Before Dawn

The dying Joe Valerie tells a psychiatrist (Warner Oland) that he has hidden a million dollars in gold from a robbery committed years before. He offers the location of the gold in exchange for the doctor ending his life.

The gold is in the house being guarded by two elderly women. One is Mrs. Marble (Jane Darwell). She reads of Valerie's death and intends to take the money and leave. But Joe's ghost appears to her and as a result, she falls down the stairs and dies.

The police aren't sure what happened. At the urging of the officer in charge of arresting fake clairvoyants (Stuart Erwin), they use Patricia, who is actually a real clairvoyant, to tell them what happened.

This was a lot of fun, with young Dorothy Wilson as the clairvoyant and Dudley Digges as her father. Stuart Erwin had a pleasant screen personality used to good advantage here, and Warner Oland, who would become one of the Charlie Chans, is quite different here.

For me the most fascinating thing about the film is that as of this writing, it's 81 years old. Everything in the world has changed, everyone in this film is long gone, and people are still watching the movie.