Crime Doctor's Strangest Case

This second entry in the "Crime Doctor" series is a steadfast crime drama with enough red herrings to keep it interesting. It even has a bit of comedic relief involving a musician and his matches.

One caution, however -- a fair amount of the critical action occurs at night, and there aren't enough shades of gray in the print (as shown on TCM) to distinguish all the details, especially in the scenes which take place in an abandoned night club.

One delightful revelation, and what may make this worth watching for aficionados of Hollywood history, is the appearance here of Lloyd Bridges, who plays a prime suspect. Those of us who grew up on the TV series, Sea Hunt, and unfamiliar with his earlier work (this was made about seven years into his career, and about fifteen before the TV series) may wonder why this tall and lean, blond and handsome, deep-voiced, quick-talking actor didn't become one of Hollywood's premiere leading men.

Psychiatrist Warner Baxter got Lloyd Bridges a new trial, and he was found not guilty of killing his employer. He wants to get married to Lynn Merrick. Baxter recommends that he get a different job, one not for a single employer. When that employer turns up dead, Bridges is in trouble, and Baxter starts an investigation that links back to an embezzlement and disappearance forty years earlier.

After thirty years in the movies, an Academy Award, and a long string of movie appearances, Baxter was pretty much marking time in the 1940s, appearing in the Crime Doctor series for Columbia. It was based on the CBS radio show created by Max Marcin that ran from 1940 through 1947. Doctor Ordway (the role taken in the movie series by Baxter) is a psychiatrist who uses his talents to help patients and solve crime.

Baxter was in poor health in the 1940s, and would die in 1951 at the age of 62. He still gives a graceful performance in a movie with Gloria Dickson, Barton Maclane, Jerome Cowan, Reginald Denny, and Rose Hobart.

Crime Doctor's Strangest Case finds Warner Baxter checking on Lloyd Bridges whom he considers a success story as a reclamation project while he was on the parole board. Bridges just got a job with George Lynn, a multimillionaire real estate tycoon whom we learn as Baxter arrives to visit Bridges on the job we learn that Lynn was poisoned by a cup of coffee Bridges brought to him.

This case is not only strange, but quite baffling as the roots go back thirty years to the disappearance of Lynn's partner in an old musical theater and vaudeville house. The theater has been boarded up and shut down ever since.

Other than Dr. Ordway and the police everybody is a suspect in this one, not excluding Bridges who has a couple of scenes that make you wonder whether Dr. Ordway missed a bet with him. This Crime Doctor is a worthwhile bit of time spent viewing.

... and by complex I mean that everybody is a possible suspect EXCEPT Dr. Ordway, his nurse, and the police. And up to the end I'm not that sure about Ordway's nurse! The film opens on a young couple seeking Ordway's (Warner Baxter's) advice on whether or not to marry. Jimmy Trotter (Lloyd Bridges) is a young man who was convicted of murdering his employer with poison. Ordway helped him get a new trial, and he was acquitted. Ordway's advice is to wait until Jimmy can get a job with a large company. Ordway does not like the fact that Jimmy is currently working for a wealthy individual as a personal secretary, which is exactly the same job he had when he was accused of murdering his employer before.

Soon thereafter Ordway decides to visit Jimmy at his place of employment. However, the maid thinks Ordway is either the coroner or with the police. You see, Jimmy's employer has just suddenly died and it looks like poison again. Ordway goes along with the ruse to get access to the crime scene and yes, it appears that Walter Burns drank poisoned coffee.

Next, the real police arrive, and this is where things get strange. The police go all "Boston Blackie" on Dr. Ordway. In spite of the fact that he has been a welcome help in other cases, they get tough with him, like he is in the way and completely unwelcome. They even imply he is helping Jimmy - who they try to arrest but escapes - evade arrest.

Well Jimmy did at least one thing he probably should not have done, he went ahead and married his fiancée Ellen against Dr. Ordway's advice. It doesn't help Ordway that the Burns mansion is filled with suspects - the young widow, the victim's brother and nephew who both circle like sharks, a maid who has been carrying a torch for the dead Mr. Burns for 30 years to the point that her mind has become effected, and a cook who turns out to be an imposter and flees the Burns household when Ordway calls her on her impersonation. The point is, by the end of the film you are suspecting all of these people including Jimmy and his wife.

The one odd thing in this film - Jimmy and Ellen have just gotten married a day or two earlier, yet their house looks like the set of "I Love Lucy" - it is completely decorated with frilly curtains, comfy couch, and well stocked kitchen as Ellen parades around in stylish house-dress and frilly apron like she has been a housewife for five years, not five days! Highly recommended as a good entry in the Crime Doctor series.

Dapper yet avuncular Warner Baxter, one of cinema's earliest Oscar winners (Best Actor in 1928's IN OLD ARIZONA), is put through his paces in this second entry in Columbia Pictures' CRIME DOCTOR series, based on the hit radio series. Baxter plays the title character, a.k.a. Dr. Ordway, an amnesiac who learned (in the first CRIME DOCTOR movie) he used to be a gang leader. Since then, Dr. Ordway's been using his knowledge of the criminal mind to become an in-demand psychiatrist. (My husband wondered if he was able to psych out his rival gangsters in his hoodlum life.) Baxter's testimony had helped acquit Jimmy Trotter (a young Lloyd Bridges), who'd been accused of poisoning his previous employer. Jimmy finds that even when you're proved innocent, it's tough to find a job when you've got "Accused Poisoner" on your resume. But does Jimmy follow Dr. Ordway's advice and get a fresh start with his new wife in a new town? No-o-o-o! Jimmy grabs the first job he can get, as assistant to a Realtor, only to find himself jobless and the prime suspect when the Realtor dies of poisoning. Dr. Ordway gets involved, and before you can say "It's old Mr. Withers! He wanted to get the land cheap!", he's up to his fedora in wily blondes disguised as brunette cooks, family skullduggery, a would-be George Gershwin who's careless with matches (played for comic relief by Jerome Cowan, best known in our household as Miles Archer in the classic 1941 version of THE MALTESE FALCON. Fellow ... FALCON alumnus Barton MacLane plays the police detective on the case), and an anxious middle-aged lady whose freaky dreams may be the key to the mystery. That dream sequence is surprisingly intense, with imagery of silhouetted girls plummeting off cliffs and hanging from nooses; it's almost like a welcome bit of comic relief when a sinister male silhouette holding a suitcase labeled "POISON" shows up! THE CRIME DOCTOR'S STRANGEST CASE may not be THE MALTESE FALCON, but Baxter is an ingratiating lead and the flick is an entertaining way to spend 68 minutes. Give it a look next time it turns up on Turner Classic Movies!