70, 000 Witnesses

It's the big college football game and gambler Lew Cody needs an upset to win big. He's got an inside track: no one, he thinks, knows his brother is Phillips Holmes, a key player on the team, and best friend of the quarterback, Johnny Mack Brown. He gives Holmes a vial that he says contains a harmless bromide that will put Brown out of the game. The net day, Brown is running a big play and drops dead on the field; his brain has exploded. It's up to e-New York cop David Landau to figure out what happened, with the help of his pal, drunk reporter Charles Ruggles.

It's a well written programmer; I couldn't figure out what had happened until a couple of minutes before Landau cracked open the case. The film is populated by the great character actors that Paramount threw into their ordinary productions, including J. Farrell MaDonald, Stu Erwin and Mary Gordon.

I found the most interesting factor in the staff behind the camera, many of whom would go on to make superior westerns over the net three decades. Harry Joe Brown is one of the producers, and Joseph Kane is the editor. It's a titled assembled movie that kept me interested throughout.