Thursday, August 12, 2021

Wednesday, August 11 - Hollywood Stadium Mystery

Hollywood Stadium Mystery (1938)

A masked man enters a library on a rain drenched night - after a few words he is shot dead by the owner with a concealed pistol...but it is only a play. District Attorney Paul Devons (Neil Hamilton) is very scathing of the writer of such rubbish, only to find it is the pretty girl he has been trying to chat up. Pauline Ward (Evelyn Venable) is a mystery writer - the dialogue between her and Bill is delicious and witty - when she and her agent are leaving the theatre they are held up by a masked man at gunpoint!!! but it is only Bill, just trying to prove a point. She turns the tables on him and has him arrested by the night- watchman (Lucien Littlefield) as an armed and dangerous man. Pauline and her agent are going to the fights but when the lights are dimmed, in honour of a dying fighter, one of the contenders is murdered and people are already calling it the "Hollywood Stadium Mystery". 60,000 suspects but the police, in their wisdom, keep only the first three rows for questioning. One of those is Smiley Burnette, who is then called up to entertain the crowd with his impressions of a car race. Fortunately we don't see much of him. The suspects mount up - Edna Mayberry (Lynne Roberts) an old girlfriend who wants revenge, her brother (even though he isn't credited I believe it's Junior Coghlan), a refreshment clerk who wants to avenge his sister and Althea Ames (Barbara Pepper) who just acts suspicious. Pauline establishes that the fighter was killed by poison gas coming from a gun. There is also a scene thrown in when Pauline is attacked in Althea's dressing room by a hooded figure.

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