Jack Oakie's gift for broad comedy was a perfect fit for the role of an egotistical movie star who decides to play detective off-screen when he and his fellow stars start getting poison pen letters threatening to kill them over bad acting. His detective skills are no threat to suspects like Eduardo Cianelli, an erudite wax-museum proprietor, but they sure manage to get in the way of real detective Edgar Kennedy and studio publicity woman Ann Sothern. Oakie would always contend that his inexpensive comedies helped the various studios at which he worked - RKO in this case - finance more ambitious, artsy projects. Certainly his "hail fellow well met" persona was a hit with audiences. As he plays off Cianelli's menace, Kennedy's slow burn and Sothern's wise-cracking he's pretty much irresistible. It also helps that the picture gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the RKO back lot as the killer stalks Oakie to the set of his latest picture. RKO remade the film in 1946 as Genius at Work, with Wally Brown and Alan Carney as on-screen detectives, Anne Jefrreys as the studio flack and Lionel Atwill and Bela Lugosi as suspects, but most fans give this version the nod for pure comedy.

By Frank Miller