Lloyd Nolan Is Michael Shayne: The Detective Who Always Solves His Cases and Has the Most Fun of Anyone Doing It

The members of the Classic Movie Blog Association (CMBA) have been asked to recommend five classic (and some maybe not quite classic) films that are sure to give some comfort to movie lovers in these difficult times. And there’s nothing like a Michael Shayne film starring Lloyd Nolan to provide some comfort and distraction when you—when all of us—are trying to get through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Michael Shayne is an ordinary guy just trying to make a living as a private investigator; he’s just not always that good at hanging on to his money or following through on his engagements. (He has as much luck getting married as he has keeping his money.) He keeps his ethical code pretty rock solid; he’s been known to break a rule here and there but only for the greater good. He always solves his cases, and he has the most fun of anybody doing it.

My top five Lloyd Nolan–as–Michael Shayne film picks are presented here, in the order that they were released to movie theaters, which I believe is also the order in which I saw them. Each film title is also a link that will take you to my original blog post about the film.

Michael Shayne, Private Detective (1940)

Michael Shayne, Private Detective mixes murder, mystery, humor—and a little ketchup. And Michael Shayne isn’t the only one enjoying himself. For example, one of the characters, Aunt Olivia Brighton, takes it upon herself to help solve Harry Grange’s murder, which she read about in the newspaper. She and the Brightons’ butler Ponsby are starting a file on the case.

• Aunt Olivia: [to Detective Shayne] “Here I’ve been, solving other people’s murders all my life, and now that I have one so close to home, why, it’s just wonderful. Ponsby and I have started working on the case, but we haven’t any decent clues, have we Ponsby?”

• Ponsby: “Only the fact that Mr. Grange died in a sea of tomato ketchup.”

The film explains why tomato ketchup could be relevant at all in a murder.

Sleepers West (1941)

Sleepers West packs a lot of information in its short running time of seventy-four minutes. I had to see the film twice before I was sure how and why Callahan and Caleb Wentworth are connected, and how Caleb Wentworth is connected to the case for which Helen Carlson would be testifying. I enjoyed Sleepers West so much both times that I should see it again, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything else! You can be sure, however, that Michael Shayne misses nothing.

Dressed to Kill (1941)

The film starts with Michael Shayne (“private investigator to you”) in a clothing shop looking to buy a suit for his upcoming marriage to Joanne La Marr. Smiley Joe Bishop is the proprietor. In walks Shayne and Bishop says:

• Bishop: “Well, well, well. If it isn’t my old friend, the private dick.”

• Shayne: “Private investigator to you.”

• Bishop: “Mike, you’re looking fine. Wonderful. If you looked any better, you’d have to be twins. Glad to see you, boy. Getting everything you want?”

• Shayne: “Well, I was just—”

• Bishop: “It’s a beautiful thing, a beautiful thing. You’re sure dressed to kill. [to the store’s salesperson] Uh, say, isn’t this the suit I told you to put away for another customer? You can’t sell that suit. [Shayne starts to take off the suit jacket; to Shayne] Well, all right. So I’ll lose another customer. You’re worth it, Mike. You’re worth it. Mmm, does it fit? Like a glove.”

• Shayne: “It should fit like a suit.”

And did I mention there’s a murder mystery for Shayne to solve in Dressed to Kill, too?

Blue, White and Perfect (1942)

The expression “blue, white and perfect” may be helpful to Shayne’s investigation into international diamond smuggling, but it doesn’t describe the state of his romance with his girlfriend Merle Garland. By the end of the film, Merle is angry with him—although she does have a couple of good reasons. When the case is closed, Shayne tells Merle that they should get married. She agrees, but when she opens her closet door to pack, a dead body, with its ankles tied and a knife in its back, falls out. Shayne is off on his next case, and he leaves Merle behind: She has fainted and she has been jilted again. Superman, I mean, George Reeves, has a fairly big role in this one, by the way.

The Man Who Wouldn’t Die (1942)

The Man Who Wouldn’t Die is a spoof of horror movies. And all the elements of a horror movie work pretty well in murder mystery, too:

◊ Dark and stormy night

◊ Thunderstorms with lightening

◊ A large dark mansion

◊ A ghost with a gun and glowing eyeballs

◊ A character conducting electricity experiments in the basement laboratory of the large dark mansion

◊ A sinister contraption in the basement laboratory that looks like an electric chair

And someone’s dead body keeps appearing and disappearing. Until Detective Michael Shayne gets involved, that is.

Bonus: There are actually twelve Michael Shayne films: seven starring Lloyd Nolan when the films were produced by Twentieth Century Fox, and five starring Hugh Beaumont when they were produced by Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC). I haven’t yet seen the last two Nolan versions or any of the Beaumont versions, but I’m guessing that the Beaumont versions are more noir in tone. Here’s a handy list:

Twentieth Century Fox films with Lloyd Nolan

◊ Michael Shayne, Private Detective (1940)

◊ Sleepers West (1941)

◊ Dressed to Kill (1941)

◊ Blue, White and Perfect (1942)

◊ The Man Who Wouldn’t Die (1942)

◊ Just Off Broadway (1942)

◊ Time to Kill (1942)

Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) films with Hugh Beaumont

◊ Murder Is My Business (1946)

◊ Blonde for a Day (1946)

◊ Larceny in Her Heart (1946)

◊ Three on a Ticket (1947)

◊ Too Many Winners (1947)

Enjoy!

This blog post is my contribution to the CMBA 2020 Spring Blogathon: Classics for Comfort. Click here to see the entire range of suggestions from CMBA members. The list will be updated with live links each day of the blogathon, from May 19 to May 22.

The Man Who Wouldn’t Die (1942)

May 1, 1942, release date

Directed by Herbert I. Leeds

Screenplay by Arnaud d’Usseau

Based on the 1942 novel No Coffin for the Corpse by Clayton Rawson and on the character of Michael Shayne created by Brett Halliday

Music by David Raksin

Edited by Fred Allen

Cinematography by Joseph MacDonald

Lloyd Nolan as Michael Shayne

Marjorie Weaver as Catherine (“Kay”) Wolff

Helene Reynolds as Anna Wolff

Henry Wilcoxon as Dr. Haggard

Richard Derr as Roger Blake

Paul Harvey as Dudley Wolff

Billy Bevan as Phillips, the butler

Olin Howland as Chief of Police Jonathan Meek (as Olin Howlin)

Robert Emmett Keane as Alfred Dunning

LeRoy Mason as Zorah Bey

Jeff Corey as Coroner Tim Larsen

Francis Ford as the caretaker                   

Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Produced by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

The Man Who Wouldn’t Die is the fifth in a series of twelve films. Lloyd Nolan starred as Shayne in seven of the films until the series was dropped by Twentieth Century Fox. These seven films were released from 1940 to 1942. When the series was picked up by Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), Hugh Beaumont took over the role of Shayne for five more films, which were released in 1946 and 1947.

These Michael Shayne films are so much fun: They are heavier on humor than on noir (or on horror, in this case), and I suppose that putting them in the category of avant noir (what many call proto-noir) is hard to defend. But why can’t noir include some humor, maybe even a lot of humor, and some spoofing of horror films?

It may be a stretch to call The Man Who Wouldn’t Die a noir of any kind, but it is definitely a spoof of horror movies. I have never been opposed to blurring categories, and this Michael Shayne film can definitely go in more than one category: It is avant noir, comedy, and horror wrapped in one.

Click on each film title below to see my blog post about the first four Michael Shayne films.

◊ Michael Shayne, Private Detective

◊ Sleepers West

◊ Dressed to Kill

◊ Blue, White and Perfect

Most of the humor in The Man Who Wouldn’t Die is directed toward spoofing the elements of a typical gothic story or of a horror film:

◊ Dark and stormy night

◊ Thunderstorms with lightening

◊ A large dark mansion

◊ A ghost with a gun and glowing eyeballs

◊ A character conducting electricity experiments in a laboratory in the basement

◊ A sinister contraption in the basement laboratory that looks like an electric chair

The opening credits appear over a shot of the large, dark, multistoried stone mansion. After the credits, the camera pans across the front of the mansion to a station wagon with its back door open. Two men carry what appears to be a dead body wrapped in a blanket and load it into the back of the station wagon. Then they drive off. The camera then pans to a woman, Anna, who is watching from a side door, the same door the men just exited. Three men (Dudley Wolff, Dr. Haggard, Alfred Dunning) bury what appears to be the dead body wrapped in a blanket.

The film cuts to a car arriving at the same door of the mansion from which the dead body made its exit. A woman (Kay) gets out of the car. Anna opens the door before Kay can find her key or ring the bell. They move into the house and into the living room. When Kay asks Anna how she knew that she was outside the door, Anna says that she heard the doorbell. But Kay insists that she never rang it. Anna is understandably jumpy, but she dismisses it and tells Kay that she must have imagined hearing the doorbell. The three men return through a different door and enter the living room, but no one is talking, of course, about recent goings-on revolving the body in a blanket.

Kay announces that she is now married to someone named Roger Blake. Her father is furious because he thinks all of Kay’s suitors just want to marry her for her—or more accurately his—money. Kay leaves to invite Roger to the house, but his visit is delayed by a few days. Later that night, Kay is trying to sleep through a thunderstorm. A man with a gun and glowing eyeballs suddenly appears, shoots at her, and misses. When Kay tells everyone what just happened, no one believes her. She has to call in Detective Michael Shayne to get to the bottom of it all.

Michael Shayne finally makes his entrance the next day. Viewers have to wait a relatively long time for his appearance in this film: at 00:10:19, after the mystery and the plot have been laid out for viewers. The film itself is only 65 minutes long (01:04:55, to be exact). I’m guessing that, by the time The Man Who Wouldn’t Die was released, Lloyd Nolan and his portrayal of Michael Shayne were already well known to moviegoers and there was no need to make him part of the exposition. His appearance in the film marks a turn to more humor in the story, and the conventions of horror movies get the full Shayne humorous treatment.

Shayne’s first appearance is his drive to the Wolff residence. He is flagged down by Kay Wolff. They already know each other: He has helped her “snag a husband or unload one,” as he puts it. Shayne doesn’t want the case because he doesn’t believe in ghosts; it’s all too “screwy” for him. He takes it, however, because Kay pays him $200 up front. One of the running gags in these Michael Shayne films is his never-ending trouble with money. He's willing to take the case because, as always, he’s in need of cash. When Kay tells Shayne that he’ll have to pose as her husband, she’ll have to pay an extra $100, and she does because she doesn’t know where else to turn.

The investigation that follows is so convoluted that it is almost impossible to follow. The story includes among other outlandish twists: (1) a dead man buried and escaping from his grave; (2) a ghost with a gun and glowing eyes; and (3) the magician Zorah Bey trying to blackmail Anna Wolff because she was once married to him and thought he was dead when he wasn’t, but now he is! Michael Shayne uses Zorah Bey’s dead body to get Anna Wolff to tell the truth about her marriage to Zorah Bey. All of this leads to a very convoluted ending, which is explained by Michael Shayne.

And even Shayne’s explanation is hard to keep track of! I have seen The Man Who Wouldn’t Die several times and I’m still not sure what to make of the plot. The story requires that viewers, at the very least, suspend disbelief because there are some “screwy” twists and turns. But getting the story of the crime right is Shayne’s job. My job as a viewer is to let him take me along for the fun ride. And even though Shayne’s explanation of it all seems more like science fiction (another category for this film?) than noir, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s having a lot of fun doing it.