We open in the offices of the Emperor Life Insurance Company, where Albert Tuttle is currently bragging-it-up to a co-salesman about how he managed to land a new client: the eccentric tycoon, Cyrus J. Rutherford.
Seems this Rutherford’s total net-worth is somewhere north of $8-million, who also lives in a secluded mansion nestled on top of a mountain; and on top of all that, Rutherford then built a private observatory on top of his mansion so he could keep track of the stars and planets to feed his well-known astrological obsessions.
Thus, when asked how he convinced such a reclusive kook into a deluxe $200,000 policy, Tuttle says it was easy. He lied, telling Rutherford they were both born under the same Zodiac sign. Then, after consulting the stars further, his new client then agreed to sign on the dotted line -- but with a few stipulations. One, it had to be done at the stroke of midnight one month and two days later, when Venus was in full retrograde with Jupiter, or something. Like I said, eccentric.
And now, one month and nearly two days later, armed with a pen and the policy, Tuttle heads to the Rutherford mansion for a midnight signing, which will trigger his windfall commission.
Unfortunately for Tuttle (Haley), in the interim, it appears that Cyrus J. Rutherford has unexpectedly died -- only Tuttle doesn’t know that yet. But his heirs sure do, who have all gathered at Rutherford manor, where the body is lying in state in the library.
Meanwhile, the family lawyer, Morton Gellman (Nedell), addresses those gathered here today, reading the words of the deceased as he contemptuously calls the roll from beyond the grave:
First is his sister, Estelle (Helm), who ignored Cyrus’s warning some 20-years ago when she ran off and married that nincompoop, Kenneth Hopkins (Littlefield), of whom the deceased had the pleasure of meeting only once, which was enough.
They’re followed by their daughter, Margaret (Fife), whom Cyrus never met, which was probably for the better, he declares posthumously, considering who her parents were.
Next is his no-account nephew, James Davis (Talbott), whom Cyrus hadn’t seen since Davis was an impertinent youth; but the old coot never did like impertinence; and so, yeah, he never did like his nephew either.
He softens a bit with his niece, Carol Dunlap (Parker), even though he despised her late father, because she seemed more intelligent than he and had a “less selfish interest” in her rich uncle than his other heirs.
And lastly, as far as blood relatives go, we have nephew Henry Rutherford (Fowley), who at least bears the Rutherford name, and who appeared honest enough when dealing with Cyrus’s financial investments; but his wife, Mona (Granger), always drank too much and wore way too much makeup as she waited with undue impatience for Cyrus’s eventual demise.
Now, there’s also Cyrus’s faithful butler, Merkil (Lugosi), who, according to further testimony, always padded the household bills and pocketed the difference; and his housekeeper, Matthews (Yurka), who really didn’t keep the house all that well.
And then there's Professor Hilton (Edmunds), who taught the deceased how to unlock all those celestial secrets.
And finally, Gellman, who at first skips the scathing details on himself, saying they’re irrelevant, until the others demand to know what the cantankerous old fart thought of him, too -- who apparently trusted his lawyer for about as far as he could throw an elephant.
Gellman then gets into the details on what was to happen with Cyrus's estate and legacy after he died. To his eleven heirs, he has left shares of his fortune: some as large as $500,000, some as small as $1.50 -- enough to cover a taxi ride home. But before they find out who gets what, there are several stipulations that must be met:
First, Rutherford’s body must not be buried underground and instead be interred in a yet-to-be-constructed glass-topped vault in the observatory, so the stars may continue to shine down upon him in perpetuity. Second, if these wishes are not met to the letter, those promised shares will be reversed, with the largest shares going to those who least deserved it and vice versa with the smallest.
And third, to ensure his wishes are met, no one knows who is getting what just yet because the bequeathment shall remain sealed and unread until the vault is completed and Cyrus is laid to rest. And fourthly, none of them can leave the mansion until the vault is finished and the ceremony completed, otherwise they forfeit their share.
Now, after convincing his belligerent and back-stabbing captive audience that the will is airtight and unbreakable, fearing the worst, Gellman immediately puts in a call to the Atlas Detective Agency. They agree to send an agent to guard the body until the reading of the will proper to prevent any shenanigans for increased shares.
As for how long that will take, Gellman assures all of Rutherford’s stipulations shouldn’t take more than a couple of days. He also insists that he hasn’t read the will either, which might explain away the several instances he is almost caught trying to clandestinely break into a hidden wall safe to get at it, meaning he has no idea on who will get what and how much.
Meanwhile, the others are shown to their rooms for the duration of their stay. Carol, the obvious favorite of her late uncle, answers a knock at her door and lets Merkil in, who delivers her suitcase. But when she opens it, the girl finds a note warning her to leave the house immediately -- if she values her life!
As to who wrote it? Well, I’m guessing it's the same shadowy figure who ambushes the rent-a-cop before he reaches the house, removing him from the board. But then the unwitting Tuttle arrives, and everyone mistakes him for the detective -- except for Matthews, who warns him to leave before it’s too late, which leads to several more comical misunderstandings and mismatched conversations.
Thus, confusion reigns when Gellman welcomes Tuttle and pays him $200 upfront. This is fine, says Tuttle, because the rest of the policy payment can wait until after his client passes a physical first, which causes even more confusion.
Then, as a besotted Mona instantly flirts with Tuttle, Carol comments she expected someone a little more rugged as the ‘detective’ is ushered into the library, where he is assured his “client” is waiting, and then promptly gets locked in.
Inside, Tuttle lays his briefcase on the coffin, not realizing what it is until he takes a closer look. One spit-take later, the man realizes his client is a corpse and makes a bee-line for the front door.
But he’s intercepted by the others, and then the case of mistaken identity is cleared up at last when he reveals who he is and why he was there -- stress on the “was” as he continues to leave.
Only Carol doesn’t want him to go, chasing Tuttle outside, begging him to stay. Seems she desperately wants some outside help since she can’t trust the others. And since the real detective has failed to show up, that leaves only Tuttle to help her figure out who is trying to scare her away and steal her share of the inheritance -- and who is more fearful of what they’ll try to do next as things escalate since she refuses to leave.
And the answer to both of those questions is lurking somewhere above them on the roof, where a large chunk of masonry has just been dislodged and is currently rocketing downward on a direct collision course with the unsuspecting Carol’s lovely head…
Headed by William “Bill” Pine and William “Bill” Thomas, Pine-Thomas Productions was one of the most prolific of Paramount Studio’s B-units. Together, they produced 81 films between 1940 and 1957, and not a one of them ever lost the studio money, earning Pine and Thomas the nickname, The Dollar Bills. “We don’t want to make million dollar pictures,” said Pine (The New York Times, 1955). “We just want to make a million dollars."
After graduating from Columbia University, Pine landed a job in the Paramount publicity department, which he eventually became the head of in 1933. Looking to expand his horizons, Pine then latched onto Cecil B. Demille, serving as an associate producer on four of his pictures: The Plainsman (1936), The Buccaneer (1938), Union Pacific (1939) and North West Mounted Police (1940), which, in some circles, is considered Demille’s worst film.
Thomas, meanwhile, worked his way through USC by playing the drums in several nightclub orchestras. He broke into the business at MGM in 1925, also working in publicity. He then bounced around between MGM, Paramount, and Columbia, where he ran the department for a year and a half before returning to Paramount in 1937, where he first met Pine.
Meanwhile, after experiencing the ridiculous excesses of DeMille’s productions, Pine had a few ideas on how to make films cheaper and more efficiently. The two hit it off and started expanding on those notions after bringing Richard Arlen into the equation.
Now, Arlen was an actor who had won an Academy Award for his work in William Wellman’s silent film Wings (1927) and was the lead opposite Charles Laughton in Island of Lost Souls (1932). But his stardom was fading and he had been languishing at Universal in a series of cheap, stock-footage heavy bottom bills, where he was teamed up with Andy Devine as the ‘Aces of Action’ in films like Tropic Fury (1939), Danger on Wheels (1940), and The Devil’s Pipeline (1940). And after doing fourteen of those, Arlen was looking for something different, too.
Serendipitously, the actor was also a pilot, who owned several planes and ran his own aviation school. He then suggested they do a series of films centered around that, starring him and his planes. And so, Pine and Thomas initially formed Picture Corporation of America and cooked up three titles -- Power Dive (1941), Forced Landing (1941), and Flying Blind (1941), and went to their bosses at Paramount, saying they had a star, three scripts (-- which was a bald-faced lie), and three low budget estimates, all looking for financing and a distribution deal.
When Paramount agreed, Pine and Thomas then set-out to actually write those scripts, bringing in people that would eventually become their unofficial, behind the scenes stock company. This included screenwriter Maxwell Shane, who had just helped resurrect The Mummy franchise for Universal with The Mummy’s Hand (1940), and who would go on to write or co-write over half of those 81 films Pine and Thomas did for Paramount (-- in fact he did all of them between 1941-1946).
They also signed author Daniel Mainwaring, who wrote for them under the pseudonym, Geoffrey Homes, on films like They Made Me a Killer (1946) and Hot Cargo (1946).
“Bill Thomas of Pine and Thomas, who made very small and very bad pictures at Paramount, gave me my first real screenwriting job,” said Mainwaring to Pat Milligan (Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s, 1997). “I wrote six pictures in one year, all of which I'd just as soon forget except Big Town (1947). At the end of the year, I fled to the hills and wrote the novel, Build My Gallows High,” which was later adapted by Jacques Tourneur as the film noir classic, Out of the Past (1947).
Also on board were production manager L.B. “Doc” Merman and director Frank McDonald, who had helmed the first three entries of the Torchy Blane series back in the 1930s, starting with Smart Blonde (1937), and then Fly Away Baby (1937) and Blondes at Work (1938), which all star my gal Glenda Farrell and I cannot recommend them enough.
McDonald came onboard with that third film, Flying Blind. All three cost under $90,000 to make and Power Dive alone earned almost a million. And so, in June, 1941, Picture Corporation of America ceased to exist and the newly minted Pine-Thomas Productions signed a six-picture deal with Paramount; three with Arlen, and then three more with the recently signed Chester Morris, another aging star that still had some drawing power.
All the budgets were small, all the plots were simple, and all involved men of action doing dangerous jobs, ranging from flying, to deep sea diving, to car racing -- and someone usually perished doing these very things in the first reel to hammer this peril home.
According to Variety (March, 1942), “The pair have shown a showman's flair for turning out thrill-heavy action dramas. They have consistently led their production classification in Box Office returns.” And by December of that year, they had scored another contract extension with Paramount and an agreement that would allow them to expand and make at least one A-picture a year.
“We're not geniuses by a long shot,” said Pine (Chicago Tribune, April 13, 1947). “And we don't propose to tell the industry how to make pictures. We're just a couple of businessmen who've learned by long experience how to put pictures together to achieve what we consider a maximum amount of entertainment at a minimum cost.”
Arlen would leave the company in 1944 and was replaced with Jack Haley, who signed a multi-picture contract. Haley was an old vaudeville performer and a song-and-dance man. His biggest role, of course, was playing the Tin-Man in The Wizard of Oz (1939), replacing Buddy Ebsen due to a massive allergic reaction to the silver make-up.
And so, with his signing, Pine-Thomas would venture into some new low-budget territory with a series of musicals, starting with Take it Big (1944), and comedies -- along with a pinch of mystery, with One Body Too Many (1944).
McDonald would direct both, and Shayne would co-write the script for One Body Too Many with Winston Miller, an actor turned screenwriter. He had assisted David O. Selznick in the myriad rewrites for Gone with the Wind (1939), and Miller would later script My Darling Clementine (1946) for John Ford.
“Westerns happened to be what I could do best,” said Miller in a later interview (IMDB Quotes). “There are a lot of pictures I couldn't do, like a highly dramatic Bette Davis picture. I can only speak for myself, but you find your niche, you find that other people like it. I never took an assignment I didn't think I could make a good picture out of."
Well, turns out Miller and Shayne were pretty adept at writing comedy, too. For what they’ve concocted here is a smart and snappy comical farce on the Old Dark House murder mysteries, whose set-pieces and characters are constantly moving around and overlapping at a breakneck pace, chock full of a metric ton of rapid fire dialogue and running gags.
These gags range from Alexander Laszlo’s screwy, cuckoo clock inspired soundtrack; to Tuttle’s cowardly, self-deprecating one-liners; to Merkil and Matthews constant offer of percolated coffee that may or may not be tainted with rat poison that our hero won’t drink because, well, he’s a drip.
But Tuttle does have his heroic moments, too, like when he saves Carol from being flattened by that falling masonry. And then, against the better judgment of both angels on his shoulders, Tuttle decides to stay, get to the bottom of things, and ferret out the culprit before anything else happens to her.
The problem is, everyone else is in on it. Or they’re all at least in on something as alliances are forged and plans are hatched to get rid of Rutherford’s body to scramble those inheritance shares by those convinced they’re on the shallow end of the trough. But only one of them will resort to murder.
And so, Tuttle once more takes up his morbid vigil in the library for a pretty good gag, where he pulls a book off the shelf to pass the time, Murder at Midnight, which he begins to read out loud only to have everything described in the book happen to him in real life -- the storm breaking, the clock striking twelve, and most shockingly, a secret passage opening up behind him!
Here, the scene is completed when two devilish hands reach out of the darkness to strangle the unwitting hero of our piece! Good thing this all proves too outlandish for Tuttle, who moves away and out of reach just in time. But as he tosses the lurid book away, leaving his attacker to resort to Plan B, the power is suddenly cut and Tuttle, lost in the dark, is knocked-out by someone.
When he comes to, surrounded by the others, Tuttle fears Carol has been hurt because she has blood on her hands -- only to find out it's his blood, from a scalp wound, and then nearly passes out again.
Worse yet, when the lights went out -- the house's and his, someone made off with the body. But as Tuttle dramatically reenacts the events that led to this dire predicament, familial hostility finally boils over; an errant punch is thrown, intended for someone else, only to land on our ersatz detective's jaw, sending him reeling into the fireplace, where he inadvertently triggers a secret chamber, which reveals Cyrus's corpse stuffed inside.
Later, we learn it was Davis, Kenneth and Margaret who were behind this latest subterfuge -- well, sort of, when the conspirators regroup to try again. Only they realize that none of them actually got around to moving the body the last time, meaning someone else was up to no good, too.
Meantime, Gellman has come up with a plan to catch the conspirators in the act. Seems he wants to remove the body from the coffin and have Tuttle replace it. Thus, when the guilty party tries again, they’ll nab them. But Tuttle better hope whoever that may be isn’t currently sneaking into the kitchen, where they secure a very large butcher knife!
Back in the library, as Tuttle barely holds it together inside the cramped and apparently sound-proof coffin, someone sneaks in and locks it. This forces those other three conspirators to just take the whole coffin.
Not realizing who’s really inside of it, they schlep the coffin outside, where they dispose of the casket by dropping it and Tuttle into a murky, man-made fish pond.
Luckily for Tuttle, Carol couldn’t sleep and spied the three unrecognizable people in hats and raincoats through her bedroom window as they moved the coffin toward the cement pond. But by the time she arrives, the others are long gone.
However, she is able to drain the water before the coffin is completely swamped and saves Tuttle.
When they get back inside, where Tuttle will continuously pull live goldfish from his pockets for the next ten minutes or so, he reveals this was all Gellman’s idea as they move to retrieve the real body from the closet they stashed it in -- only once again, the body has been replaced; this time by Gellman, who is most definitely dead!
Gathering up all the suspects, Carol relates how she saw three people moving the coffin but recognized none of them -- much to Davis and the other conspirators’ relief. Then, Tuttle notices Merkil’s shoes are muddy, but the butler claims he went out to let the family cat in due to the storm.
Now, moving bodies around is one thing, but murder is a whole new level of peril. Thus, Tuttle declares this is too much for him and he is going to alert the police -- only he can’t; because one, the phones are no longer working; and two, according to Merkil, the storm has washed out the lone bridge on the one and only road to the mansion because OF COURSE it did.
Thus and so, it’s decided that everyone should lock themselves into their bedrooms for their own safety until morning, including Tuttle, who is given a room and a spare pair of pajamas so he can get out of his wet clothes.
But while avoiding eye contact with a creepy portrait hanging in his designated bedroom -- that appears to be keeping an eye on him, as well -- Tuttle, wrapped up in a towel, hangs his suit up in the closet to dry.
Here, he once again accidentally triggers another hidden panel, which reveals an extensive secret passageway that snakes its way all throughout the mansion.
Now, what happens next is a fairly hysterical comedy of errors as Tuttle soon gets trapped in the passageway, gets lost in the dark, and constantly stumbles back into the wrong bedrooms, thinking they’re his, catching several of the womenfolk in a state of undress.
He then continues to sneak around, but then loses his towel when it gets caught in a door, leaving him stark naked!
This streaking then continues until Tuttle winds up hiding in a clothes hamper, where he is finally caught with only a batch of kittens to use to save what little dignity the man had left. (Words fail me on how funny this whole sequence is. More on this in a second.)
Later, after things calm down considerably, Tuttle is awoken when he hears someone prowling around in the room above him. These noises lead both Tuttle and Mona Rutherford upstairs to the observatory.
Seems she and Henry have been sleeping in separate rooms for a while now due to her constant boozing and flirting with other men. When they don’t find anything, he escorts her back to her room.
But once again, his robe gets caught when her door swings shut, which is now locked, trapping him. Strangely, no one responds when he knocks on the door. And then Carol finds Tuttle and wrongly assumes Mona has gotten her hooks into him, too.
Now, these two have been sort of developing feelings for each other as this cataclysmic night of errors and terrors has elapsed. And not wanting to spoil that, Tuttle is determined to prove nothing happened between him and Mona. Thus, he inevitably breaks the bedroom door down, where they find Mona on the bed, dead, with a knife sticking out of her chest!
Carol’s startled scream brings everyone else into the room, where they all grill Tuttle, who was the last person to see both murder victims still alive in a locked room. When no one believes his story about the secret passages, they decide to lock Tuttle up in the tower before he can murder anyone else. And then they leave it at that until the police can be summoned in the morning.
But! While everyone else thinks he’s guilty, Carol believes Tuttle is innocent and sneaks into the observatory to see him. And as that romantic spark between these two starts to flare up, Carol takes a look through the massive telescope to see what the stars say about their future -- only to make a gruesome discovery instead: Cyrus’s body has been stuffed inside of it!
With that, Tuttle stays behind to guard the body while Carol rounds everyone else up and herds them up to the tower -- only she can’t find the grieving Henry. She checks Mona’s room, but he’s not there either.
However, that secret panel Tuttle swore was there all along is now open! And when she enters this darkened passage, Carol finds the missing detective, alive but all trussed up. She also finds Henry, lurking in the shadows, and then suddenly realizes he was the killer all along!
As to why he did the dastardly deed: Seems Mona was following him into the tower when Tuttle found her earlier. And since his wife was getting too curious, she had to be eliminated. As for Gellman, well, the lawyer caught Henry breaking into that safe to get at the will, so he had to go, too.
The will also showed Henry was on the short-end on his share of the loot. Thus, he has been working hard to rectify that ever since, meaning Carol must be eliminated as well.
But her screams alert the others, who trace them to the secret passageway, where they also find the detective, who confirms it was Henry all along and how he’s taken a captured Carol deeper into the catacombs.
Thus, as the men pursue them, Henry uses his knowledge of this maze to open several trapdoors, whittling away his pursuers until only Tuttle is left.
Thus the chase continues, with Tuttle tracking them all the way up to the observatory, where Henry intends to toss Carol from its highest perch.
But as he raves, and Tuttle negotiates Carol’s release, the others inside activate the telescope.
And as the giant contraption trundles to its new celestial setting, it knocks Henry to his doom just as Tuttle wrests Carol away to safety and they embrace as the credits roll.
Considering its vintage, One Body Too Many has a little more bite than you’d probably think. It’s a little rowdy, a little bawdy, and is an absolute delight.
This kind of mash-up of comedy and chills had been a thing since Bob Hope zinged his way through The Cat and the Canary (1939) and The Ghost Breakers (1940), which soon triggered a lot of imitators.
Some of these cash-ins on this formula were pretty good. Most were not, and relied way too much on schtick, slapstick, and ah-lot of screaming and yelling and property damage.
I guess it all kinda depended on which comedian was in the lead. Milton Berle did just fine in The Whispering Ghost (1942), as did Red Skelton with Whistling in the Dark (1941). And I’m happy to report that Jack Haley was more than up to the task, too.
Honestly, Haley was a bit of a revelation here. I had only seen him in The Wizard of Oz before catching One Body Too Many, a rare headliner for the actor, and loved it enough to immediately track down his follow-up feature, Scared Stiff (1945) -- not to be confused with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis’s 1953 film, which was in fact a remake of Hope’s The Ghost Catchers,
For their version of Scared Stiff , the Dollar Bills basically brought the whole band back together: McDonald, Shayne -- this time co-writing with Mainwaring, and Haley, who teams up with Ann Savage to find more missing bodies and solve another string of murders. This follow up wasn’t near as good, mind you, but I still think it’s worth a spin.
Meanwhile, Haley is funny as hell in One Body Too Many as the constantly befuddled Tuttle. He has a wonderful sense of comedic timing, waiting for just the right moment to finish off a line someone else started or to punctuate a joke -- especially with all of those fish. And that whole segment where he’s half naked, sneaking and eventually streaking from room to room belongs in the Hall of Fame of such things -- and that final punchline with the kittens, omigod.
His co-stars are also a lot of fun, too, and it's always great to see some career second bananas come to the forefront.
The San Angelo Times (February 25, 1945).
Here, Haley has excellent chemistry with Jean Parker and their scenes together just crackle. I kinda wish Douglas Fowley, who was so fantastic as the lunatic director in Singing in the Rain (1952) and as the squad malcontent in Battleground (1949), had a little more to do, but he makes for a fine enough villain. And I love William Edmunds as the hair-brained professor -- watch for the scene where he loses his shit when they find Cyrus’ corpse plugged into the telescope.
And then there’s our old friend, Bela Lugosi.
I tell ya, it did my heart good to watch his performance as the kooky butler in One Body Too Many. Always in the scene, always listening, helping his co-stars, and delivering plenty of genuine laughs -- none of them at his own expense.
Yeah, One Body Too Many was a rare opportunity for Lugosi to show off his comedic side, where he wasn’t constantly overwhelmed by Bud and Lou.
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That running gag with the coffee, as he keeps foisting it on people, only to be rejected over and over; and the hangdog look on his face when they do is priceless. And for the record, the coffee wasn’t poisoned and provides a perfect final punchline for the film.
But the most hysterical moment is when Haley is grilling Lugosi over the incriminating mud on his shoes,and is told it was due to the storm. When Haley asks, “What storm?” Lugosi marches to the sliding glass door, swings it open, lightning flashes and thunder booms, waves his hand in a “duh” motion, and says, “That storm.”
It’s all in the delivery, and it's a lot funnier in motion. Trust me. It’s so good. We hadn’t lost him completely to the needle yet, Fellow Programs, and this role for Lugosi needs to be a lot better known than it is.
Hell this whole film needs to be better known than it is. This is no Moldy-Oldie. This is a Classic Creaker, with so many good little bits that they all really add up to something pretty great.
Personally, I found it to be hysterical, which means you all will probably at least find it somewhat amusing. Also, if you’re a fan of the chaotic Clue (1985), here’s something from the fossil record you should probably dig into.
Thus and so, the only real complaint I have about One Body Too Many is that it’s currently stuck in Public Domain Hell. This explains why every print I have found is pretty dreadful -- either washed-out or faded into murk and will likely remain that way as I don’t see any Special or Remastered Edition on these old cheap programmers anytime soon, which is too bad.
Because right now, we’re only seeing about half that sequence when Haley is running around in the dark in his birthday suit due to the deterioration of the infinite dubs and I would like to see all of it, dammit. Get on that, somebody. Or is that one hope too many?
Originally published on October 20, 2020, at Micro-Brewed Reviews.
