“There’s a lot more to this case than meets the eye, Bill.” “Well I must be blind cause I can’t see it.”
Everett Digberry (Byron Foulger) has just been caught climbing over a cemetery wall. He is taken to the Police department and questioned. He says he went there to put a thousand dollars on a grave. He says he received a note from someone called “The Panther” demanding the money or there would be consequences. Others have also received notes. Most of them work for the New York Opera Company.
They have assembled in Commissioner Thatcher Colt’s (Sidney Blackmer) office. One of them is and opera star named Nina Politza (Gerta Rozen). Digberry is a wig maker and makes wigs for most of them. The only one any of them could think of that might be responsible for the notes is a former Baritone at the opera named Enrico Lombardi (Thornton Edwards). Lombardi has been giving Nina unwanted attention, and was fired by the Opera Company. Everyone has had some issues with him.
Nina is scheduled to leave for South America. The police give her permission to go. In the meantime police are looking for Lombardi. When Digberry is out the police go into his apartment and use his typewriter so they can compare it to the letters. The typing matches and when the neighbor’s cat steps into some shoe polish; his foot print matches the paw print on the letters.
Digberry is once again taken to the police station. This time he admits that he sent the letters but only as a ruse so that he didn’t have to tell his wife he loaned the money to someone, but he refuses to say who.
When the police find Nina dead they find out she never went to South America. She is wearing a wig that was made by Digberry but in her hand are some hairs from a different wig. Digberry says they were made by a different wig maker named Samuel Wilkins (Frank Darien). The police ask Wilkins to come in and see if he can identify who he made the wig for. Wilkins is killed before he can do that. Suspicion is still on Digberry, and the evidence is mounting.
“The Panther’s Claw” was released in 1942 and was directed by William Beaudine. It is a poverty row crime/mystery movie by the Producers Releasing Corporation. At one point the police commission calls the elevator operator in Digberry’s apartment building eight-ball. In the 40’s it was used as a derogatory name for a black person.
The movie is a little far fetched, yet charming and light. Foulger plays a confused milquetoast, his stock and trade. His performance is perfect. Blackmer is the calm and amused Police Commissioner. I loved his little ‘Sherlock Holmes’ routine in Nina’s apartment.
The Thatcher Colt character appears in several novels written by Anthony Abbott in the 30’s and early 40’s. The movie was based on a short story called “The Perfect Crime of Mr. Digberry”. Supposedly the movie was to be the first in a series but it never developed.