1937’s Topper was an odd movie that rubbed me the wrong way. I am a big fan of screwball comedies, especially ones starring Cary Grant, but I found it weird he and Constance Bennett were husband and wife ghosts who decide to do a good deed by screwing up the life of Roland Young, who plays the title character. What was really weird was she constantly seemed to be putting the moves on the married Young. Oh, that, and her doing that while dead.
I find it baffling that film has two sequels, as I can’t imagine what warranted them or in which directions they could possibly take the story. The first of these, 1941’s Topper Returns, ends up being an almost entirely different film than the previous one.
For one thing, I think the only people returning are Young and Billie Burke as his wife. There is still a ghost element, though only one this time (Joan Blondell), and she badgers Young into investigating her death. Yep, Topper is basically a private eye in this one.
Not only is the setup different, but the vibe is completely different. From the very beginning, it is largely a mystery-thriller, as a shadowy figure with a rifle tries to shoot out a tire on a speeding cab carrying Joan Blondell and Carole Landis. The cab rolls over and almost goes over a cliff. Cab driver Dennis O’Keefe goes to find a tow, and so the women try hitchhiking. One of the few moments in the film that made me laugh was when Blondell lifts up Landis’s skirt to add incentive for passing motorists to give them a lift.
They are picked up by Young and his chauffer, played by Eddie Anderson. Anderson plays the kind of comic relief Black actors of the time were usually restricted to. Still, he got most of the other laughs in the picture, even as few as those were. There will eventually be a curious, recurring bit where he keeps falling through trapdoors and into a secret cove beneath a mansion. For some reason, there is a seal in the water down there and a great many unamusing moments transpire between these two.
That mansion is the destination for the four travelers in the car, as Landis is to meet her father (H.B. Warner) for the first time, on the occasion of her 21st birthday. It is the expected old, dark, spooky house, complete with secret passageways, falling chandeliers, etc. I already mentioned that secret underground cove. The house has the mandatory assortment of suspicious characters, complete with its own model of Mrs. Danvers (Rafaela Ottiano).
On the first night there, Blondell so covets her friend’s horrifically gaudy bedroom that Landis casually trades sleeping quarters with her. You know this can only be a setup for mistaken identity to lead to an attempt on the wrong woman’s life…except that attempt is actually successful! Now that I didn’t expect. And we hear her scream, but this somehow doesn’t wake Landis. Jeez, and here I was thinking Landis was one exceptionally generous friend…
Blondell’s ghost walks through the night sky until arriving at Young’s house, because Topper is somehow a ghost magnet. The guy has a very weak personality, so I think of him less as a ghost whisperer and more of a ghost whimperer.
Young breaks into the mansion in the middle of the night, where he’s discovered by the occupants, all of whom (bar one) are unaware there has been a murder. Blondell’s body has been removed from the crime scene, so he appears to the others to be crazy. There’s even a note left behind, supposedly from Blondell, saying she suddenly had to leave and will explain more later. Everybody just accepts this as truth, which makes me wonder about her behavior prior to this.
Soon, everybody is running around the house and falling through trapdoors and the like. Anderson falls through that trapdoor more than anybody else, but at least he gets the movie’s best line, where he’s upset by “people talking to themselves and getting answers”. O’Keefe’s cab driver eventually joins the fray, because Landis needs a love interest. Burke delivers some intriguing non-sequiturs, such as, “It can’t be raining inside. And if it has, it has cleared up.” She also has this remark upon seeing the trapdoor take yet another victim: “Well, that’s a silly way to leave a room.”
The invisibility effects are surprisingly good. The best of these are the impressions of footprints an unseen Landis is leaving in the snow. Another bit that impressed me is an invisible woman putting on a slip. I’m not sure how they pulled off either of these effects, and I like being stumped when trying to figure out tricks from films of this vintage. My best guess for the latter effect is chroma keying, but I didn’t think they had that technology back then.
One of the worst aspects of the script for Topper Returns is a great many cultural references that may have no longer resonated with audiences even a year or two after the picture debuted. I wish all contemporary filmmakers would watch films such this, as I feel like all media is become increasingly saturated with up-to-the-minute references. If you want to make a timeless work that is for the ages, you can’t overload it with lingo and pop culture nobody will remember ten or more years from now.
Dir: Roy Del Ruth
Starring Joan Blondell, Roland Young, Carole Landis
Watched on VCI blu-ray