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.