CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

gerdeen-1 A good whodunit should have a bit of originality in the plot, and the solution should not be too easy to guess. And it shouldn't be too long. Under those criteria, this last episode in the "Crime Doctor" series holds up very well.The plot is about a convicted arsonist who gets an early release from prison. The agent of his good fortune is the Crime Doctor himself, who believes the man is guilty but considers him redeemable. Ignoring the advice of the doctor and others, the man rashly sets out to prove his innocence. Soon he's in bigger trouble than ever, and it all looks just a bit too convenient.Warner Baxter, whose career was drawing toward an end, is considerably grayer than in his previous "Crime Doctor" films, and he doesn't get involved in much action. But he doesn't seem frail. He has a stylish presence that compensates for the movie's fairly spartan production values.The two women in the ex-con's life, who turn out to be important to the mystery, are played by Lois Maxwell and Adele Jergens. Maxwell is better remembered today, because of her later role as "Moneypenny" in the James Bond films. But in 1949, Jergens, a former burlesque queen, was a much bigger name in movies. She certainly gets the more glamorous treatment here.

markjeff_1 As has earlier been commented, Whit Bissell's performance here as an aspiring and mentally challenged composer is a scene-stealer. He intuitively takes the film to another plane with a blissful unawareness that is inadvertent and yet elevating. Along with the tragic end of his character Tom Lister in "Brute Force" this is one of his most affecting performances of the forties. Probably the second most affecting. He seems to inhabit this role as opposed to the other actors in the film who seem to just be going through their paces robotically and quite superficially with little or no special touch of humanity other than to move the story along so they can pick up their check. The film stops when he comes on the screen and you do a double take because you sense this performance is a silk purse in a sow's ear of a film. His character Pete Bellem, touching, halting and muddling along, stays with you when everyone else in the film just fades away into cardboard kitsch heaven. And that song of his so conscientiously crumbles upon itself that it takes on a profound, sad and yet sweet resonance which belies its silliness. Whit was a talented pianist, by the way. He puts that to use here (and in some other roles through the years). He was also a fencing enthusiast in real life. His character Pete Bellem, harmless and hampered and even harassed here by those who have no time of day for him and, in their self-anointed intellectual superiority, belittle what they feel are his mental limits, may be in a world of his own but in this world of charlatans and floozies and hucksters, his seems a better, kinder world. His fingers are his intellect. He loves his ditty no end and to the exclusion of all critique. He is a man-child in this not so promised land and (toot-toot) one you root for. He is the heart and very much the only soul of this film and definitely the only one who stays with you as the credits roll. Great job. Rest in peace, Whit.

sol1218 **SPOILERS** Released from prison after serving three years of a ten year sentence for the arson fire that burned down his boss' music studios Steve Carter, Stephen Dunne, is determined to find out who the real arsonist was who also ended up framing him for the crime. Carter's girlfriend at the music studio Jane Darrin, Louis Maxwell, whom he two-timed before he was sent up the river is still crazy about him. Jane wants Dr. Robert Ordway, Warner Baxter, who testified to Carters sanity at his trial to talk some sense into his hot head before he does something foolish. Like killing the person whom he thinks famed him co-worker Carl Anson, George Meeker, and end up in the Sign Sing electric chair.Given his job back by a grateful Phillip Bellem, Dan Deddoe, who's business he was convicted in burning down but who always felt that he was innocent Carter make it a point to confront Anson and Bellems rival in the music business jukebox king George "Goldie" Harrigan, Robert Armstrong. Carter feels their the two persons most responsible for burning down the Bellem Stuidos.Carter going to see Harrigan for a job, even though he already has one, so he can find out if he, an ex-gangster, was the one who had Bellem's place torched. Later when Carter plans to meet with Anson a his place of business at the Bellem Studios things go a bit screwy for him: Anson is found found shot death with Harrigan, who Carter asked for a job, mad as hell at him for sealing his lover and private secretary Inez Gray, Adele Jergens, from under his nose and out of his office.On the run for almost half of the movie Carter now wanted for Anson's murder knows that he's been framed for a second time by whoever framed him in the Bellem Studio arson. Carter now more then ever needs Dr.Ordway, who always felt that he's innocent, to come to his aid. Shot by the cops in an escape attempt from Jane's apartment Carter is left in limbo and on the run with all the evidence pointing to him as being Anson's murderer. It turns out that Anson's killer overlooked a record being recorded by Bellems brother Pete, Whit Bissell,a engineer at his business establishment. Pete was thrown out of the studio by Anson, for playing his personal insipid and annoying record, just before he was murdered. The record not only exposed who murdered Anson but also exonerated Carter of the earlier Bellem Studio arson.The last of the "Crime Doctor" series that had a very tired Warner Baxter looking as if he wanted to retire, which he was in the movie. Baxter died two years later in 1951 at the age of 62, in peace and quite and away from all the stress and demands as both a crime fighter and crime solver.

Neil Doyle WARNER BAXTER was approaching the end of his life by the time he did THE CRIME DOCTOR'S DIARY, the last film in the Crime Doctor series.This above average programmer is slickly produced, written and acted in true "Crime Doctor" style with some nice performing by LOIS MAXWELL and a good role at the center for STEPHEN DUNNE as an innocent man released from prison and, as it turns out, wrongly framed for arson.The plot has to do with a record music company delivering call-in juke-box service where patrons could request certain records to be played by request, a forerunner of disc jockeys. Haven't been aware of the existence of this sort of thing until I saw MY DREAM IS YOURS (same year) wherein Doris Day worked in such a record establishment where she could be heard by bar patrons.WHIT BISSELL, who turns up in so many films from the '40s and '50s, does a neat job as a mentally deficient but good-humored man trying to get the music industry interested in his foolish folk song. ADELE JERGENS is the girlfriend of Dunne who has the courage to help him when he's on the lam after being hurt by a police bullet, and ROBERT ARMSTRONG is her jealous boss.It's noticeable that there's no strenuous action staged for Baxter, as there usually is in a "Crime Doctor" movie, since the actor was obviously not well during filming. He gets to comment briefly on things and hasn't much of a role at all while others get to hold center stage.But it makes a good crime doctor story and unfolds in a crisply efficient sort of way to make pleasing entertainment. STEPHEN DUNNE and LOIS MAXWELL are both seen to advantage here.Summing up: Not bad at all. One of the more interesting in the series.