Danger on the Air

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.

This little gem is one of the most well-scripted programmers that I have ever had the pleasure to watch. The acting is great too, and you also manage to work in one of those rare mysteries that makes it hard but fun to guess who the killer is. It's all set at a radio station, where a crotchety old sponsor ends up getting murdered. Donald Woods plays a very intelligent and clever radio engineer and Nan Woods is the ad agency worker who helps him solve the mystery. I know the storyline sounds all old-hat, but I was pleasantly surprised at how refreshing this movie was...a very enjoyable hour!

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.

This Crime Club entry is an almost perfect B mystery with its solid cast, interesting setting, plenty of murder suspects and intriguing (but not really plausible) murder method. The setting is a large metropolitan radio station. Caesar Kluck is an obnoxious soda manufacturer who sponsors the show Kluck's Popola Hour. He's also a corrupt man who uses gangsters to ruin competing soda manufacturers. Understandably, no one at the station can stand him including the sound engineer Benjamin Franklin Butts ( played by the ever affable Donald Woods) and "Skeets" MacCorkle (Nan Grey), one of the advertising sales staff (Nan Grey). Not surprisingly, Kluck is murdered and the station manager insists it was a heart attack and has either a phony or incompetent doctor to back him up. Butts is convinced that he was murdered by a poison gas and tells reporters this. The result of this is that most of the staff refuse to enter the building. This leads to the highlight of the movie when the wannabe performer Harry Lake takes on roles in several shows in order to keep the station on the air. Peter Lind Hayes as Lake steals the show. His various impersonations, including that of Bing Crosby, are wonderful. The movies old time radio setting is fascinating. This is a highly entertaining and slick murder mystery worth watching more than once.

Universal's Crime Club series lasted 7 films from 1937 to 1939, of which "Danger on the Air" was number 4, the last to co-star Donald Woods and Nan Grey, previously seen in the second, "The Black Doll" (also 1938). Lecherous sponsor Caesar Kluck (Berton Churchill) dies during a live radio broadcast, with hard working engineer Benjamin Franklin Butts (Woods) deducing murder from poison gas, and Kluck's physician, Leonard Sylvester (Edward Van Sloan), insisting it was a heart attack. The ventilating system has clearly been tampered with, and a persistent gangster (Joseph Downing) was also hanging around, plus the station janitor (Lee J. Cobb), who was angered by Kluck's advances toward his young daughter (Louise Stanley). The adorable and capable Nan Grey gets top billing over Donald Woods this time, but he again solves the case. Also on hand are William Lundigan, George Meeker, Tom Kennedy, and a young Peter Lind Hayes, future songwriter and TV personality, doing a variety of impressions like Bing Crosby (he also name drops Rudy Vallee). All of the Crime Clubs are quite entertaining, and the final three were included in the popular SHOCK! package of classic Universal horror films issued to television in the late 50's ("The Last Warning," "Mystery of the White Room," and "The Witness Vanishes"). Only "The Black Doll" and "Mystery of the White Room" were shown on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater, so it was many years before I discovered the other five in the brief series, lesser known than the Inner Sanctums but in some ways superior. The next Crime Club would be "The Last Warning."