Meet Nero Wolfe *** (1936, Edward Arnold, Lionel Stander, Dennie Moore, Joan Perry, Victor Jory, Nana Bryant) – Classic Movie Review 11,212

The 1936 Columbia Pictures black and white mystery thriller Meet Nero Wolfe is based on the 1934 novel Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout. Edward Arnold plays the gruff, boozy, stay-at-home New York detective hero.

‘I CAN SOLVE ANY MURDER WITHOUT MOVING FROM MY DESK! Right from the pages of Rex Stout’s famous mystery… the slyest sleuth who ever baffled a cunning killer!’

Director Herbert J Biberman’s 1936 Columbia Pictures black and white mystery thriller Meet Nero Wolfe is based on the 1934 novel Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout, though typically much changed for the movies in a too-free screenplay adaptation.

Edward Arnold plays Rex Stout’s gruff, boozy, stay-at-home New York detective hero Nero Wolfe with the right intense and irascible touch, but this acceptable and generally enjoyable tale of two murders – a college president and his mechanic – does not really get going into overdrive despite the classy playing.

Lionel Stander is good value as Arnold’s bungling legman assistant, Archie Goodwin. The film’s biggest departure from the novel is the creation of extraneous character Mazie Gray (Dennie Moore), Archie’s fiancée. Watch out for Rita Hayworth (billed as Rita Cansino) as Wolfe’s client Maria Maringola.

Co-star Joan Perry, who plays Ellen Barstow, married the Columbia Pictures studio boss Harry Cohn in 1941, and she retired from films and they had four children. They remained married till his death in 1958. She separated from second husband Harry Karl 23 days after their wedding in 1959 and quickly divorced. Her third husband was Laurence Harvey (17 October 1968 – 14 February 1972) (divorced). She died on 16 September 1996, age 85.

Arnold played the character of Nero Wolfe only once, after he decided he did not want to become identified with one part in the public mind, and Walter Connolly took over for The League of Frightened Men (1937), in which Stander returns as Archie Goodwin. Connolly originally had been in mind by Columbia Pictures when they bought the screen rights to Fer-de-Lance for $7,500 and secured the option to buy further stories in the series, but then Columbia thought they could keep Arnold busy with low-cost Wolfe films between main features.

Fred Ludekens illustrates Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin for the abridged version of Fer-de-Lance in The American Magazine (November 1934).

In a stylish start, the titles begin with the November 1934 issue of The American Magazine (in which the abridged version of Fer-de-Lance appeared as Point of Death) lying on a table whence it is taken and opened to an illustrated spread that reads: ‘Edward Arnold in Meet Nero Wolfe.’

Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin feature in 33 novels and 39 short stories by Stout, but only in the two films for Columbia Pictures after Stout disliked The League of Frightened Men and thought Stander miscast as Archie Goodwin.

It is the second film (after One Way Ticket, 1935) directed by theatre director Herbert Biberman (1900–1971), who became one of the Hollywood Ten and was blacklisted. He was expelled from the Directors Guild of America in 1950 but his membership was posthumously restored in 1997. He married actress Gale Sondergaard in 1930 and the marriage lasted till Biberman died in 1971.

Also in the cast are Victor Jory, Nana Bryant, Walter Kingsford, John Qualen, Dennie Moore, Russell Hardie, Boyd Irwin Sr, Gene Morgan, Frank Conroy, Juan Torena, Martha Tibbetts, Eddy Waller, George Offerman, William Billy Benedict, Raymond Borzage, Eric Wilton, Roy Bliss, David Worth and William Anderson.

Meet Nero Wolfe is directed by Herbert J Biberman, runs 73 minutes, is made and released by Columbia Pictures, is written by Howard J Green, Bruce Manning and Joseph Anthony, based on the novel Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout, shot in black and white by Henry Freulich, produced by B P Schulberg, scored by Howard Jackson, and designed by Stephen Goosson.

It is supposedly the first film to include a game of Monopoly (marketed in 1935) in the plot, though when Archie wins second prize in a beauty contest he collects $11 but in Monopoly the prize is $10.

Rex Stout was so disappointed with the Columbia Pictures films based on his first two Nero Wolfe novels that there were no further Hollywood adaptations of Nero Wolfe in his lifetime. He said in 1967: ‘I’ve had offers but I haven’t been to a movie in 30 years and I despise television. Anyway, the money, in addition to what the books are bringing in, would put me in a tax bracket where I wouldn’t see much of it. If the characters are any good for films or television they’ll be just as good 10 years from now.’

Ten years later, a little more than a year after Stout’s death, Nero Wolfe was revived for TV in Nero Wolfe (1978 TV film with Thayer David). It was followed by Nero Wolfe (1981 TV series with  William Conrad), The Golden Spiders: A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2000 TV film with Maury Chaykin), and its subsequent series Nero Wolfe (2001–02).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,212

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