On this day in movie history - The Canary Murder Case (1929 movie & novel):

The Canary Murder Case

directed by Malcolm St. Clair,

written by S.S. Van Dine, Albert Shelby LeVino, Florence Ryerson and Herman J. Mankiewicz,

based on the novel by S.S. Van Dine,

was released in France on February 16, 1929.
Music by Karl Hajos.

Cast:

William Powell, Jean Arthur, James Hall, Louise Brooks, Margaret Livingston, Charles Lane, Lawrence Grant, Gustav von Seyffertitz, E. H. Calvert, Eugene Pallette, Ned Sparks, Louis John Bartels, Tim Adair, Oscar Smith.

Recommended reading:

The Canary Murder Case

By S.S. Van Dine.

First published 1927.

Library of Congress Crime Classics.

Paperback.

Edited by Leslie S. Klinger.

Description:

Philo Vance #2.

At the height if his popularity, S.S. Vane Dine pens a locked-room mystery with a lethal dose of sex and sin where infamous actress, "The Canary," is murdered in her cage after a passionate night with her lover.

Margaret Odell, the famous Broadway beauty and ex-Follies girl known as "The Canary", is found murdered in her ransacked apartment, her jewelry stolen. It appears to be a robbery gone wrong, but the police can find no physical evidence to pinpoint a culprit. No one witnessed anyone entering or leaving, and the only unwatched entrance to the apartment building was bolted from the inside.

Who could have killed the Canary in her locked cage? Margaret was seeing a number of men, ranging from high society gentleman to ruthless gangsters, and more than one man visited her apartment on the night she died.