While the Patient Slept

I didn't know anything about this film and couldn't find any reviews anywhere but the one comment here so I went ahead and took a chance and recorded it. I am SO glad I did. It's a great little mystery. I had NO idea who the murderer was and was suprised at the end of the film. Why don't they make these kind of movies anymore? Also, the acting was very good. Aline McMahon and Guy Kibbee were great together!

This is among the better entries in the comedy/mystery genre popular in the 1940s. No one liked the person murdered. Many people had reason to do him or her in. All are assembled in creepy surroundings.

Apart from a plot that's easy and logical, what sets this apart is Aline MacMahon. She plays a nurse who happens to be in the house and who helps the police solve the crime.

MacMahon was unique in Hollywood history. Though only in her thirties here, she was already playing an old maid. Yet she had an occasional fling at glamor roles. And she was an exceptionally good actress, with a haunting beauty.

Her rather heavy-lidded eyes seem to bore right through her co-players, here as elsewhere. ZaSu Pitts had a somewhat parallel career. But at least Erich Von Stroheim saw her as a beauty and a great actress.

Maybe MacMahon really couldn't have done it. But I think she had the potential for far greater roles than she was given. As strange as this probably sounds, I can see her, decades later, as the tragic Mary Tyrone in "Long Day's Journey Into Night." (She would surely have been better than Katharine Hepburn, an actress, I often liked, in that role.)

This is a good old-fashioned Thirties mystery, with comic turns from Guy Kibbee, Aline MacMahon, and Allen Jenkins doing his usual Sheldon Leonard- like one-step-behind sidekick cop. It's based on an early novel by Mignon G. Eberhart, who had a knack for implausible plotting that didn't matter because the action spun everything along at a nice clip. Nice to see Kibbee taking the spotlight, even if in a B movie, because he was such a stalwart supporting player, a familiar face in so many movies of the era. He and MacMahon play well off each other, even creating a bit of a romance, though MacMahon's Nurse Sarah Keate isn't quite as acerbic and witty as the character in the novel. However, the movie has its own charm, spiced with a bit of wackiness, and is a pleasant way to while away a little more than one hour.

MacMahon never disappoints and that's true here again. This movie is terrific... funny, with clever repartee, and fast paced! MacMahon and Kibbee have great chemistry.

To other reviewers who complained that this film is "derivative" or that the plot and setting are "unoriginal," I'd like to remind you that this movie was made in 1935...just how many times have these scenarios been played out before and after this particular film? As Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) said about storytelling: "There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages."

This film is highly entertaining and absolutely worth 66 minutes of your time!

I ran across this movie on TCM. It is a wonderful classic 30's mystery. Typical of the genre and period, it is not very demanding, entertaining with great chemistry between Aline MacMahon and Guy Kibbee.

Not Sommerset Maugham here, just fun and light humor. I had never heard of this series until today. I love light mysteries like the Thin Man Series and the Charlie Chan series. When I am stressed out, I can put one of these "light mysteries" on and just sit back and let the entertainment flow over me. I almost never know "who done it" and the characters, while light weight, are always entertaining.

I am thrilled to "discover" a new series.

Just grab the popcorn and enjoy!