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Private eye Michael Shayne (Lloyd Nolan) is hired by old Mrs Murdock (Ethel Griffies) to retrieve a valuable coin that has been stolen from her, the Brasher doubloon. Now the affair is a delicate one because she believes it was stolen by her golddigger daughter-in-law Linda (Doris Merrick), who has left her son Leslie (James Seay) only recently - and Mrs Murdock wants not only the coin back but also wants Shayne to pressure Linda into a divorce. Shayne doesn't like the old woman one bit, but the money's good, and he has sympathy for her deeply traumatized secretary Myrle (Heather Angel). Now thanks to a friend, Lois (Sheila Bromley), who's torn between her nightclub owner husband Alexander (Morris Ankrum) and mobster Lou Venter (Ralph Byrd), Shayne has no problems to track down Linda, but she assures him she hasn't got the doubloon, even when he threatens to call the police. This is good enough for Shayne, so he follows up a few other tracks, like that of a coin dealer (Lester Sharpe) whom the coin was sold to and a private eye (Ted Hecht) working on the same case, but wherever he turns to, he stumbles over a corpse. On the plus side, the doubloon is sent to him - right before Mrs Murdock calls him and asks him to drop the case as the coin has been returned to her. Dropping the case is not an option for Shayne though, as he's now a suspect in both above murders, and he follows a lead that leads to Lou Venter ... whom he finds murdered as well. What's worse is he stumbles upon Myrle, who confesses to have shot him - but it's easy to prove her gun hasn't even been fired recently. Ultimately, Shayne can prove that Venter has blackmailed Mrs Murdock as he has evidence she has murdered her husband, something the old woman has successfully convinced Myrle to take the blame for, that Leslie has stolen (and returned) the doubloon, and has also killed Venter, as their scheme to forge Brasher doubloons has somewhere along the line has gotten out of hands. Oh, and in the end, Shayne gets the girl - Linda that is.

Now of all the private eyes that sprung up in the pulps of the 1920s and 30s, Philip Marlowe would ultimately prove one of the most prominent ones and the one with the most shelve-time when it comes to silver screen adaptations, so it's very interesting to see that in the first two Philip Marlowe-features (this one and The Falcon Takes Over, released a few months prior) didn't even feature the character but became entries into other characters' film series (Michael Shayne here, The Falcon in The Falcon Takes Over), characters that in all honesty have been largely forgotten by now. Now as far as Michael Shayne goes, that was that character's seventh and last adventure at 20th Century Fox, but he would be revived at PRC in 1946 for five more features, to eventually land on television in the 1960s. As for Raymond Chandler's novel The High Window, on which Time To Kill was based on, it would be remade (again by 20th Century Fox) as The Brasher Doubloon as early as 1947, now with Philip Marlowe in name leading through the proceedings - of course after (especially) Warner's The Big Sleep has made the character a household name on the big screen. 

Comparing Time to Kill and The Brasher Doubloon, one has to admit the earlier movie is actually the livelier adaptation. That's not to say it's a perfect or even near perfect film, but it moves along at a very steady pace, irons out some of the complexities of the source material to fit everything into one hour of runtime, it adds some humour to the proceedings, and Lloyd Nolan is a likeable enough hero. Sure, essentially the film feels like exactly what it is, a series movie of the B-variety - but that then is not essentially a bad thing, either.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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