The Witness Chair

Another movie that I forgot to record when it was on TCM some time back and watched off of the Watch TCM app before it expired is The Witness Chair. With that in mind, I immediately wrote up this review to be able to post at some time in the future.

The movie opens up in one of those big New York office buildings that were another staple of movies of the 1930s. Leaving a company called the Whittaker Textile Co. is secretary Paula Young (Ann Harding), who makes a point of not getting on the elevator. When she walks down the stairs to the second floor, she then calls the elevator, which comes up and leaves an elevator operator to find an empty floor while she walks out the building. All of this implies that she's done something wrong.

Paula takes a taxi home, and not long after she gets home, there's a knock on her door. It's Connie Trent (Frances Sage), happens to be the daughter of the Whittaker company's sales manager, Mr. Trent (Walter Abel). Connie has a suitcase in hand, as she's just been left at the pier by none other than Mr. Whittaker. It seems as though young Connie had been planning to elope with Mr. Whittaker, which is something Connie's father wouldn't approve of. Paula doesn't particularly think it's a good idea either.

Cut to the morning, and the cleaning lady finds that the door to Mr. Whittaker's private office is locked, which is unusual, since only the front door to the businesses are locked normally. When the super unlocks the door for the maid, she finds... a dead body! It's Mr Whittaker, lying down on the floor next to his desk, gun in hand. There's also a note on the desk signed by Whittaker that says that Mr. Trent is not responsible for the $75,000 that was embezzled from the company.

But the police who come to investigate quickly figure out that there are way too many things wrong with the case for it to be a suicide: why would Whittaker go to the side of his desk, turn the light off, and lock the door before killing himself? And how could he wipe the gun of prints after he killed himself. The police interview the various people who work at the Whittaker company, and when it's figured out that the gun had belonged to Mr. Trent, he's the obvious suspect. He's put on trial, and the rest of the case is the trial, although various characters' testimony is replayed through the form of flashbacks.

So why, then, was Paula furtively descending the stairs at the start of the movie? Well, that, combined with the fact that there's a Production Code, should give you a few clues as to how the climax of the movie is going to go, if not the denouement. It's all handled in a shade over an hour, however.

The Witness Chair is another of those movies that, a couple of decades later, would have had the plot slightly reworked to fit within the confines of episodic TV. Something like, say Perry Mason, although in that case not so many clues would have been given early on as to what really happened. The Witness Chair isn't a terrible movie, helped by the performance of Harding and the rest of the cast which is mostly character actors. But it's strictly B material, something that back in the mid 1930s audiences would have gone to see, enjoyed well enough, and forgotten about before the following week's B movie came to theaters. Fans of 1930s films will certainly enjoy it, but it's another of those movies that wouldn't come to mind for recommending to people who aren't already movie buffs.