MOVIE OF THE DAY: "VOICE OF THE WHISTLER" (1945)

Auto magnate John Sinclair is working himself to death. Friendless and without family, he suddenly proposes marriage to a nurse, Joan Martin. He wants to spend his remaining days with someone who cares, offering her "my entire fortune for a few months of your life." 

To Joan, who grew up poor, this sounds dandy -- until Sinclair gradually regains his health... and discovers that she's sick of living in a lonely lighthouse with a husband she loathes... and her former fiance comes by, rekindling old feelings... 

The fourth in Columbia's Whistler movies based on the popular radio series, Voice of the Whistler shows how loneliness affects the lives of its principal characters. By the end, it has killed two of them physically, and one psychologically. Try pitching an idea like that at one of the major studios today, see where it gets you.

Voice of the Whistler appears to rise above its B-movie status by opening with a newsreel straight out of Citizen Kane. From that point on, however, it's onto the slightly shabby Columbia soundstages, starkly furnished and with as few knickknacks as possible in order to save some dough. 

The sense of cheapness even affects the dialogue. When John Sinclair initially decides he needs a vacation, he books passage on a steamer to Duluth. Duluth?! Dude, you're a multi-millionaire! At least try Block Island. 

Sinclair is taken under Sparrow's wing.

Nobody in Voice of the Whistler is who they appear to be.  Sinclair initially passes himself off as an ordinary guy named John Carter. Ernie Sparrow, who cares for Sinclair when the latter collapses on the street, was once a great boxer in the UK, but found true happiness as a cabdriver in Detroit. (Yes, this is fictional.) Joan Martin seems like the nicest nurse in town, until her grasping, greedy side comes to the fore. Her ex-fiance Fred, a friendly doctor, decides, literally overnight, to murder Sinclair. You'll never look at your neighbor the same way again.

"Pay no attention to the fiance behind
the window!"

Nurse Joan in particular is a real piece of work. Breaking the news to Fred that she's marrying Sinclair, she barks, "I've given you the chance to get ahead and you've failed!", adding for good measure, "You're soft!" After six months stuck with Sinclair, she spits at her now-healthy husband, "I've kept my part of the bargain. You haven't!" Joan might have taken the Nightingale Nursing Pledge, but she really needs to brush up on her interpersonal skills.

Living in a Maine lighthouse miles from
anyone else with a rich husband who
didn't die and a dumbass boxer who smells
like seafood -- what's not to love?

But all bets are off when Fred visits them at their Maine lighthouse, where Ernie Sparrow also lives because... well, it's not clear what he's doing there, other than having accepted Sinclair's invitation. If I thought I had six months to live with a pretty wife, having a washed-up Cockney pugilist hang around cracking wise would be the last thing I'd want around me 24/7. 

No fool he, Sinclair immediately figures out that Fred has come for more than fried clams and a can of New England Ale. In one of the sickest moments of any of the Whistler movies, Sinclair manipulates Fred into murdering him, only to turn the tables at the very last minute. And Ernie doing the same to him. And Joan doing the same to them.

As with the best of the entries in the series, Voice of the Whistler creates an uneasy tone right from the beginning, gradually amping things up until its startlingly strange finale. You leave the Whistler movies as if awakening from a particularly troubling dream that you can't immediately shake off, somewhat like being married to me.


Of course, none of the Whistler movies would be half as good without Richard Dix, the Bogart of the B's, as their perennially doomed "hero." Dix plays Sinclair with a stark reality and empathy that appears shockingly personal.

When we first meet him, Sinclair is a walking corpse, rich in money and celebrity, but devoid of any life. Regaining his health, he appears to be the happiest, heartiest person on earth. By the end, the now-insanely jealous Sinclair transforms into a stone-cold killer. In each phase, Dix is totally convincing.

Don't mess with Dix.

Once a leading man in silents and early talkies, Richard Dix saw his fortunes wane over time. Alcoholism, too, had by now taken its toll; in Voice of the Whistler, Dix can be heard occasionally slurring his dialogue, and not because he's tired. This unintended glimpse into the real man offers an emotional resonance lacking in many actors of his time or today's. 

Indeed, Richard Dix became an even better, more interesting actor as he drifted into B's and his health deteriorated. He seems to be willing his characters to life as he himself was dying. Watch Voice of the Whistler and picture any contemporary actor his age -- only 52, but looking much older -- doing the same job. It isn't a coincidence that when he could no longer work, Columbia shot only one Whistler movie without him before ending the series. Richard Dix was irreplaceable.

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(Click on the Richard Dix label below for more of his movies.)

MOVIE OF THE DAY: "THE POWER OF THE WHISTLER" (1945)

Forget about I Love a Mystery and The Shadow Strikes. The movies based on The Whistler are how to bring a radio series to the screen. From their unsettling opening theme music (whistled, of course) to their violent climaxes, the Whistler  B-movies -- ranging from fine to terrific -- put many A's to shame.

The Power of the Whistler, one of the best in the series, tells of the story of fortune teller Jean Lang, who predicts death within 24 hours for William Everest, an amnesiac she meets in Greenwich Village. As Jean and her sister Frances try to put together William's past from the items in his pocket -- a train schedule, lighter, doctor's prescription, and the like -- they gradually discover that the gentle-spoken man isn't quite as gentle as he seems. But as predicted, William keeps his appointment with death right on time.

"I don't know who you are, you don't know
who you are -- come home with me!"

For all its quiet terror, there's a charming, unintended naivete running through The Power of the Whistler. When William has a dizzy spell upon first meeting Jean, she suggests he sit down somewhere close by. "The owner of this car won't object, I'm sure!" she chirps merrily. And when the driver finally does appear, he happily gives them a lift to where they want to go. (This is supposed to be New York, remember.)

That's not a flattering look for him.

Now, say you're a young woman who meets a guy 25 years your senior, and you have no idea who he is. Would you bring him back to the apartment you share with your younger sister so he can stay the night? Of course! There's nothing strange about this, nor how your sister's parakeet suddenly turns up strangled to death when your back is turned. On the other hand, he makes a swell over-easy egg for breakfast the following morning! (The parakeet is just one of three cute little animals who meet a grisly death at his hands. Yeah! That's what I'm talkin' about!)

Frances brings William's scrip to the drug store where it was filled. Turns out it's a prescription for poison. As the druggist says, "There's not much call for it." I would hope not. Is it unusual to fill out a prescription for poison at CVS these days? (William forged the scrip himself, but please.)

William, meanwhile, has strong-armed Jane into accompanying him to visit a "friend" in New Jersey he's suddenly remembered -- the judge who sent him up the river. By now, Frances and her boyfriend Charlie have figured out that William is "an escaped maniac" -- the only kind of maniac they have in these movies. The police were never notified because the prison warden believed William had been cured anyway. That's a very good reason to keep the information from the public. Especially when William sends the warden a birthday cake laced with poison. (Oh, so that's what it was for!)

"Your name's written in ink?
That's good enough for us!"

If that doesn't give you faith in the system, William gets through a police dragnet by offering foolproof ID: a name written on the label of the suit jacket he stole from the prison warden upon his escape. Surely there must be some sort of happy middle between outright incompetence and getting X-rayed at the airport. Fortunately for all, William meets a particularly nasty end in a hayloft that even had my usually-peace loving wife cheering.

Nor have I seen a cop in Central Park
during broad daylight.

Per usual with the Columbia B's, the sets for The Power of the Whistler are drab, but help set the mood. The Central Park scenes, meanwhile, feature ambient studio sounds -- the closing of a door, a chair squeaking on the floor -- I've never heard during my visits. No problem -- at least the actors say their lines correctly! And despite what they say, there are no Dexter or Harris Streets in New York, so don't expect to visit them on your next TCM Movie Tour. 


The Whistler movies appear to be a blueprint for the much-later Twilight Zone. In this case, your host is The Whistler, who always speaks the same introduction: "I am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales, hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows." He works for the NSA now.

You might want to pay attention to that whistling
shadow behind you, mister.

The Whistler himself -- itself? -- is best described as Fate in sardonic human form, seen only as a shadow with a trench coat and fedora, waiting patiently for the losers in his tales to meet a ghastly end they can never escape.

The other thread running through all but one of the Whistler movies is Richard Dix, one of the most underrated actors of the '40s. Continually described in The Power of the Whistler as "good-looking," he has instead the appearance of a man who's seen too much of life's darker side. He is, to use an archaic phrase, "ruggedly handsome," a description no longer used for today's pretty-boy actors. Just for comparison, Dix is 52 in The Power of

the Whistler, the same age that Tom Cruise is now.
 
Switching with ease from compassionate to terrifying in the bat of an eye, Dix -- as in The Ghost Ship -- gives extraordinary depth to William Everest, a character that other actors would play as a jacked-up nut job. He starts his morning saying grace at the breakfast table. By the evening, he's murderously approaching Jean with a genuinely bloodcurdling expression in his eyes -- and is absolutely convincing both times. By any standard, Richard Dix is the real power of The Whistler.

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To read about I Love a Mystery, go here.
To read about The Shadow Strikes, go here.
To read about another radio-to-movie feature, Inner Sanctum, go here.
To read about The Ghost Ship, go here.