Candles at Nine ** (1944, Jessie Matthews, John Stuart, Beatrix Lehmann, Eliot Makeham, John Salew) – Classic Movie Review 10,434

Director John Harlow’s 1944 British mystery thriller Candles at Nine stars Jessie Matthews as Dorothea Capper, a beautiful young showgirl who becomes a surprise heiress when she is left a bundle by her old distant relative Everard Hope (Eliot Makeham) on condition that she stays in his spooky mansion for a month. But then she is beset by murderously greedy relations who previously didn’t know her, in another cheap run-through of an old comedy mystery plot.

Already sadly past her glorious prime, the game Matthews gives a losing performance, without her old vivacity, as the heiress scared by creepy people in a haunted house. Detective William Gordon (John Stuart) tries to save Matthews from death at the hands of a Mrs Danvers-like housekeeper Julia Carberry (Beatrix Lehmann), while aiming to get his hands on her himself as his future wife.

Somehow the British mostly haven’t shown the right touch with these comedy mysteries that the Americans seem to find so easy to do, and the hesitant tone here veers between serious murder mystery and spoof satire. Lehman and John Salew as the butler are fun though.

Matthews retired quietly from films, till her return in 1958 in Tom Thumb.

John Harlow and Basil Mason’s screenplay is based on the novel The Mouse Who Wouldn’t Play Ball by Anthony Gilbert, the pen name of Lucy Beatrice Malleson (15 February 1899 – 9 December 1973), an English crime writer who was a cousin of the actor-screenwriter Miles Malleson.

Matthews performs ‘I’d Like to Share With You’ (music by Harry Parr Davies, lyrics by Harold Purcell).

It is made at National Studios, Elstree, Hertfordshire, England.

Also in the cast are Winifred Shotter, Reginald Purdell, Hugh Dempster, Joss Ambler, Vera Bogetti, Andre Van Gyseghem, Ernest Butcher, C Denier Warren, Patricia Hayes, Guy Fielding, and Gerry Wilmot.

Candles at Nine is directed by John Harlow, runs 82 minutes, is made by British National Films, is released by Anglo-American Film Corporation (1944) (UK), is written by John Harlow and Basil Mason, based on the novel The Mouse Who Couldn’t Play Ball by Anthony Gilbert, is shot in black and white by James Wilson and Arthur Grant (camera operator), is produced by Wallace Orton, is scored by Charles Williams and is designed by C Wilfred Arnold.

Patricia Hayes plays Gwendolyn the maid, in an early role, though she started in films right back in 1936 after graduating from RADA in 1928.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,434

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