Word: philos
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...return to the S. S. Van Dine ghoulish extravaganzas William Powell, while easily surpassing his understudy, Basil Rathbone, who appeared as Philo Vance in the "Bishop Murder Case", gives a distinctly inferior performance to his first appearance as the modernist detective. His suavity is the direct cause of objection: ennui sits so heavily upon him that it finally spreads to the spectator and the latter at last doesn't give a--(censored on Sundays) just who did make off with the entirely nasty stockbroker: he's done away with and that's the important point. Mr. Powell sits and sits...
...hilarious act on a hospital cot, trying to roll himself into a three-quarter blanket, the audience is informed that he was just "dying to introduce the next sketch." The usual parodies include a mystery story with Clive Brook as Sherlock Holmes and William Powell as Philo Vance, and Harry Green singing something called "I'm Isidore, the Toreador." Best sketch: Maurice Chevalier and Evelyn Brent in The Origin of the Apache...
...gets murdered, is a stockbroker. He has ruined several of his customers by selling them out in a market slump and each of the ruined traders has some other, private, reason for killing him. One evening they all meet at Benson's place in the country, where Detective Philo Vance is also a guest. Benson is killed and his murder later detected. William Powell, who has been Philo Vance twice before, plays him again with ease and conviction. Best shot...
...Bishop Murder Case (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Cock Robin was the first to go. An arrow finished him. Then little Johnny Sprigg was shot in the top of his wig and Humpty Dumpty tumbled off a wall. It was Philo Vance, the amateur detective of the S. S. Van Dine mystery stories, who found the solution of the Mother Goose pattern in the series of horrible murders involving first Mr. Cochrane Robin in an archery butt, then a gentleman named Sperling, which is sparrow in German, then Mr. Sprigg, and finally a hunchback who resembled Humpty principally in the manner...
...stop to such activities with the declaration that Harvard had a greater need for academic building development. The question was virtually dropped for more than a decade, but then Harvard's crying need once again broke into top-column print. It would require the services of a veritable Philo Vance to disclose the identity of those who have not only brought the problem of a new athletic building to the fore once again, but also cinched the completion of such a structure at Harvard...