The Arsenal Stadium Mystery (1939)

During a charity soccer match between top professional side Arsenal and touring amateur side Trojans, the Trojan's new star player collapses. When he dies, Inspector Slade of Scotland Yard ... See full summary »

Director:

Thorold Dickinson

Writers:

Leonard Reginald Gribble (original story), Thorold Dickinson (adaptation)

Stars:

Leslie Banks, Greta Gynt, Ian McLean

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Leslie Banks	...	Inspector Anthony Slade
Greta Gynt	...	Gwen Lee
Ian McLean	...	Sgt. Clinton (as Ian Maclean)
Liane Linden	...	Inga Larson
Anthony Bushell	...	John Doyce - Trojan Team Member
Esmond Knight	...	Raille - Trojan Team Member
Brian Worth	...	Philip Morring - Trojan Team Member
Richard Norris	...	Setchley - Trojan Team Member
Wyndham Goldie	...	Kindilett
Alastair MacIntyre	...	Carter (as Alastair Macintyre)
George Allison	...	Himself
Tom Whittaker	...	Himself
E.V.H. Emmett	...	Himself
Dennis Wyndham	...	Commissionaire
David Keir	...	Dr. Meadow

Storyline

During a charity soccer match between top professional side Arsenal and touring amateur side Trojans, the Trojan's new star player collapses. When he dies, Inspector Slade of Scotland Yard is called in and declares it was murder. It takes all his ingenuity and another death before the motive is discovered and the killer revealed.

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Plot Keywords:

soccer match | murder | soccer | soccer club | police detective | 

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Genres:

Comedy | Crime | Sport | Thriller

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Details

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

November 1939 (UK)

Also Known As:

Arsenalmysteriet

Filming Locations:

Denham Studios, Denham, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Company Credits

Production Co:

Greenspan & Seligman Enterprises Ltd.

Technical Specs

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The football match from which the main action sequences were taken was between Arsenal and Brentford, and took place on Saturday 6th May 1939 with The Bees playing in a a special striped kit to simulate The Trojans (closer shots feature the Oxford and Cambridge Blues as the Trojans).

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Goofs

When Slade and Clinton are searching Doyce's flat, at one point Slade leans on the telephone wire and accidentally pulls the receiver off the hook.

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Quotes

[Arsenal manager giving pre-game talk]
George Allison: ...they don't play your game, they play the attacking game.

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Soundtracks

Home on the Range
(uncredited)
Lyrics by Brewster M. Higley and music by Daniel E. Kelley

User Reviews

Memorial to a club's greatest era

There are several reasons to relish this curio. It was a prentice work by Thorold Dickinson, the Hitchcock assistant and cutter who would shoot "Gaslight" and "The Queen of Spades" before becoming Britain's first professor of film. It is one of the earliest sports movies to feature real sportsmen- acting very woodenly, as befits stiff-upper-lip soccer stars. It is anchored by a mischievously eccentric performance by Leslie Banks, who a few years later was to be the magnificent Chorus of Olivier's "Henry V".

Above all, the film lets us glimpse pre-war Britain's, maybe the world's, leading football club. Arsenal FC, the "Gunners", had been raised to pre-eminence by Herbert Chapman, Britain's first modern soccer manager, until his untimely death in 1934. Five years later his team were still on top, coached by his deputy George Allison, who appears in the movie.

Highbury Stadium, the setting for the murder, was state of the art. The scene in the treatment room underlines Chapman's far-sighted, scientific approach to caring for his players. He was an early advocate of floodlights and numbered shirts, and even got the name of the local Tube station altered to advertise the Gunners. The film was a massive plug for them; alas, soon after its release the Second World War meant that the lads had to pick up real guns and compete in a more dangerous game. Afterwards Arsenal did not recover its top-of-the-tree status for 25 years. Unwittingly this production memorialises its greatest era.