Meet Nero Wolfe

I am no expert on Nero Wolfe stories, but do know that in some ways Columbia Pictures got the story right and in other ways they dropped the ball. This is no surprise, as Hollywood back in the day often disregarded the original source material...more so than in this film. The biggest way the story differs from the original is the character Archie (Lionel Stander). In the book from which it was based, he was quick-witted and sophisticated. Here, however, it's Lionel Stander playing his usual sidekick duties...and comes off as uncouth and really slow-witted (at best). Fortunately, they got Nero Wolfe closer to the book as well as many of the details of the case.

The story begins with a foursome playing golf. It's interrupted when one of the party drops dead! It's soon reported in the papers that the guy died of a heart attack. Here's a huge problem...the agoraphobic* Nero immediately declares to Archie that the dead man was murdered. How could he know or guess this when all he knows about the story is a tiny blurb in the paper. There's no inside information he's privy to...and the article says the man died from a heart attack. And, given that B-movie detectives are almost always right, when he convinces authorities to exhume and re-examine the body, it is discovered he died from poison...poison from a South/Central American snake, the Fer-de-Lance**.

This film simply isn't for purists....as Columbia, like most all the studios of the day, didn't trust the source material and altered it. If you aren't a purist, the film is enjoyable fluff...much like 100001 other B-mysteries of the era. Edward Arnold is good as Wolfe...but not much else to make it stand out as a mystery movie.



*An agoraphobe is a person who never leaves their home due to the fear and dread of the outside world.

**This snake was said in the film to come from the Argentine. I checked and this snake is NOT found in Argentina but the top of South America and Central America.