Bulldog Drummond

Unfortunately I had some problems with my internet connection, so today is only going to see a brief post. I'm looking forward to tonight's prime time lineup on TCM of Bulldog Drummond movies. They're running eight movies which I beleive is the entirety of the series.

There were a whole lot of detective movie series in the 1930s and into the early 1940s. I think Philo Vance might have been the first. As with the Philo Vance movies, the Bulldog Drummond films used multiple actors in the title role over the course of the series. The first one (8:00 PM; as far as I can tell, the series goes in order) stars a young Ray Milland before he became a big star. John Howard, if you've ever heard of him, played in most of the later ones. The more interesting in the later ones is the presence of John Barrymore in several of them as the Scotland Yard investigator who butts heads with Drummond. It must have been a big step down for the alcoholic Barrymore to have to do movies like this, although we saw Barrymore himself doing a variation of this in Dinner at Eight.