Philo Vance Collection

William Powell

Florence Eldridge

Ullrich Haupt

Jean Arthur

Eugene Pallette

E.H. Calvert

Gertrude Norman

Lowell Drew

Morgan Farley

Brandon Hurst

Augusta Burmeister

Marcia Harris

Veda Buckland

Shep Camp

Charles E. Evans

Helena Phillips Evans

Mildred Golden

Harry Strang

Frank Tuttle

S.S. Van Dine

Verna Willis

Louise Long

Henry W. Gerrard

Bartlett Cormack

Fred A. Datig

Karl Hajos

Travis Banton

B.P. Schulberg

Dick Stockton

Adolph Zukor

Jesse L. Lasky

Richard H. Digges Jr.

Mystery

The Greene Murder Case

Paramount Pictures

United States of America

CinemaSerf

This all starts with a sort of roll-call where a lawyer checks the presence of the "Greene" family at the bedside of their mother. A condition of their late father's will is if they don't all live together for fifteen years after his demise, then they don't get a sou. Not surprisingly, they don't exactly see eye to eye so when one of them is shot, it's hardly a shock. The police - the instantly recognisable Eugene Palette as "Sgt. Heath" - duly arrive and enlist the help of detective "Philo Vance" (William Powell) who quickly discovers that any one of them could have done it. Thing is, the killer isn't content with just the one - and when the family start to drop like flies, the investigators must get a move on in case it is just them who are actually left at the end! It's very stage-bound, this, but the pace is break-neck and there are a few characters - not least the bed-ridden and grumpy mother (Gertrude Norman), to keep the investigation moving along until it's slightly unexpected conclusion. It's a bit of an hybrid of other "Dark House" style stories, but Powell and Pallette deliver simply and quite well here.

English