Meet Nero Wolfe

A great who-done-it mystery film told with the true spirit of author Rex Stout's genius detective Nero Wolfe.Perfect in size,girth,and bellicosity Edward Arnold portrays the heavyset armchair private investigator as fans of the novels would expect.His man of all tasks,Archie Goodwin(played here for laughs),is portrayed by gravel-voiced character favorite Lionel Stander. Adapted from the first Nero Wolfe novel'Fer De Lance',the mystery in the film begins with a strange death at a golf course which was actually murder.It is a very young Rita Hayworth who hires Nero Wolfe to solve the crime before the police prosecute a loved-one for the murder.The story moves quickly with marvelous red-herrings,interesting clues,murder attempts,and plenty of suspects to choose from(Victor Jory,Walter Kingsford,Frank Conroy). All of the elements from the novels are included :the brownstone mansion,the huge library and red-leather chair,the orchid room upstairs,the endless beer supply,and Wolfe's personal chef played by John Qualen.Columbia pictures had a winner here and there were hopes of a series but,because of Edward Arnold's commitments elsewhere he bowed out after this entry.There was one more Nero Wolfe film following the success of this one.It was 'The League of Frightened Men'(1937),and starred Walter Connolly as Wolfe and Stander returning as Archie Goodwin.

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.

Edward Arnold makes a decent Nero Wolfe in "Meet Nero Wolfe," a 1936 B film based on Rex Stout's first novel about the detective, Fer de Lance.

Wolfe here is much more cheerful and talkative than in the books, and Archie (Lionel Stander) is a less sophisticated Archie, with a nagging girlfriend (Dennie Moore) who wants to get married.

Wolf still drinks his special beer and tends to his orchids. He's an agoraphobic by choice - he could leave the house, but he doesn't want to. Here his chef (John Qualen) is renamed Olaf instead of Fritz.

The plot concerns the missing brother of his beer supplier (a totally unrecognizable Rita Hayworth) - Wolfe discovers he cut out put a newspaper article concerning the alleged death by heart attack of a man on a golf course.

Learning that Carlo made the springs for guns, he concludes that Carlo is dead and the death on the golf course was murder.

Of interest, the widow of the murdered man offers a $50,000 reward. The buying power in 1936 was over a million dollars!

Solid mystery.

Many actors have played Nero Wolfe on film, television, and radio, including Sydney Greenstreet, Walter Connelly, William Conrad, Thayer David, Kurt Kaszner, Francesco Pannofino, etc. My dream Wolfe was Raymond Burr. Back in the '30s, Stout wanted Charles Laughton.

While this first Nero Wolfe film seems well-intentioned, it's really of interest only as an historical curiosity. Edward Arnold, one of the great character actors of all time, looks pretty good as the portly Wolfe, but his portrayal of the detective is way off base. Rex Stout created Wolfe as an irascible, egotistical, curmudgeonly man who quaffs beer endlessly from a glass. Arnold portrays him as a jolly, laughing, hale-fellow-well-met who drinks beer directly from the bottle -- something that Wolfe did very rarely.

Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's amanuensis, legman, and sometime tormentor, is supposed to be a tough, smart, courageous detective in his own right. Lionel Stander, also a fine actor when properly cast and directed, turns Goodwin into a clown.

The plot moves rapidly. Too rapidly, in fact, for the charm of the Nero Wolfe mysteries lies largely in the atmospheric familiarity of their milieu. They are written as if they were stately waltzes, and this films zips by like a two-minute jazz riff.

Of all the adaptations of the Nero Wolfe stories, from the Sydney Greenstreet radio version of the 1940's to the lovingly produced A&E network productions almost sixty years later, the nod must be given to the A&E version, and to Maury Chaykin's portrayal of Nero Wolfe.

"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.