Murder on a Honeymoon (1935) is the third and last of Edna May Oliver's appearances as spinster detective Hildegarde Withers and it couldn't be more different from the feeble effort which followed it. Capably directed by Lloyd Corrigan (a unique instance of a director who dropped the megaphone and went into screenwriting and an extended career as a character actor) and co-written by Robert Benchley so you know at least there are going to be some good lines in it, it looks like they tried. All pretense at the schoolteacher setting is dropped as Hildegarde is on vacation in California. On a short seaplane hop to Catalina Island, in itself a great way to start a picture, the most irritating passenger sickens and dies. It appears that he was a witness against the mob, and that it was murder, and that Inspector Oscar Piper must hop out from New York to take charge of the investigation. That business out of the way, we may settle down to a fairly pleasant entertainment that keeps one's interest and even has a few mild surprises before it satisfactorily ends.
While the story is adequate it is the sharp dialogue and interaction of Oliver and Gleason that provides the interest here. The RKO studio had a good thing going with these two and it was only because she signed with MGM, probably for more money and less work in classier pictures, that this series didn't peter out at the usual pace for such things. Since I have just viewed the dismal production which followed this, comparisons are inevitable, but the main thing is that in Murder on a Bridle Path it seems like they didn't even bother to try. Here they spent some money on it, with much of the action filmed on location on Catalina Island. Oliver maintains the frumpy sardonic schoolmarm nature of the character as compared to the aging socialite portrayed by Helen Broderick. You can imagine having cocktails in Broderick's apartment but with Oliver a handshake at the door and sincere thanks for a pleasant evening will suffice.
A secondary character in the plot is played by Lola Lane who has a lot of charisma, which makes up to some degree for her lack of subtlety as an actress. It seems as if there were more to her part than appears now, as it's a bit disjointed and meaningless - it never really contributes anything of value to the story. I enjoyed her in
Port of Lost Dreams (1934),
Death from a Distance (1935) and the serial
Burn 'em up Barnes (1935). I bring her up because here is something that maybe you didn't know. In 1938 she appeared as the girl reporter Torchy Blane (usually played by Glenda Farrell) in
Torchy Blane in Panama, inspiring the name and character of girl reporter Lois Lane in Superman comics the following year. So that is where that came from.
It's not the greatest thing you have ever seen by any means, but it is well made, doesn't put you to sleep, and gets a little bit exciting before it ends, and that's all anyone can reasonably expect from this sort of thing. You come away from it saying that wasn't bad at all. Except maybe for the fact that Willie Best was still being billed as Sleep 'n' Eat. That's bad.
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The other thing they used to have Willie Best do was act scared. They totally wasted him in one of the Nancy Drew movies, just acting scared. Bob Hope said something to the effect that Best was the greatest comedian he'd appeared with (like Fields praised Grady Sutton), and I hope it wasn't some kind of gag on his part. THE GHOST BREAKERS (based on a stage play I've encountered online somewhere) and NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH were both examples of Best getting more to do in a script and making the most of it.
"In 1938 she appeared as the girl reporter Torchy Blane (usually played by Glenda Farrell) in Torchy Blane in Panama, inspiring the name and character of girl reporter Lois Lane in Superman comics the following year."
That's not quite true. First of all, Action Comics #1, the first Superman comic book, was published in June, 1938; less than two months after "Torchy Blane in Panama" premiered in most of the country.
Secondly, while it's true that Lola Lane was the inspiration for the name of Lois Lane, Glenda Farrell was the inspiration for the character.
In 1988, Jerry Siegel wrote the following (emphasis mine):
TIME Magazine, May 30, 1988, Letters to the Editor, P. 6-7
Lois Lane = Torchy Blane
Thank you for saying "Happy Birthday" to Superman [SHOW BUSINESS, March 14]. Joe Shuster and I, the co-creators of Superman appreciate it. My wife Joanne was Joe's original art model for Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane back in the 1930s. Our heroine was, of course, a working girl whose priority was grabbing scoops. What inspired me in the creation was Glenda Farrell, the movie star who portrayed Torchy Blane, a gutsy, beautiful headline-hunting reporter, in a series of exciting motion pictures. Because the name of the actress Lola Lane (who also played Torchy) appealed to me, I called my character Lois Lane. Strangely, the characterization of Lois is amazingly like the real-life personality of my lovely wife.
Jerry Siegel
Los Angeles
As you can see, he clearly specified that the inspiration for Lois Lane, the character, came from Glenda Farrell. Only the name came from Lola Lane.
Jerry Siegel's wife, Joanne Siegel, who was also the very first art model for Lois Lane, was asked in an interview if Jerry Siegel had based Lois Lane on Rosalind Russell's portrayal of Hildy Johnson. Here's her reply:
"He got the inspiration for Lois Lane from a movie star before Rosalind Russell. Her name was Glenda Farrell and she played a girl reporter, very fast- talking, and she always got the story."
Also interesting to note is that Siegel and Shuster later created a series of comic books about a character names Funnyman. In the Funnyman comic books, there is a Lois Lane-like character named June Farrell, who was named after Glenda Farrell.
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