Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase

Fourth and final entry in the wonderful Nancy Drew series starring the ever-adorable Bonita Granville. This time out Nancy's trying to help a couple of elderly sisters. They want to donate their mansion for a children's hospital but their father's will stipulates the ladies must live in the house every night for twenty years before it's theirs. With two weeks to go before the twenty year deadline, someone is trying to scare the old ladies out of the house. So Nancy investigates, dragging best friend Ted (Frankie Thomas) into trouble along the way.

As in the other films in the all-too-short series, pretty Bonita Granville is extremely likable. John Litel as her dad and Frankie Thomas as her sidekick are also great. Frank Orth's Captain Tweedy is amusing. The culprit behind the mystery is pretty obvious but it's still fun. Seems odd nobody suggested someone stay with the two old ladies to keep them safe, but I guess we wouldn't have had much of a movie then. Exciting finish, as the Drew series was usually good at providing. Wish there had been more of these movies.

I think Warner Bros. captured the spirit of the Nancy Drew novels, and presented them in great style. The give and take between Nancy and her father is actually better than the books, and Ted Nickerson, as played by Frankie Thomas, makes the character stand out far more than in the books, where he was just a straight man for Nancy. And Bonita Granville as Nancy gives a phenomenal film portrayal of the heroine of millions, without going over the top, and she is especially likable and memorable. We have to remember this is a film portrayal of a book, it is not the book, nor was it meant to be, and it captures exactly the feeling of Nancy Drew mysteries. I wish the Hardy Boys had been done like this! I gave it a 10 not because it was the best movie ever made, but because it was a great interpretation of the book that lost nothing in the translation to screen, and gained in the character given by superb actors.

Warner Bros. filmed several of these Nancy Drew stories in the late 1930s with Bonita Granville, Frankie Thomas and John Litel top-billed and this one is probably the best--and the only one actually based on one of the early Carolyn Keene novels.

But the script is a hapless, far-fetched one and really stretches credibility and patience when viewed today. Only a certain nostalgia for these kind of B-films that played the lower half of a double bill can have any appeal for modern viewers.

The actors aren't to blame. Bonita Granville as Nancy does an excellent job, as does Frankie Thomas as her All-American boyfriend Ted, and John Litel as her lawyer father. All of it, however, is weakened by a poor script and a weak storyline. Only the last twenty minutes or so maintains any real suspense.

Most of it is pretty uninvolving but appeals more as a curiosity piece than anything else.

From 1938 to 1939, Warner Bros. produced four entries in its "Nancy Drew" series. Each is a perfect delight; why didn't the studio continue making more of them? Perky, blonde, vivacious Bonita Granville is perfection as the feisty teenaged sleuth. John Litel is equally solid and dependable as her tolerant dad. Rene Riano is a joy as the Drews' long-suffering but devoted housekeeper. And the underrated Frankie Thomas outshines them all with his droll, engaging, All-American-Boy niceness as Nancy's would-be boyfriend Ted, whom Nancy drags reluctantly into each of her outlandish crime-solving schemes. This final entry packs more fun, suspense, and twisty plot turns into a mere 60 minutes than most of today's bloated bombs manage to squeeze into two hours. The Drew's home, nestled on a cozy small-town American street, complete with picket fences and old-fashioned street lights, could be a block away from the Hardy family's domain. Although done on a B-budget, the production values of the entire Nancy Drew series are first-rate (craftily utilizing the sets of Warners' big-budget films of the era). Watch "Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase" (and spend the night in a "haunted" house, shivering along with Nancy and Ted) and I guarantee you'll be hooked--and searching TCM's listings for showings of the other three entries in the series. Mystery, wry comedy, spine-chilling suspense, first-rate writing, crisp direction, and endearing performances by actors with charisma to spare--movies of any generation don't get any better than this! The Drew series quartet is a fascinating forerunner of the teenagers-in-jeopardy genre revived in 1978 by "Halloween" (and a thousand imitators) for a more blood-thirsty generation. There's not one single drop of blood to be seen in the entire Nancy Drew series, but the suspense and chills are no less palpable. Catch these unsung classics as soon as possible. After 60-some years, they are still fresh as if newly minted, and thoroughly irresistible.

I stumbled upon this series, courtesy of TCM, and was pleasantly surprised by their almost effortless charm. Bonita Granville was especially well cast as Drew, and cohort Frankie Thomas shared a good onscreen chemistry with her. I too wish there were more episodes in this underrated series; one can still appreciate its breezily innocent yet often witty qualities--all too rare to find let alone do nowadays. It remains a homage to the skills of workaday backlot Hollywood, circa 1939, showcasing plenty of talent for an otherwise unassuming footnote in the Warner Bros. vault. Thanks again, TCM.