This was the first of the 4 Warner Brothers attempts at filming a Nancy Drew mystery in the '30's, all of them pretty much revolved around this standard and all taking liberties with the characters and original stories, where used. The series of books began to be published in 1930 following on from the success of the Hardy Boys and ghosted mostly by Mildred Wirt under the name of Carolyn Keene, until 1953 when other ghosts completely took over. Therefore it's always amused me that the first book chosen to (liberally) adapt for the big screen, The Password To Larkspur Lane from 1933 was one written by a man, Walter Karig. There weren't as many astounding plot co-incidences in his 3 books as with Wirt's and it shows in the screenplay here.
Nancy ably played by Bonita Granville is intuitively sure a nice rich old lady has been kidnapped for her money, her Dad's not too sure, but her beau Ted grumblingly followed her lead. This involves letting a message-bearing homing pigeon free and improbably following it by car to the nest of gangsters improbably led by otherwise sophisticated James Stephenson. It doesn't matter but it grates a little bit with Ned the confident proto-man changed to Ted the juvenile radio ham, Nancy is played slightly more immature than the stories at the time leading to the cops continually calling her a little girl, Effie was supposed to be 17 not middle aged, and Carson Drew although well played by John Litel never lost his temper like he did in here! But overall it's an engrossing pleasant mystery - good photography got the atmosphere of River Heights just right too.
Not recommended for the serious! Obviously they couldn't be as good as the books but they were all good efforts and solid family entertainment and imho miles better than the 1970's TV series. I wish Warners had made 14 of them not 4!
