later? All of these men were born in the 1880s, putting them in their fifties, not 38-ish.

Wolfe promises to protect them for a fee and sends Archie to investigate. Is Chapin after them, or is someone trying to pin the killings on him?

Since this isn't based on a Rex Stout novel, it appears the writers only used the character names and threw the rest of it out the window. They also threw elements from the first movie out as well.

Though Archie (Lionel Stander) is a bachelor in the books, in the 1936 film, he gets married. Evidently by 1937 she's not around any longer. In the books and in the 1936 film, Wolfe refuses to leave the house. Now he thinks nothing of it.

Now he's also British. Instead of a chef he has a reformed thug named Butch as butler and chef. However, in one of the last scenes, he is working with his orchids.

Stander is a complete miscast as the sophisticated and smooth Archie of the books.

In short, not very good, with some very old Harvard alumni.