Warner Baxter ended his stint at Columbia Pictures Crime Doctor series with one of the best of the series in Crime Doctor's Diary. This concerns Baxter okaying the parole of Stephen Dunne who was released after serving three years of a ten year term for arson.
As all convicts he claims his innocence and even the Crime Doctor is not first willing to believe him. Allegedly Dunne set a fire at the business of Robert Armstrong who is a gangster who has a hold on the jukebox concession.
There's a new business however which seemed to anticipate IPODs by a few generations. You call a number from a place where a machine connected to the central location and request a song. A record will then play over a loudspeaker. The company stores an infinitely more amount of 78 RPMs than any jukebox will. Armstrong is not happy that this is cutting in on his business. He even more resents Dunne cutting in on his time with Adele Jergens.
Another murder happens and Dunne escapes the cops, but takes a cop's bullet. Will Dr. Ordway clear Dunne of this murder and maybe the original charge? You know the Crime Doctor will.
Stealing the film in every scene he's in is Whit Bissell who plays a slightly demented brother of Don Beddoe. Bissell has the idea he's a song writer and is forever plugging this incredibly bad song he wrote about his little French horn as a kid that he toodely tooted all day. But Bissell demented though he is actually has the key to the whole mystery. The future Ms. Moneypenny Lois Maxwell is also here carrying a big old torch for Stephen Dunne.
For a B film from a movie series The Crime Doctor's Diary is one of the best of the series and could stand up to more sophisticated detective stories. It moves without a second of wasted film frames and the editing of the story is much better than you get in most films of this type.
Warner Baxter did only three more films after The Crime Doctor's Diary. This one is a really good introduction to him as a player in his later years.
