This is the first 7 minutes of the last of two Nero Wolfe Films,The League of Frightened Men (1937) which was a sequel to, “Meet Nero Wolfe” and was posted on YouTube by a company selling an out of print DVD.

Rex Stout decided not to allow any more movies to be made based on his books, displeased with Lionel Stander’s portrayal of Archie Goodwin. The punchdrunk Archie Goodwin portrayal we see in the clip seems to justify the conclusion..

On both the level of the artist and of business, it’s understandable why Stout didn’t want to make any more films. If films like this made their way into the cultural bloodstream, it would have turned people off to the books. And these movies came very early in the Wolfe franchise.