THE 13TH MAN (1937)

District Attorney Sutherland, who is facing competition in an upcoming election, has put twelve high-profile crooks behind bars recently and now he announces he is about to do the same for a thirteenth. Among the men who worry that they might be the 13th man: Martin, Sutherland’s chief rival; Crandall, who runs race track gambling; Cristy, a nightclub owner; Dr. Gorman, whose career stumbled when Sutherland exposed his crooked dealings; and even Baldwin, publisher of the local paper, who has published some negative stories about Sutherland. One night at a boxing match, all the above men are present, and just as one of the boxers is knocked out, Sutherland drops dead in his seat, apparently of a heart attack. But radio commentator Swifty Taylor and his reporter buddy Jimmy Moran soon figure out that Sutherland was killed by a poison dart to the neck. The two work to crack the case, and when Jimmy is killed while following a lead about a dart gun, Swifty (and his girlfriend/secretary Julie) work even harder to expose the killer, an event which happens when Swifty gathers all the suspects in his studio during a live broadcast.

This is a moderately compelling B-crime/newspaper film with an interesting leading man (Weldon Heyburn) who was saddled with a badly-written character. I found Swifty to be unlikable and irritating, though Heyburn tries his best to make him lively. Better is Milburn Stone as Jimmy, and I was very sorry to see him leave about two-thirds of the way through. Inez Courtney (pictured with Heyburn) is fine as the love interest, though few of the suspects are able to stand out in any way. Still, the plot was never confusing, and I only figured out the killer moments before Swifty exposed him. This was the first movie from the re-opened Monogram Pictures, which had been merged with another studio two years earlier. Good production values put this a notch above the average low-budget film of the time. There's even a decent song, "My Topic of Conversation" sung by B-movie chanteuse Eadie Adams—not to be confused with Edie Adams who was married to Ernie Kovacs and was best known for her sexy TV ads for Muriel cigars in the 60s. [YouTube]