Meet Nero Wolfe

I never read Rex Stout books yet, so I can't compare this film adaptation of Fer-De-Lance to that book or the character presentation in this pacey mystery. But as a mystery film it's fairly entertaining with Nero Wolfe, from his home, taking on a case of a man dying on the golf course. There are a number of suspects, and some good deductions.

Nero Wolfe, as played by Edward Arnold, is jolly, and chortles a lot but is sharp-minded, however, I didn't like how he treated his assistant, Archie, played by Hart to Hart star Lionel Stander, like a thicko. Well he is, I guess, but he should get some credit for running around and questioning people.

A good mystery that keeps one watching and the denouement at the end was quite a surprise.

A man playing golf is stung by a mosquito and has a heart attack. When Nero Wolfe's favorite bootlegger's brother disappears, he sends Archie Goodwin out to look for clues, telling him "Just write down anything that looks unimportant to you."

Edward Arnold was the obvious choice to play Wolfe in this adaptation of Rex Stout's FER-DE-LANCE Lionel Stander makes a fine Archie, and John Qualen is at home with a Scowhegian accent as cook Olaf. Unhappily, the writers lard in all of Wolfe's eccentricities as early and often as possible, and Arnold plays this one chuckling all the time. Director Herbert Biberman's direction seems to have been to let Arnold do pretty much what he wanted. Noteworthy for Rita Hayworth's first appearance in a Columbia feature.

Columbia would try again the following year with THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN. Walter Connally would play Wolfe in that one. Stander, still as Archie, wouldn't seem to notice the switch.

"Meet Nero Wolfe" (1936) is basically a radio play on the screen: the budget is low, the direction practically nonexistent (apart maybe from the opening sequence, set at a golf course). All that matters is the plotting (which is dense enough), the dialogue (which is sometimes lively), and the acting, primarily from the two leads: I have seen Edward Arnold as a supporting character in comedies before, and found him too loud, but this time as the lead he finds the right tone and makes Nero Wolfe pleasingly eccentric. Lionel Stander, looking younger than ever, plays his loyal sidekick. Rita Hayworth, also looking younger than ever, has a very small part. **1/2 out of 4.

I first came across Nero Wolfe in the excellent 2001 TV series starring Maury Chaykin – this set in stone my image of the man – I even pictured him when I read this Rex Stout story Fer-de-Lance. Back in the '30's Edward Arnold was a fine and serious actor but he over-egged Wolfe's character in all departments for this one, making him totally unsympathetic and a wonder anyone put up with him. Nowadays of course the character would sneer and laugh at us "fools down on the street" for not using the internet to do everything for them.

A man has a heart attack on a country golf course – sedentary guffawing beer guzzling orchid growing New Yorker Wolfe proves it was murder and the wrong man without moving a muscle but with a lot of help from his comic stooge (in this) Archie. The only person he seems to care for is Marie who supplies him his booze, she plays a significant part as Wolfe's helper in return for finding her brother's killer. There's some ingenious detective work going on here taken at a breakneck speed, but it would have been much better had it been at a more lugubrious pace. And Maisie's repeated question to Archie "When are we gonna get married?" wears awful thin! Favourite bits: John Qualen making up the kitchen table for Archie to sleep on with very mixed emotions in the crowded house; Wolfe's treatment of the young and spry Victor Jory throughout.

All in all some fun moments and I enjoyed it, although utterly unlike the recent TV series - I'm not surprised it didn't work back then based on this screenplay.

In the 1930's, when the motion picture mystery was having a golden age and studios were sending the latest best sellers straight to film as fast as the top mystery writers could come up with new characters and scenarios, Columbia looked at the success of S.S. van Dine's Philo Vances (First National, Warner Brothers), Dashiel Hammett's Nick & Nora Charles (MGM), Earl Derr Biggers' Charlie Chans (20th Century Fox) and others building on the oft filmed legacy of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and thought they had a winning entry in Rex Stout's soon to be classic detective Nero Wolfe.

A combination of the irascible brilliance of a Holmes (even author Rex Stout speculated on the intellectual debt if not direct lineage of Wolfe to Holmes' brother Mycroft) and the hard boiled practicality of a Sam Spade with the narrative charm of a Doctor Watson in Wolfe's side-kick/assistant, Archie Goodman, how could a series based on the new characters fail? It probably shouldn't have, but in producing a relatively faithful adaptation of Stout's first Nero Wolfe novel, "Fer de Lance" (the name of a poisonous snake that figures late in the plot), they just missed the challenging tone that won Wolfe fans on the page.

The casting of character actor Edward Arnold, famed for playing outrageous incarnations of the Devil and devilish industrialists was probably a master stroke, but fearing that such an acerbic character might not win viewers, they softened the character and made him too given to "fat man jollity" and too light on the irritated "phoeys." Legman (in more ways than one) Archie followed the unfortunate studio pattern of consigning "Dr. Watson" side-kick characters to comic relief with the miscasting of fine (all too soon to be blacklisted) character actor Lionel Stander. As conceived in both the Nero Wolfe films Columbia managed, Stander's "Archie" was eager but not the skilled detective Stout had created whose own capability made Wolfe all the more brilliant in comparison.

Failings in tone which ultimately doomed the series notwithstanding (along with the failure to find a definitive Nero - Walter Connolly essayed the role in the second and final Columbia film, the 1937 LEAGUE OF FREIGHTENED MEN, based on Stout's second Wolfe novel), MEET NERO WOLFE is a highly entertaining film in its own right.

The murder on the golf course is beautifully filmed with clues clearly enough laid out the sharp viewer can have the fun of guessing ahead of Archie and Nero "whodunnit" and why. Even with too many self conscious laughs from his character, it's a pleasure to see the lighter side of Edward Arnold for a change, and while wrong for a true "Archie Goodman," Lionel Stander gives one of his best performances, and isn't quite as befuddled as Nigel Bruce's classic (but decidedly non-Sherlockian) Dr. Watson.

1936's MEET NERO WOLFE isn't the great Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodman we would eventually get from Maury Chaykin and Timmothy Hutton on TV's A&E Network, but it's solid entertainment and an interesting "might-have-been" look at what should have been one of the classic 30's mystery series in the hands of a studio more sensitive to the demands of producing a classic mystery series.