A Casa do Crime

As a life long fan of murder mysteries in general and William Powell in particular, I was thrilled to finally get a chance to see this early sound Philo Vance mystery. A follow-up to Paramount's THE CANARY MURDER CASE (1929), this was adapted from "SS Van Dine's" third Philo Vance novel(originally published in 1928 to runaway business) and also stars the wonderful Eugene Pallette as Sergeant Heath and a young Jean Arthur in the ingenue role of Ada Greene.

The intricate plot finds gentleman detective Philo Vance assisting his old friends District Attorney Markham and Sergeant Heath in a case of multiple and attempted murders at the Greene Mansion in New York's Upper East Side. It seems that someone is killing members of the Greene family, ostensibly for a stake in the large inheritance left by the long dead patriarch, Tobias Greene, whose fortune was accumulated (we come to suspect) by less than honorable means.

I'll admit that, although anxious to finally see this film after reading about it for years, I wasn't expecting much. I had heard that the film was talky, creaky, and static, as many early sound productions seem to modern sensibilities. Perhaps it was because of these lowered expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised by some of the great stuff found here. The film abounds with wonderfully creepy atmosphere and a real sense of menace, and the climax, set in the rooftop garden of the formidable Greene mansion (a fantastic set, by the way), is thrillingly shot, with trick photography and a last minute-in the nick time-rescue.

The screenplay is a faithful simplification of the Van Dine novel (the book's first two murder victims, for example, are compressed into one and the character of Julia Greene is jettisoned) and Powell's Philo Vance is much more likable than his literary counterpart. The identity of the murderer, while possibly surprising to the relatively innocent audiences of 1929, is fairly easy to spot by the more jaded modern viewer raised on scores of mysteries and taught to always suspect the least likely. This does not detract from the fun.

Playing the part of Philo Vance was a huge boost to Powell's career, and allowed him to move from villainous heels to debonair man-about-town roles. After a parody appearance as the detective in 1930's PARAMOUNT ON PARADE, Powell played Vance twice more [in Paramount's THE BENSON MURDER CASE (1930) and Warner Bros. THE KENNEL MURDER CASE (1933)] before moving to MGM and forever being associated with the role of Nick Charles in THE THIN MAN series (an even BIGGER boost to his career!)

Yes, the film is invariably hampered by the limitations of the early sound era, but once the modern viewer accepts these limitations, there's a lot to enjoy here.

1929's "The Greene Murder Case" was the second of three early talkie Paramounts starring William Powell as Philo Vance, coming six months after the first, "The Canary Murder Case," eight months before the third, "The Benson Murder Case." Storywise, it's perhaps the best of all three, while technically it's a huge improvement on its predecessor, the pacing agreeable, the acting more natural, and Powell again joined by District Attorney Markham (E. H. Calvert) and Sgt. Ernest Heath (Eugene Palette). Also returning as a different character is young Jean Arthur, in a far more substantial role than her cameo in "The Canary Murder Case." The Greene household, consisting of bedridden matriarch and four offspring, are beholden to the will of the late patriarch Tobias Greene, requiring everyone to remain under the same roof for 15 years before the estate can be divided evenly between them. One dark midnight, both Chester (Lowell Drew) and Ada (Jean Arthur) end up shot (Chester fatally), but the robbery motive piques the curiosity of Philo Vance, particularly as the two shots were fired minutes apart. Always intrigued by the psychological aspects of each case, Vance has his hands full under this roof, where Tobias kept an extensive library on the history of crime. He may wind up solving this one by having only one suspect left! Florence Eldridge (Mrs. Fredric March) is an assured scene stealer, but her doctor boyfriend is played by dull as dishwater Ullrich Haupt (hard to believe that two women would be interested in him). Powell is far more involved here, and his amusing rapport with Eugene Palette never goes over the top. Struggling in a role few actresses could credibly pull off, beautiful Jean Arthur was still an unknown quality at the time, but remained one of Powell's favorite leading ladies (later seen to best advantage in "The Ex-Mrs. Bradford").

...and how far his film persona has traveled since 1928's Forgotten Faces! In the silent era, Powell had played a heavy. But that distinguished sounding voice may not have been what the audience expected, but it was what they wanted once they heard it. So parts arrived for him that matched that distinguished voice.

This film opens with the dysfunctional Greene family going over the terms of the late Mr. Greene's will that says the family must live in the estate for 15 years before anything more than living expenses is awarded to any of the heirs. All share equally, and if any die or decide to live somewhere else, their share is distributed to the others. They are 10 years into the 15 years, so New Year's Eve 1934 gives them all their money and their freedom. And none of them likes the other. Mrs. Tobias Greene is bedridden because she cannot walk. Ada (Jean Arthur) dotes on her, and Ada is always being taunted by Sibella Greene (Florence Eldridge) as an outsider since she is adopted. Sibella has some secret between herself and her mother's doctor.

Then, one by one the members of the Green family begin turning up dead. The police call in Philo Vance to help, and lest the audience think it strange that a civilian is helping in police matters, several references are made to "The Canary Murder Case" in which Vance solved the crime. Vance keeps emphasizing that these things usually boil down to psychology, and that is his focus throughout the film - the psychology of the members of the Greene family, both the dead and the living. Did I mention that the servants share some in the will too and there are some very strange household servants? Eugene Palette plays Sgt. Ernest Heath of the police, and does the most interfacing with Vance. Paramount paired Powell and Palette quite a bit in the early years of sound and their contrast seemed to be very synergistic, both of them with trademark voices of a very different kind from one another.

I'll let you watch and see how this all turns out. There are quite a few surprises in the plot. I'd recommend it.

The Greene Murder Case was William Powell's second of four ventures in the role of society detective Philo Vance. In this film, he's called in as a whole family named Greene, rich society folks like Vance himself keeps getting knocked off one at a time. As Eugene Palette as Sergeant Heath says, they'd have to be crazy to keep committing the crimes while Vance and he are actually in the house investigating. Insanity is a key element in The Greene Murder Case.

The house itself holds a few clues as to the identity. And it plays a part in the crimes as they unfold because as we learn right at the beginning of the film, the terms of the late Mr. Greene has that the whole family has to live together, if not happily under the same roof for fifteen years before they can inherit. Only in these old murder mysteries do they come up with wills like that.

The Greene family is an interesting lot in and of themselves. Mother Gertrude Norman is bedridden, but keeps a tyrannical reign over her kids who consist of flapper Florence Eldridge, doormat Jean Arthur, and a pair of worthless trust fund baby sons in Morgan Farley and Lowell Drew.

The Greene Murder Case is probably the weakest of the four William Powell Philo Vance cases. It relies on some really way out solutions for Powell to identify the culprit. And if you're any kind of fan of these films you will know about a third of the way through who the murderer was. Let's say the culprit has what looks to be an airtight alibi for all the murders, especially the second of the three.

Powell of course is as debonair and smooth as always. As I did in seeing The Canary and Benson Murder Cases, I do marvel at the way Powell was able to immediately adapt almost by instinct to the requirements of talking pictures. Definitely a film if you are a fan of his.

The reviews printed here are all over the place subject-wise. It's unfortunate that some of these were written by contemporary viewers with apparently little or no appreciation for the age of a motion picture, the date of its making, or the public's taste at the time. Myself, I usually find early-talkies of much interest, having been produced when sound was new (as opposed to film shows with live musicians providing the score), and revealing the maker's lack of creativity, or, conversely, creativity of a high order, still impressive today. "The Greene Murder Case" (Paramount; 1929) is rather an amalgam of both. Mysteries at the time were often very atmospheric; this seemed to be part and parcel of the attempts at sound recording. And Frank Tuttle, who directed this effort, was a fine craftsman who went on to direct motion pictures now regarded as classics. Some shots were done silently so as to free up the camera (a scene where it quickly ascends a staircase comes to mind), but most impressively, a cable was strung well over the exterior of the Greene mansion, itself a full-scale set, so that the attached camera could (unexpectedly) be hoisted, revealing the intimidating height of its roof garden, this serving to intensify the film's climax wherein the murderer plummets from it to certain death. In the 1928 S. S. Van Dine novel, the climactic car chase - one of the most exciting things I've ever read - was probably considered too difficult to film effectively; hence the top of the mansion serving as a similarly-exciting substitute. The sequence, as related by Van Dine, was, in effect, effectively achieved by director John Cromwell's car-chase finale to "The Mighty", a George Bancroft crime opus also made at Paramount in 1929, wherein he, Cromwell, took his mobile camera out into busy Los Angeles streets! An irony is that he had been a successful Broadway director, brought, with others, to Hollywood because they knew how to deal with dialogue, and here he was, refusing to have his motion pictures restricted by "talkie" requirements. "The Greene Murder Case", incidentally, is one of Van Dine's finest murder-mysteries (popular author John Dickson Carr, no less, selected it in the Forties as being one of the very finest of all such fare!); but, unfortunately, moviemakers of the day could not have done cinematic justice to its elaborate, yet brilliantly subtle, writing.

• Ray Cabana, Jr.