Gracie Allen Murder Case, The (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Alfred E. GreenRelease Date(s)
1939 (November 18, 2025)Studio(s)
Paramount Pictures (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: B
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
A real oddity, The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1939) apparently began as an idea by writer S.S. Van Dine, a fan of the popular comedy duo of George Burns and Gracie Allen, to team them with his most famous creation, amateur sleuth Philo Vance. It’s not entirely clear if Dine initially developed a full treatment or screenplay based on this idea, but eventually he turned it into a same-named novel in 1938, his penultimate Philo Vance story prior to Dine’s death in 1939.
This unusual fusing was not well-received by critics or audiences, the case with all of Dine’s later Philo Vance stories. Nevertheless, Paramount Pictures opted to produce a film version, released a few months after Dine’s passing. While the movie, adapted by Nat Perrin, is generally faithful to Dine’s novel, the film unlike the novel does not include George Burns, Allen’s straight man and real-life husband. Reportedly, this change was made at Burns’s suggestion, he feeling his presence was unnecessary and, perhaps, he thought it would work better as a solo vehicle for Gracie. In the movie Kent Taylor essentially plays the George Burns part from the novel. The Gracie Allen Murder Case is certainly intriguing but only fitfully funny, though there are a couple of big laughs.
The story opens at a company picnic for a perfume company, where visiting Gracie Allen (Gracie Allen) is the niece of the company’s president. She and perfume developer Bill Brown (Kent Taylor) go out on a date to a nightclub, though his main purpose is to make his girlfriend, Ann Wilson (Ellen Drew), jealous. At the Diamond Slipper Café, Gracie discovers Bill’s cigarette case next to the body of murdered escaped convict Benny “The Buzzard” Nelson, nitwit Gracie blithely incriminating Bill when she’s interviewed by the police. Philo Vance (Warren William) is brought in by Ann to assist in the investigation, but Gracie’s tone-deaf stupidity—she keeps calling Philo “Fido”—drives everyone crazy.
...and, pretty much, the movie audience. A little of Gracie Allen goes a long way, and the big problem with The Gracie Allen Murder Case is that she exasperates the movie audience with her cheerful bird-brained meddling as much as the characters in the story. If indeed George Burns felt the movie would be better without him, he was wrong. As a comedy team, Burns was Allen’s indispensable straight man—his patient, loving acceptance of Gracie was a big part of their appeal, and his comic timing, especially in allowing Gracie to ramble on but at a pace that flowed naturally and conversationally, George bemused by Gracie’s screwy logic, brought out the best of both performers. Here, the jokes are in keeping with Gracie’s persona, but it’s in relentless, machine gun-screwball comedy style. Instead of offering occasionally hilarious non-sequitur observations, Gracie’s character is way too much in everyone’s way, garrulous and oblivious to the supposed seriousness of a murder enquiry.
The film further errs in downplaying the Philo Vance part. Had George Burns been in the film, once jailed and charged with murder his character could have essentially passed Gracie off to Philo Vance more naturally, they temporarily teaming to find the real killer. In the film version, though, they don’t spend much screentime together, and Vance is really just part of a larger investigation dominated by a gaggle of police detectives. Gracie helps Vance only accidentally, and he in his gentlemanly manner puts up with her absurd remarks, she even less help to Vance than Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland) was to Charlie Chan.
Nevertheless, many of Gracie’s lines are amusing. There’s a really funny scene near the end where Vance, at the nightclub, could die should he smoke a poisoned cigarette, so from Vance’s apartment Gracie races to a nearby telephone to warn him. Except that she keeps dialing the phone endlessly as Vance’s houseboy (Willy Fung) looks on, exasperated. As with this scene with Fung, the comedy works better when it’s Gracie one-on-one with another character, rather than the group of detectives and D.A.s she’s often with.
Warren William had played Philo Vance once before, in Warner Bros.’s 1934 film The Dragon Murder Case. He’s quite good, perhaps not as effortlessly suave and amusing as William Powell, but enough so that one wishes his character had been much more prominent.
The supporting cast is also excellent with, in addition to those mentioned above, Donald MacBride (as the D.A.), Jerome Cowan (as the shady nightclub owner), H.B. Warner (as an old man trying to pick up Gracie), Richard Denning (as another of Ann’s suitors) and, unbilled, James Flavin, Esther Howard, Horace McMahon, and Paul Newlan.
Kino’s Blu-ray presents The Gracie Allen Murder Case in its original black-and-white, 1.37:1 standard screen. The image is impressively sharp and clean throughout, basically a flawless video transfer. The DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono) is likewise excellent, and the Region “A” disc is supported by optional English subtitles.
There’s no trailer and just one extra feature: a new audio commentary by film historian Bernie Prokop that hits all the salient points.
Burns and Allen were a constant presence on radio of the 1930s and ‘40s and then on their television series until Gracie’s retirement in 1958, but like many radio stars they appeared in movies only sporadically, perhaps best utilized in the Fred Astaire musical A Damsel in Distress (1937). The Gracie Allen Murder Case gives viewers more Gracie than they had, perhaps, bargained for, and the movie is a real curio, but intriguing and moderately entertaining.
- Stuart Galbraith IV