A classic country-house whodunit from 1937, The Thirteenth Chair gets the whole thing done and dusted in just over an hour, which is more than you can say for a lot of these things. And it can boast May Whitty – billed as “the Distinguished English Actress Dame May Whitty” – in the lead role as a clairvoyant.
Set in India during the Raj, it opens with Scotland Yard inspector Marney (Lewis Stone) and local man Commissioner Grimshaw (Matthew Boulton) discussing the recent murder of a man not universally loved by the expat community who lord it about in Calcutta.
The dead man’s best friend, John Wales – “fanatical”, says Grimshaw, so obviously not universally loved either – suggests that what the authorities should do is bring in a medium to help catch the murderer.
Enter Distinguished English Actress Whitty to put on a show both for the other actors present and watching audiences, as Rosalie La Grange, a flaky spiritualist who rises to the challenge when the other expats tease her about all the fakery and nonsense that surrounds table tipping and contacting the dead etc.
She does this by declaring honestly and openly that she does fake it, and then proceeds to wow them anyway, first by levitating a table and then by conducting a seance in the dark. When the lights come back on one of their number is dead, which La Grange obviously didn’t intend, and since she was tied to a chair throughout – a suggestion by one of those present so La Grange couldn’t indulge in any fakery – it can’t have been her. Inspector Marney is soon back on the scene to work out who done it, with La Grange’s help.
The original play by Bayard Veiller was a hit when performed in 1916, and was then a hit again in a 1919 silent movie adaptation, before Tod Browning and Bela Lugosi had a go at it in its most successful form, in 1929.
Here it’s George B Seitz directing and in spite of following along in Browning’s illustrious footsteps, he brings a certain swagger to the story, helped along by the suggestive lighting (often from below) of Charles G Clarke, who was cinematographer on everything from Miracle on 34th Street and Night People to The Virgin Queen and Carousel.
Seitz and co are most interested in the lifestyle of these colonials, and spend a good amount of time setting them up as members of the leisured class while also painting them as a ghastly bunch of toffs who will insist that status hierarchies are observed. Repeatedly they try to throw the jobbing policeman off course by pulling social rank. And yet, as the case rolls on, these people are revealed as tawdry as skeletons roll from cupboards and superficially pristine copybooks are shown to be full of blots.
Yes, it’s very Agatha Christie. She wrote her first Poirot story, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1916, around the same time that Bayard’s play was debuting in New York. May Whitty’s Rosalie La Grange rides through the whole thing like a later Christie invention, Miss Marple, her dithery, knowing performance an archetype. As is Lewis Stone’s as the cop, an inspector who is right down the line – knowing, friendly, authoritative and diligent (and not the star of the show).
But never mind all that, is it any good? Yes it is. In a familiar way, and allowing for some very theatrical acting in some quarters, there is a pleasing symmetry to the whole thing, especially once it becomes clear that a second seance is going to bookend the story and that the murderer is about to be revealed. Don’t look for clues as to who done it, because there aren’t any. Instead enjoy the journey.
The Thirteenth Chair (in a box set with the Tod Browning 1929 version) – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
