Serial of the Month: Mystery of the Riverboat
I know I rag on Universal’s later serials for their plot heavy stories with tons of dialog and intermittant action, but occasionally one comes along where their mid forties template actually works. Mystery of the Riverboat (1944) is one of those rare examples. For once the plot is what actually keeps the serial going, a twisty-turvy concoction full of doublecrosses, surprise revelations and murder frames all set along the Louisiana Bayou.
The serial opens during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Professor Hartman (Byron Foulger) is showing his new discovery to Herman Eienreich (Ian Wolfe) and his henchman Craig Cassard (Dick Curtis). It is a new fuel that is cheaper to produce and burns hotter and quicker than gasoline, dubbed nitrolene by the scientist. Apparently the base ingrediant, which can be drilled for just like oil, is only found in the swamp on the properties owned by the Langtry, Perrin and Duval families. Once Hartman gives Einreich a map detailing where the underground pools are located, Einreich has Cassard murder the scientist.
Einreich books passage on the Morning Glory paddlewheel riverboat, which is head toward Duval Landing, where the properties are located. Captain Ethan Perrin (Oscar O’Shea) who is captain of the boat, along with his first mate and daughter Jenny (Marjorie Clements), is one of the land owners. Also coming aboard are Steven Langtry (Robert Lowery), old family friend, lawyer and also an owner of some of the desired property.
Joining the voyage is cultured Rudoph Toller (Lyle Talbot) accompanied by his obvious moll Celeste Eltree (Marian Martin) and the even more obvious thugs Bruno Bloch (Anthony Warde) and Louis Schaber (Joe Devlin). Toller knows all about the nitrolene and plans to steal it out from under Einrich. Last to board is a heavily bearded man named Clayton (Arthur Hohl) who seems to know all about Einreich and Toller and creeps around the boat watching both.
That night Einrich starts nogtiating with Captain Perrin for his property, but Steve, suspicious of why he would want so much worthless swamp land, puts a stop to the proposed sale by reminding Captain Perrin of the Arcadia Pact, a legal agreement that prevents any of the land from being sold unless the Perrin, Langtry and Duval families all agree. Since Jean Duval (Earl Hodgins) is in Duval Landing, the proposed sale is put on hold for the time being.
Then, while everyone is in the salon enjoying the singing of Minstrel (Jimmy Dodd) and the dancing of Jug Jenks (Eddie Quillan), Toller has Bloch search Einreich’s cabin for the map of the drill sites, but it turns out he is too late as Clayton had already stolen them.
The next morning as the Morning Glory is coming upon a shanty town, Steve convinces Captain Perrin to layover for a few minutes so that he can talk to Cassard, who Steve knows had been with Einreich in New Orleans. Though it will play havoc with their schedule, Captain Perrin reluctantly agrees and has chief purser Napoleon (Mantan Moreland) get Steve a rowboat.
Steve rows over to Cassard’s shanty. The man is beligerant and refuses to tell Steve anything about his trip to New Orleans. Steve pulls out a newspaper detailing the unsolved murder of Prof. Hartman, telling Cassard that he knows he and Einreich had business dealings with the scientist, and if Cassard doesn’t spill what he knows, Steve will have Cassard put away for murder. Cassard attacks Steve and the two men destroy the meager furnishings inside of the shanty in a knock down, drag out fight.
Meanwhile back on the boat, Einreich learns from Napoleon that the reason the boat has stopped is that Steve had to go to see Cassard on some legal business. Einreich sneaks into the wheelhouse where he throws a blindfold over Jenny and then throws her into a corner, knocking her out. Signaling the engine room for full speed, Einreich steers the boat toward the shanty town and rams Cassard’s shanty with both men inside, running over it and sending it to the bottom of the river….
As you can see this is not your average serial from Universal, what with the unusual setting of the modern day Louisiana Bayou combined with a standard Western plot, and musical numbers sprinkled throughout. The early chapters feature songs by future Mousketeer Jimmy Dodd, Eddie Quillan and even Marian Martin belts one out for the boat’s patrons. Quillan tap dances and juggles up a storm during his numbers, throwing in some good vaudeville comedy along the way.
Too bad the boat of the title gets disabled in Chapter Four and except for brief appearance in Chapter Six rescuing people during a flood, it dissapears from the serial along with the songs, only the wheelhouse is seen as the heroes’ headquarters in a couple of chapters. Once everybody gets to Duval Landing, most of the action takes place out on the bayou or at the Duval estate. A minor quible, but if your title is Mystery of the Riverboat, I expect the riverboat to be prominant throughout.
The multiple villains give the serial a nice complex plot that is well handled with two different factions fighting over the prize while trying to keep the heroes in the dark and a bearded mystery man pits them all against each other for his own reasons. The reveal of his true identity at the halfway mark is a nice twist and comes as a genuine surprise.
Robert Lowery gives his best performance in a serial. Tough and smart, he seems less pissed off than he did in his Columbia serials. After all of the fighting and shooting he does throughout the serial he gets to do a court scene and does a passable Perry Mason imitation defending himself on a trumped up murder charge. Marjorie Clements is a good compliment to him as a lively heroine with a mind of her own who demonstrates an independent streak that thankfully doesn’t cause her to constantly get in trouble and have the hero save her, it’s the opposite in fact with her saving the hero on several occasions. They make the minor subplot of them being former childhood sweethearts, who revive the spark on meeting subtle and plausible.
Lyle Talbot is the best of the villains. Smart and ruthless, he also projects a sense of sophisticated amusement at most of the setbacks the heroes throw in his way. For once villain doesn’t angrily berate his men for failure, instead he takes it philosophically as something they can turn to their advantage later on. Marian Martin is also a good compliment to his villainy, offering unimpressed sarcastic commentary to Talbot’s schemes, most of which amuses Talbot no end.
Arthur Hohl’s mystery man stands in for the ranting and raving villain, but he doesn’t really get that physically angry, instead he seeths with repressed rage at the wrongs he feels have been done him. It is a nice understated performance.
As for the henchmen, though Warde and Devlin are giving things to do, the serial is a little overcrowded and they tend to get pushed into the background. Plus they’re overshadowed by Francis McDonald’s Cajun henchman to Hohl, who shows up around Chapter Four. Armed with a hunting knife and a passable Cajun accent, McDonald stands out as a clever and rather polite killer who causes much more trouble for the heroes once they get to the Landing than Talbot and Wolfe do in the early chapters.
SPOILER ALERT! Speaking of Ian Wolfe, he starts out as a pretty good oily bad guy in the first chapter but unfortunately gets bumped off in the second chapter, providing the first of the many frame ups against Lowery (after a while you begin to wonder if the writers had a really bad experience with a lawyer the way they heap problems on the hero).
But let’s face it, even people who have not seen this serial will know who steals the film from the minute he walks on the screen, Mantan “Da Man” Moreland. As usual, Moreland doesn’t play a character so much as he plays the public personae his fans have come to know and love, the slightly scared though always helpful sidekick full of flippant self depricating humor. Moreland invests a lot of comedy into the serial with his patented oneliners, when he is not saving the hero from one death trap or another in the early chapters (Clements and Quillan would handle those duties in the later episodes).
One of his funniest lines comes in Chapter Three, when he is on guard duty at night after another act of sabotage by the villains and Lowery asks him if he is scared of running in to a ghost in the dark. Moreland replies “Oh ghosts don’t scare me in the dark, I can see them but they can’t see me.” Sadly after Chapter Six Moreland gets pushed into the background and Eddie Quillan’s youthfully enthusiastic vaudvillian becomes Lowery’s sidekick in the later chapters. Being the mid-forties I guess it would be too controversal to have Moreland duking it out with Warde or McDonald (though it would have been awesome to see). Oh well, for compensation, it is Moreland that figures out what the villains are after and where it is located.
So if you are looking for a serial that’s a little different, are a Mantan Moreland fan, or enjoy toe tapping early forties pop tunes, you might want to book passage on the Morning Glory.
