Danger on the Air

Nan Grey and Donald Woods banter appealingly, and the unique personalities of an excellent range of suspects contribute strongly to this really fun mystery. Wit, characters, a clever murder—all tucked into a tidy hour.

Berton Churchill, as radio sponsor and cola magnate Caesar Kluck, spends the first fifteen minutes of the picture insulting virtually everyone in this large metropolitan radio studio; it is no surprise when he is found dead. But who is responsible? Motives, opportunities and suspects abound.

Churchill is wonderfully bad and blustery in his brief role. A young Lee J. Cobb is a lot of fun playing an aged maintenance man in a mustache and a thick immigrant's accent.

However, Grey and Woods are the two who really make this show, with their confident performances and quick exchanges of snappy back-and-forth dialog. "Did you really find her fingerprints on it?" she asks at one point. "No," he replies, "but I could see she was lying and I wanted to trip her up." "Boy, are you some tripper-upper!"

Seventy minutes and not a dull moment.

DANGER ON THE AIR (1938) is a delight for fans of B movie mysteries. The setting is a radio station and the pace is quick and full of fun characters. The leads, Nan Grey and Donald Woods, are a well-matched set of amateur sleuths. Their objective is to solve the murder of a lecherous, tight-fisted sponsor. They certainly have enough suspects among the staff and rivals in the media industry. It is great fun seeing a young Lee J. Cobb portray the elderly janitor. An entertaining bonus is a baby-faced Peter Lind Hayes doing bang on impersonations of famous radio stars of the time. Get that popcorn ready and turn the lights down low.

A clever radio engineer (Donald Woods as Benjamin Butts) and his beautiful co-worker and a prime suspect (Nan Grey as Steenie MacCorkle) search for the killer of a broadcasting executive and unscrupulous millionaire (Berton Churchill as Caesar Kluck), who had an eye for the ladies, stepped on far too many toes, was very difficult, and garnered a legion of possible suspects. He keels over dead- Benjamin claims he was murdered - gassed by cyanogen gas.

However, the head of the radio company wants to cover it up and claim that Kluck died of natural causes, like heart failure. He's helped in this deceit by a dodgy doctor (Edward Van Sloan).

But Benjamin, with the help of Steenie, insist on sleuthing ...

Danger on the Air is set entirely within a radio station where the murder occurs and ingenious one too and there's no police called at the scene of the crime and it's up to Donald Wood and Nan Grey to find out who killed the victim, who is -no surprise - a horrid man. Which means there's many suspects. It's fast-paced, breezy , funny and the two leads are quite charming.

Another in Universal's Crime Club series. This one is about a murder at a radio station, a fairly popular plot for murder mysteries back then. Donald Woods stars as a radio engineer turned amateur detective who sets out to nab the killer with help from pretty Nan Grey. Woods spouts off scientific lingo and is distracted by engineering issues with the radio broadcasts. That's different enough to make this a little more interesting than the average B mystery film. Nice cast backing up Woods and Grey includes Berton Churchill, Edward Van Sloan, and William Lundigan. Lee J. Cobb appears in one of his Mario Bros. exaggerated accent roles he did early in his career. Peter Lind Hayes is annoying as a guy wanting to break into radio by doing impressions. His impressions suck. Worth a look if you enjoy B mysteries from this period, which can kind of bleed together after you've seen enough of them.

When despicable and despised radio sponsor Berton Churchill dies while his show is broadcasting, Doctor Edward van Sloan says it's a heart attack. When studio technician and polymath Donald Woods tells a reporter it was actually poison, panic ensues. It's up to Woods and advertising agency gal Nan Grey to figure out what actually happened.

This is one of the 'Crime Club' mysteries that Universal made in the late 1930s. While I haven't read the novel it is based on, it certainly has a better title, given it was published as DEATH COMES FOR MR. CLUCK, with the author named as 'Xanthippe.' It's not a great mystery -- we don't get the motivation until after the unmasking of the murderer -- but it is slickly written and directed, with a good cast that includes Peter Lind Hayes, William Lundigan, George Meeker, Lee J.Cobb and Johnny Arthur.