Most Baffling Case On the Silversheet

Manawatu Times, Volume 59, Issue 182, 1 August 1934, Page 5

Most Baffling Case On the Silversheet

JEALOUSY MOTIVATES TO CONCEIVE PERFECT CRIME

. If you -were charged -with having committed a murder of which you were wholly innocent, and if every fact of the evidence painted to your guilt, how would you attempt to clear yourself? That is the problem which confronts Eric Anderson, young novelist, in “The Crime Doctor,” RKORadio picture, which comes to the State to-day, and in which Otto Kruger, Karen Morley and Nils Asther are co-featured.

The scene opens with the second-floor apartment where Eric Anderson lived; that of his neighbour, a beautiful adventuress known as Blanche Flynn. On the morning of the day in question, Blanche had attempted to blackmail Eric, and he had promised to bring her live thousand dollars at six o’clock that evening. The aid of Dan Clifford, expert crime investigator, has been enlisted on Eric’s behalf, and the detective called at Eric’s home at the appointed hour and the two men went together, to meet the blackmailer. Binging the doorbell of her apartment and receiving no response, they tried her door, and, much to their surprise, found that it was not locked. At the detective’s suggestion, they entered to investigate and were confronted with the sight of Blanche’s body lying on her kitchen floor, two bullet holes in her head.

The police are promptly notified and the evidence brought out the following facts:

All doors and windows of the apartment were locked on the inside, with the exception of the front door, thus indicating that the murderer left by thc stairs in the front hall—unless he was someone residing in the building. The janitor, who was working in the first floor hall at the time, testified that nobody had come down the stairs while he was there. The murder was committed with a rare type of revolver, using its own type of bullets, and this weapon was missing from its customary place on Eric’s gun rack and could not be found.

The Janitor found a note in Blanche’s fireplace. It began, “Dear Eric,’’ and spoke of the money she dc-

manded, saying that she felt that he owed it to her, as ho was leaving her destitute. Tho signature had been burned off, but the handwriting was unquestionably that of the adventuress. She had been last seen alive by Eric’s Chinese butler, whom she had called from his kitchen opposite to go out and buy her some cigarettes. When he returned by way of the back stairs, the crime had been committed. His alibi was unassailable.

, Circumstantial evidence against Eric, coupled with tho fact that he freely admitted that Blanche had attempted to blackmail him, seemed conclusive. Yet Erie did.not commit the crime. How the murder was planned and committed and how the killer made his escape, and the dramatic and wholly unsuspected aftermath, forms the basis of this absorbing story of “the perfect crime.” It is is no sense a mystery story, however, for tho audience is in possession of all the facts throughout the picture, only the characters of the play being kept in the dark. Otto Kruger will bo scon as the detective, Dan Gifford, and Karen Morly has the role of his beautiful wife, who is the innocent motive for the murder. Nils Asther is the novelist, Eric Anderson, and Judith Wood plays the adventuress. “The Crimo Doctor” was adapted to the screen from the Israel Zangwill story, “The Great Bow Mystery.”

Vicki Baum, author of “Grand Hotel,” is writing the scenario of “The Bugle Sounds,” a story originally bought for Lon Chaney and now destined to provide a vehicle for Wallace Beery ' <s><•> <s> <«>

Adolphe Menjou and Elissa Landi have been teamed to enact the leading roles in “The Great Flirtation,” which will be produced by Paramount. Menjou will assumo his new role on the completion of his current Paramount picture, “Little Miss Marker.”