WHISTLING IN THE DARK (1941)

The Silver Haven estate is the home of a health and spirituality cult led by Joseph Jones (Conrad Veidt), a con man who bilks rich folks out of their money. A follower who has recently died left a chunk of money to the cult but the interest on the money goes to her nephew Harvey until his death, so Jones and his cohorts decide they need to get rid of the nephew. But how to do it? Jones is inspired by listening to a radio detective show featuring The Fox, aka Wally Benton (Red Skelton), who solves seemingly perfect crimes every show. Wally is about to leave on vacation to marry his long-time girlfriend Carol (Anne Rutherford), but to keep his radio sponsor satisfied, he agrees to one last night on the town to entertain the sponsor's wild daughter Fran (Virginia Grey). But Jones's men kidnap Wally, take him to Silver Haven, and demand that he work out the perfect way to get rid of Harvey. When he refuses to cooperate, they kidnap both Carol and Fran. Wally comes up with a plan involving putting a poison in Harvey's toothpaste that will be untraceable after he gargles. Jones and his men set out on the murder mission—Harvey is traveling on a plane—and Wally and his gals try to figure out a way to rig up a radio so that they can use an impromptu broadcast to warn Harvey about the danger of brushing his teeth.

I’m not a fan of Red Skelton—he is second only to Phil Silvers as my least favorite comic actor. But in this film, his first starring role, he's quite tolerable. Perhaps because of the plotline, involving some secret passages and a little bit of spookiness, he reminded me of Bob Hope in something like The Cat and the Canary or The Ghost Breakers. His outsized clowning and facial contortions are nowhere to be seen here. I enjoyed both leading ladies, and Eve Arden and Rags Ragland in supporting roles. But what I most enjoyed about the movie was Conrad Veidt, normally a villain (best known as the Nazi Major Strasser in Casablanca); he's still a villain here but he does a nice job keeping things fairly light and almost stealing scenes from his comic co-stars. There were two more "Whistling" movies with Skelton and Rutherford; though I'm not sure I need to see those, this was a surprisingly breezy and pleasant comedy. Pictured are Veidt and Skelton. {TCM]