70,000 Witnesses

"70,000 Witnesses" is an extremely old football movie with stars who are long gone. It is a murder mystery which works until the murder and murderer are uncovered by Det. David Landau, one of my old time favorites. Johnny Mack Brown is the murdered player, and Philips Holmes is the leading man of the piece.

Much footage is shot in the Los Angeles Coliseum and some stock footage of games is used. This, as reviewers have noted, is supposed to be the big game between State and University, a clever use of school names. All goes well until the last half hour. Then takes place one of the most labored and preposterously contrived solutions to a murder in modern forensic science, which I thought was an anticlimax to a fairly good mystery up to that time. I was surprised to learn that it was a hit in its time, which just goes to show that you can fool some of the people some of the time - especially if it's a depression era audience.

There's a really brilliant, exciting movie in which a football player drops dead in the middle of a football match, in a stadium filled with witnesses... and it turns out he's been murdered. That brilliant movie is 'The Arsenal Stadium Mystery', a thriller filmed in England in 1939. '70,000 Witnesses', made in Hollywood seven years earlier, uses exactly the same premise ... but this movie is vastly inferior to 'Arsenal'.

A subdivision of mystery fiction is the 'impossible crime' story, in which a crime (usually a murder) is committed under circumstances so baffling that no solution (short of the supernatural) seems possible. The payoff comes with a solution that is totally unexpected, yet plausible ... and all the clues have been laid beforehand for the reader or viewer. The best examples of 'impossible crimes' are the locked-room mysteries by author John Dickson Carr.

'70,000 Witnesses' whets our appetite by setting up an 'impossible' crime which seemingly has no solution. We know that the case will be solved, and we eagerly anticipate a brilliantly unexpected resolution ... while at the same time we pay close attention for clues. It pains me to report that, after a first-rate set-up of the suspects, motivations, and so forth, '70,000 Witnesses' simply doesn't play fair with the audience. The identity of the murderer seems to be randomly chosen, and as for **how** the murderer pulled off this impossible crime ... well, the guy who wrote this thing just got lazy.

The opening scene is a football match between State and University. (Ah, those generic names! Does the winning team go on to play Tech?) We see the State players in their changing-room, putting on their uniforms and gear. The star player for State is Wally Clark, well-played by the underrated Johnny Mack Brown. Also on the team is Buck Buchanan ... unfortunately played by Phillips Holmes, a pretty-boy actor who usually portrayed characters with weak morals.

Time out for some clumsy exposition. Buck has a brother named Slip (their mother must have been very creative). Slip Buchanan, well-played by Lew Cody, is a spiv and a crooked gambler: he's wagered the astonishing sum of $350,000 (in Depression dollars) on University to win the game. (Hmm, in this movie it works out to $5 per witness.) To ensure that University's side will win the match, Slip pressures his younger brother Buck to slip some poison to Wally. Buck doesn't want to commit murder (apparently because it would make his own team lose the football match), but he doesn't want to argue with his brother. To placate Slip, Buck accepts the poison and agrees to murder Wally ... but we know he's planning not to comply. (Phillips Holmes looks and acts like someone who's just too gutless to commit a murder.)

At the climax of the game, Wally is running for a thrilling touchdown that will give State the victory ... when he suddenly keels over on the one-yard line. Dead! Did Buck kill him after all?

The coarse and deep-voiced character actor David Landau (whom I've disliked in nearly all his many roles) takes over the movie as the police detective investigating Wally's death. To solve the murder, he orders both football teams to re-enact the final play. (Surely the murderer will do something different this time, so as not to get caught, yes?) After an interesting set-up, this movie drops the ball. Fumble!

There's some of that hardboiled thick-ear dialogue that American movies of the 1930s achieve so delightfully. Some stock footage is very obviously inserted during the action sequences. Gruff actor J. Farrell MacDonald is effective and convincing as the State team's coach. Charlie Ruggles (whose popularity quite eludes me) receives bigger billing than he deserves in a comedy-relief role that's annoying and unfunny. I'd like to rate the first half of '70,000 Witnesses' as 9 out of 10, and the last reel an absolute zero. Split the difference and call this movie a 4 out of 10.

It's the big college football game and gambler Lew Cody needs an upset to win big. He's got an inside track: no one, he thinks, knows his brother is Phillips Holmes, a key player on the team, and best friend of the quarterback, Johnny Mack Brown. He gives Holmes a vial that he says contains a harmless bromide that will put Brown out of the game. The net day, Brown is running a big play and drops dead on the field; his brain has exploded. It's up to e-New York cop David Landau to figure out what happened, with the help of his pal, drunk reporter Charles Ruggles.

It's a well written programmer; I couldn't figure out what had happened until a couple of minutes before Landau cracked open the case. The film is populated by the great character actors that Paramount threw into their ordinary productions, including J. Farrell MaDonald, Stu Erwin and Mary Gordon.

I found the most interesting factor in the staff behind the camera, many of whom would go on to make superior westerns over the net three decades. Harry Joe Brown is one of the producers, and Joseph Kane is the editor. It's a titled assembled movie that kept me interested throughout.

I agree with several of the reviewers here that this film was surprisingly well made.....to a point. How Johnny Mack Brown's character was killed on the field appears to be a foregone conclusion, but then things change and the obvious is much less obvious. My foregone conclusion was erased. However, the actual conclusion is just too slap-dash and contrived. We could have had an 8 star rating here with a better finish.

Some discussion about the appearance of Ruth Etting was enlightening to me. At the 22 minute mark, it appears that the real Ruth Etting is singing as the camera pans across the bar room. However, the lady companion of Lew Cody at the 46 minute mark definitely does not look like Ruth Etting. I am very well versed in 30s actresses but can't place that lady.

Hooray for old, leather helmet football movies. The passage of time has helped this one as entertainment for 21st century old movie fans. I would like to give it a 7 rating. Johnny Mack Brown, a football player acting the part of a football player and Dorothy Jordan playing the role of a loyal co-ed in love are a plus but a 7 rating is too high due to the promenance of a drunkard reporter and novice sports broadcaster. Even Charlie Ruggles is not enough to make that character viable or entertaining (check out the bullet holes in the racoon coat). The 6.5 rating is offered to 21st century old movie fans, instead of a 6, due to the absence of an actress and singer who is not even accorded an "uncredited" status. 21st century old movie fans will perhaps enjoy guessing if that singer and actress is Ruth Etting.

Those who are not familiar with Ruth Etting will find plenty of information available on line. In addition to much more, she appeared in a long series of movie shorts between 1929 and 1936. The movie being rated is from 1932. The viewer may want to take a brief look at her on line in cyber space singing while Eddie Lang plays the guitar in another 1932 movie called A Regular Trouper). There she sings a song called "Without That Man". It was more commonly known as "Without That Gal". In 70,000 Witnesses there is again a change of gender in the lyrics to suit the putative Ruth Etting when she is singing a brief bit of "Don't Tell Him What Happened to Me". Ruth Etting recorded that tune in 1930. It is commonly known at "Don't Tell Her What Happened to Me".

Later in the movie, after the demise of Johnny Mack Brown before 70,000 football fans, the movie goes on to other scenes. One of those involves a character, a criminal bookie, whose name is Slip Buchanan. He is back from the big game and relaxing at home. Is the character who he is shown with Slip buchanan then played by Ruth Etting? She wonders why he did not take her because she likes football. He says he had business to do. She replies that sometimes mixing pleasure with business is "awful nice honey". When a visitor wants to come in the door, she says that perhaps she had better get dressed.

I hope that the reader of this evaluation will enjoy making up his or her own mind about whether it was Ruth Etting appearing in the 1932 movie and agree that 70,000 witnesses deserves a boost for 6. To 6.5.