I thought I knew my mystery writers but I
had never heard of the author that this film was based on. Mignon Eberhart.
She wrote nearly 60 crime novels from the late 1920s to the late 1980s and
was called America's Agatha Christie. In her first novels she has a crime
solving nurse as her protagonist. Sarah Keate. In total she wrote seven Keate
novels and five of them were adapted for the screen. They were produced by
Warners from 1935 to 1938 but for whatever reason they brought on a different
actress for each of them. This one stars Aline MacMahon while the others
were Jane Darwell, Ann Sheridan, Kay Linkaker and Marguerite Churchill. The
only other one I can find is Murder by an Aristocrat with Churchill. Would
like to see Darwell solving a murder. All of them were B films running around
an hour.
I have no idea how this tracks to the book but it struck me as odd that Keate
doesn't solve the murders but the cop does. And he is played by Guy Kibbee!
Guy Kibbe catching a murderer is ludicrous but he isn't his usual confused
perplexed muddled character. In the books Sarah does team up with a detective
named Lance O'Leary, the moniker that Kibbee takes on but I would be surprised
if he is anything like the rotund Kibbee. The mystery is not all that good
- very standard - and so I hope the books are better if they compare her
to Christie. I Kindled one so will know at some point (eh - didn't get far
into it).
A wealthy older man sends for his family to come see him. The usual group
of no-good-niks waiting for him to die. He has a stroke and goes into a coma
for the entire film - thus the title. Nurse Keate is called in to take care
of him. But someone is shot and killed and Kibbee turns up. He knows Sarah
and refers to an earlier case. His loud-mouthed assistant played by Allen
Jenkins says "Isn't it funny how whenever there is a murder you are on the
scene". But she basically does nothing to help solve the murder and
another one to come. Kibbee does. Who would have guessed? The film really
depends on the back and forth between Kibbee and Aline - he throws complements
and she bats back insults - but they are not all the clever. Lyle Talbot,
Dorothy Tree and Patricia Ellis show up as suspects.
