No Hands on the Clock

This is a terrific unknown B-picture from the Pine-Thomas outfit at Paramount. Chester Morris plays a fast-talking (and thinking) private dick who drinks milk instead of whiskey. Jean Parker is his sassy, lacto-intolerant new bride. There are plenty of other good character turns, especially by Astrid Allwyn as a hot-to-trot barfly. Although the plot (from Geoffrey Homes of "Out of the Past" fame) is intriguing, it's a bit too complex for such a short programmer. However, the repartee and character "bits of business" are top-notch, and journeyman director McDonald maintains a breakneck pace while slipping in some clever camera angles. The cryptic title refers to a clock that represents eternity, located outside a funeral home facing the hero's hotel. Worth seeking out.

Private detective Chester Morris phones his boss: he has found the person their detective agency was hired to find, but he is not bringing her back—in fact, he's just married her and they're on their way to Reno for a honeymoon. Alas, the boss follows and mystery awaits Morris and new wife Jean Parker; the couple check into a hotel across the street from a mortuary fronted by a large clock with swinging pendulum but no actual hands, where they proceed to spend a merry 75 minutes chasing crooks and each other around the neighborhood.

A strong cast of B movie stalwarts includes Dick Purcell as a bank robber named Red, and Astrid Allwyn as a dangerous female at the bar. George Watts is the comical yet crafty boss detective who drags our man Chester into the case by promising to buy Parker a fur coat when the case is finished. (Other familiar faces who appear in bits include Milburn Stone as an FBI man and Keye Luke as a cash-hungry fired house servant.)

The plot is, frankly, way too involved and packed with too many characters for it all to make a lot of sense. Among other story threads, it seems that both the FBI and the gang of robbers think that Chester is a fellow bank robber whom he apparently resembles greatly (but whom we never meet).

What are easy to follow, however, are the reasons we watch in the first place—little touches like Morris's fondness for milk contrasted with Parker's inability to drink it at all; the accordion that Morris repeatedly picks up but never gets around to playing for more than a measure or so; and, of course, the handless clock that our heroes can see from their hotel window. (A symbol of something? Perhaps it would have been in a movie that had had the time to develop such an idea.)

It's fast moving and fun. Having watched with moderate attentiveness, I can honestly say that I don't feel much moved by the actual plot, and I'm not particularly concerned about the meaning of the clock. However—I would like to ask the same question of Chester Morris and his accordion that the room service boy asked him early on in the picture: "Can you jive on that thing?"

This much better than average comedy mystery made in 1941 by the Pine-Thomas B picture unit at Paramount is excellently staged by journeyman director Frank McDonald, but I'm guessing that much credit must go to film ediitor Bill Zeigler who started with comedies at the Roach studios, then did a number of Hitchcock pictures, and ended up editing many of Warner Bros. Greatest A budget musicals like MY FAIR LADY. Zeigler, master editor, keeps all his cuts moving so effortlessly, switching from laughs to drama and back, that the viewer soon doesn't give a damn about who did what to who and why. The crime plot is enormously convoluted, impossible to follow, but that doesn't inhibit us from enjoying the excellent Nick and Norah chemistry and laughs between Chester Morris and his jealous bride Jean Parker. They are surrounded, as to be expected, by first rate cast of familiar faces, including Jack Norton, who for once is not the drunk at the bar but the bartender behind it. All highly entertaining. This is one of those 1940s quickies that feels as if everyone working on it had a good time, having no idea how good the film would turn out,

Chester Morris and Jean Parker star in this mystery that seems to have more comedy than mystery. They are newlyweds and are about to go on their honeymoon, when he is hired to find a missing person, as Chester is a detective. This film has a very relaxing and natural feel to it, as Chester and Jean banter back and forth. The viewer enjoys their company so much, you wish you could hang out with them for all the excitement and fun and games, particularly Chester. One might call it the Dean Martin trait. (They seem like the poor man's Nick and Nora Charles.) I tried to follow the mystery, as someone is indeed murdered. I did follow it, up the last 20 minutes or so. But what this has going for it is good company. If you're lucky enough to find this unknown little mystery, you've got one little gem, that has charm in spades.

Chester Morris plays investigator Humphrey Campbell who searches for runaways and others for Flack's Missing Persons Bureau. As the film opens he has married a runaway woman who had just got bored with her home-life. They are in a bank while it is being robbed by the Red Harris gang. Campbell takes on another job while he is honeymooning in Nevada which leads him into all sorts of trouble.

Hal Benedict had gone missing for two weeks leaving his father and fiance wondering what sort of trouble he had got himself into. Campbell begins his search at the Nugget Room at a local club where Hal was known to frequent. Campbell gets involved with a fast blonde and the murder of an ex showgirl and the Red Harris gang show up again. Campbell's fingerprints found in the murder room and his identity confused with a lookalike informer means he is in trouble with people on both sides of the law.

This works well as a crime comedy but it is impaired as a mystery by having too many characters in it. We have to deal with characters who are spoken of but who never appear in the action. You will have to pay really close attention to fathom what's really going on. There are some novel ideas in this but some of these just get a brief mention.

I think there were plans to feature Chester Morris as the Humphrey Campbell character again but this was just a one-off. He had already done a Boston Blackie movie and that's the character that really proved to be a winner for him in the 1940s.