The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1939)

Let's be realistic.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Apart from George Burns, the delightfully dizzy Gracie Allen seemed like half a team, like Desi without Lucy. George and Gracie had made a mixed bag of comedies and musicals throughout the 1930's, but what worked was how they played off of each other, evident in their very long running T.V. series. George would throw Gracie one simple of dialog, and Gracie would simply pull a Jackie Gleason by silently putting into motion, "And away we go...." That aspect made her delightful malapropisms and metaphors hysterical, especially while describing her equally befuddled family. Even with the weakest of plots, Gracie was hard to resist.Unfortunately, that's not the case in this last ditched effort to continue a decade long series of Philo Vance mysteries, with Philo (or Fido as she mispronounces his name as) a secondary character, not appearing until almost half way through the movie. It's mostly a Gracie vaudeville routine, although she has one very funny moment while sneaking around a room filled with covered furniture, she becomes literally afraid of every movement, including seeing herself in a mirror, and like "The Man Who Knew Too Much", an altercation with a stuffed cat. She even gets to sing briefly, but unlike "A Damsel in Distress", that moment takes away from the plot which there really isn't much of, only the investigation to the death of a gangster found in a nightclub office. There's tons of popular performer characters of the day including William Demarest and "Pa Jones" (Jed Prouty) who visits Gracie in jail, something she promises to do for him some day. Judith Barrett makes an appealing femme fatal, but romantic heroine Ellen Drew has nothing to do. After one last try on her own ("Mr. and Mrs. North"), Gracie would never separate from her husband again, except this time on some little medium called television.

When I first heard there was a murder mystery starring Gracie Allen I was very excited, both because I love old comedy-mysteries and because I love Gracie. I assumed this was something created in Hollywood, and was surprised to learn the creator of Philo Vance actually wrote a book featuring Gracie Allen. Without Gracie Allen this would be a pretty forgettable movie with a bland detective, so it's good that Gracie is never off screen for more than about a minute. She is a constant, very funny presence, referring to Philo as Fido and insisting she knows a song only to turn it into a medley of songs that it is not. George Burns always said that the success of Burns and Allen had far more to do with Allen than Burns, and this movie suggests he was right. Certainly Burns was a much better straight man than anyone Allen meets in the film, but Gracie doesn't really need much to work with; she's just really funny, and the script is full of wonderfully daffy lines. It's a shame though, that there was never a Burns and Allen mystery, because Burns would have made a much better detective than the guy playing Philo Vance. Oddly enough, I've read that Burns is in the book in the character of the perfume guy, but suggested that character be excised from the movie. Don't know why.Anyway, if you're a fan of Gracie this is prime Gracie. She's the only thing that makes this movie worth watching, but she makes it very worth watching indeed.

I don't even think you've got to be a Philo Vance fan or a classic mystery buff to be utterly disappointed by this movie; but if you've seen other Philo Vance movies beforehand, this one will surely make you wonder WHO on earth had the idea to try and combine one of his cases with a Gracie Allen comedy.I usually try and put myself in the place of the audience of the time to find out why a movie that doesn't appeal to me at all today was popular then - but in this case, that's not even necessary, because even then it was a flop; and that's no wonder.Gracie Allen was a very popular radio comedy star together with her husband George Burns; and their domestic little jokes obviously appealed to quite a lot of fans who weren't too hard to please. I've got some of their broadcasts on cassette, and it's - well, just VERY light comedy, much lighter than, for example, W.C. Fields, Bergen & McCarthy, or even Abbott and Costello. But it was comedy, and it was popular.The 'Philo Vance' movie series, on the other hand, which had started 10 years before this movie was made, was composed of classic murder mysteries, with suspense, clever plots - and humor; Philo Vance's OWN kind of dry, slightly sarcastic gentleman's humor. That was just about enough humor those films needed to lighten up the atmosphere of crime and murder a little bit, and it was intelligent and well-dosed and in a way quite charming. And then, since the success of the long-running film series seemed to fade a little, the producers seemed to try a NEW feature that would radically alter the style, and (hence the title) lure more people into the theaters with the big name of Gracie Allen.But what was the result? Unsuspecting Gracie Allen fans were probably scared by the murder plot, the strangers lurking in dark apartments, the poisoned flowers and cigarettes (which they only described as smelling like 'bitter almond', not even bothering to mention that this, as everybody who has read or watched more than two or three murder mysteries, means of course cyanide, or prussic acid...) - while Philo Vance fans must have simply gone MAD with rage at this nut case who doesn't stop talking nonsense for a single moment, until they probably wished somebody would at last murder HER...Don't get me wrong, I LOVE crime comedies, from "Arsenic and Old Lace" to "Murder by Death" to "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" - but all those WERE real crime comedies, parodies on the genre without losing the grip on the suspense and the atmosphere of the genre itself. They don't try to mix PURE comedy with PURE mystery, like "The Gracie Allen Murder Case" did - but the outcome is neither a comedy nor a mystery; and it's CERTAINLY not recommended for serious fans of serious classic murder mysteries.

The Gracie Allen Murder Case starts out as a delightfully silly parody with plenty of Allen's trademark nonsensical quips. By about 45 minutes in you want so badly to slap her into silence it almost ruins the movie. Justifiably (thank god), so do her costars who basically tell her to shut up. In a 30 minute radio show she gets away with it, but in a feature film she eventually becomes as unwelcome as any obnoxious character does. Sorry to say... The supporting players are all well suited to the script, which is well written except for the overabundance of Gracie's big mouth. I don't know what sort of reviews it got upon release, but mine is 3 out of 10, and that's being generous.