Whistling in the Dark

When car trouble stalls his elopement, mystery writer Wally Porter ("Crime is my racket," he declares) doesn't know he's sharing drinks with gangsters who want to rub out a defiant brewer who won't pay for "protection." After he boasts he's "probably the world's greatest living authority on murder," timid Wally and his flirty fiancee become hesitant hostages in homicide planning. If the title and the premise are more familiar via its zippy 1941 remake starring Red Skelton as the radio sleuth "The Fox," this first screen version of the farcical 1932 source play offers an equally genial and clever take on the material. It's also a rare showcase lead for Broadway's original Wally: nimble character actor Ernest Truex, who pairs marvelously with Una Merkel as his teasing girlfriend, Toby, and squares off nicely with fellow New York-run costar Edward Arnold as mob leader Jake Dillon. Adapted and directed by Elliott Nugent (The Male Animal, The Cat and the Canary), Whistling in the Dark is light on its feet, spry in its humor and sure to prompt you to raise a toast to crime.