If you ask classic horror fans if Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre ever appeared in a movie together, many would probably answer in the negative or at least say they don't know.  Yet, these three film fiends did perform a tag team together in a flick that featured one of the most popular band leaders of the time.  Ironically, the likely reason this film is not better known or regarded is because it features that same band leader.  But we maintain that this flick proves that swing music, comedy, and classic scares do go together nicely if prepared properly.  So sit back, relax, and peruse the foregoing article about a fun fright flick that could well have been entitled...

By JOE WINTERS

The year was 1940. Part of the world was at war. Here in the States many knew what was coming, and many others were still shaking off effects of the Great Depression. To help folks forget their troubles there was radio and the movies.

The Big Band sound was in full swing and boogie-woogie was still going strong, while movie monsters and boogie men were making a comeback after a brief lull in the mid to late 1930’s.

With his hit radio musical quiz program, Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge on NBC since 1938, North Carolina-born bandleader Kay Kyser (1905-1985) made the jump to movies with 1939’s Hollywood spoof That’s Right—You’re Wrong for RKO. The title was one of the catch phrases Kyser used on his show.

Kay was one of those bandleaders like Cab Calloway or Spike Jones not content with just waving a baton or playing an instrument. "The Old Professor" (as Kyser, then in his 30s, was also known) often wearing a college cap and gown, brought a brand of showmanship that capitalized on his own folksy charm.

The picture was a huge hit, so Kyser and RKO kept the ball rolling in 1940 with The Old Professor, changing the title to You’ll Find Out. Part of the reason being this time Kay played host to a trio of stars quite familiar to fans of scare cinema, as you’ll find out a bit into the story.

It opens with a montage of folks tuning their dials to the Kay Kyser show. With a live audience in attendance, Kay conducts his mock classroom with a rapid fire "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!" and a barrage of questions and challenges. One contestant (Jeff Corey) attempts to sing "My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean" while Kay feeds him cake between lines.

Soon the old professor declares "No more cogitation! Its time for relaxation! So off with your thinking caps! On with your shoes with taps, and like the fella once said, grab yourself a co-ed! What I mean is, ‘Come on, children let’s dance!’" And the band cuts up with another number.

After the show, Kay’s manager Chuck Deems (Dennis O’Keefe) introduces girlfriend Janis Bellacrest (Helen Parrish). Chuck has arranged for Kay’s band to play at Janis’ twenty-first birthday party. Bellacrest Manor stands on an island with only one bridge to the mainland.

"What a beautiful spot for a murder," says band member Ish Kabibble as they arrive at the stormy estate. Next is the introduction of Janis’ Aunt Margo (Alma Kruger), seemingly in a trance as she descends the stairs to greet her guests. While Margo rambles, Kyser is unnerved at the sight of another guest, Judge Spencer Mainwaring (Boris Karloff), watching nearby.

When Kay confidentially asks if Margo is wacky, the scowling Judge replies "As her attorney of several years, I can assure you that Margo Bellacrest is just as sane as I am." Somehow, that response is not comforting.

The butler shows the guests to their rooms with Kay getting that of the late master, Elmer Bellacrest. The butler relates the story behind the roomful of African art and how, according to Judge Mainwaring, "savages cut the master to ribbons" when they thought he wanted to loot their treasures and that Judge Mainwaring "barely escaped with his life." Hmmmm.

To add to the bandleader’s bewilderment, he next encounters spiritual medium Prince Saliano (Bela Lugosi) who assures him with a smile that the spirit of Elmer Bellacrest is in the room and friendly, but warns that "the spirits are strongly displeased with the skeptical."

Meanwhile, a dark figure climbs up the vine-filled trellis outside the house and looks in at the ladies as they prepare for the party. As Janis and singer Ginny Simms walk into the hallway, an unseen a pair of eyes gaze through a lion mask on the wall. A blowgun emerges from the mask’s mouth. Lightning causes a temporary outage.

When the lights are back on, Kay sees a needle in the wall, but by the time he can point it out to Chuck, the needle has vanished. Judge Mainwaring is annoyed that Kay and Chuck plan to take Janis out of the house. Next thing you know, the bridge blows up!

What’s left to do but relieve the stress with a bit of music in the ballroom? After a couple numbers, Janis tells Chuck that she had planned for Professor Karl Fenninger to expose "that turban-topped Svengali" Prince Saliano whom she believes has been swindling wealthy Aunt Margo for months. Everyone is surprised when Judge Mainwaring next introduces said professor (Peter Lorre) to the guests. When the two men are alone, we learn part of their scheme and of their collaboration with Saliano.

A musical interlude introduces the song "I’d Know You Anywhere" (which became a hit) as individual takes of Lugosi, Lorre and Karloff look on. Next, Kyser and Fenninger provoke Saliano, prompting Margo to insist on a séance to clear her friend’s name. The ballroom is electrically guarded, or in Saliano’s words "sealed with the fire of death" to safeguard against interference.

The guests are seated, with Janis herself directly below a very pointed chandelier. The lights dim. Saliano calls for the spirit of Elmer Bellacrest amidst floating objects and the glowing painted face of a jungle native with an otherworldly voice that seems to say over and over, "I killed Bellacrest." Then the face of Elmer appears to appear and urges Janis to trust in Saliano. Janis rises and faints as the chandelier falls with a direct hit on the chair she had been seated on!

Later, phosphorus paint on the tail of the other Prince (Ish Kabibble’s dog) leads Kay and Chuck through a secret panel, down folding stairs and eventually outside. A sundial activates another secret passage that leads Kay to the villains’ control room.

Kay tells Fenninger to tell Mainwaring to tell Saliano to tell Margo to allow another séance, during which Kay slips into the control room where Saliano uses a microphone and a Sonovox machine connected to his throat muscles to emit the weird electronic voices. Kay knocks him out, grabs the mike and declares "Somebody in that room is a murderer!"

The Elmer mask comes off to reveal the face of Judge Mainwaring who escapes to the control room for a fight with Kyser during which Kay hits the control panel activating all the phony séance elements. A fall against a lever brings a small lift down on Mainwaring’s head.

Kay returns to the ballroom with a codicil to Elmer’s will from Mainwaring’s briefcase that turns everything over to Janis on her twenty-first birthday. "Fenninger" goes to round up the bad guys.

The real (and beat-up) Professor Fenninger turns up as Mainwaring, Saliano, and the false Fenninger rush in brandishing guns and dynamite. Saliano tosses the explosive into the ballroom, and the fearsome threesome locks the door behind them. Prince the dog grabs the sizzling stick. Kay takes it from him and throws it out the barred window. The playful pooch chases it, picks it up and pursues the fleeing villains into the bushes.

Boom! Prince returns, carrying the turban of the other "Prince" (Saliano), who presumably has been blown to bits with his criminal cohorts.

Back in the city, a musical wrap-up utilizes the Sonovox with a medley of the movie’s tunes (a similar technique has since turned up in the music of Alvino Rey, Peter Frampton, and Styx, among others). Kay reassures us that Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Bela Lugosi aren’t really murderers, but nice fellows and good friends of his. As he says "so long," he backs into the electrical apparatus from earlier and disappears with a smile as the sparks spell out "The End."

You’ll Find Out was directed by David Butler (1894-1979), who had acted in dozens of silent pictures before turning to directing in 1927. His credits include several Shirley Temple movies, three Kay Kyser movies, and the sci-fi musical comedy Just Imagine (1930), among other films and TV shows during his four-decade directing career.

Among the film appearances of Helen Parrish (1923-1959) was a non-appearance as a communion girl in The Bride Of Frankenstein (1935). Those scenes wound up on the cutting room floor. Helen did appear in Monogram’s Mystery Of The Thirteenth Guest (1943).

Dennis O’Keefe (1908-1968) was in over two hundred movies, un-credited in many before appearing in such goodies as Topper Returns (1941) and The Leopard Man (1943). He played band manager Chuck in the earlier Kay Kyser hit That’s Right--You’re Wrong, and years later had his own short-lived television series, The Dennis O’Keefe Show (1959-1960).

Karloff, Lorre and Lugosi appeared on Kay Kyser’s radio show on September 25, 1940, to help promote the movie, which made money, and thus propelled Kay through five more films. With these and dozens of hit tunes such as "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" and "The Woody Woodpecker Song," Kay Kyser did what many radio and film stars did. In 949 he turned to television. His gang included a young Michael Douglas (not Kirk’s son, but singer and future talk show host Mike Douglas).

Kyser’s show lasted only a year, reportedly due to a dispute between sponsor and network. The idea was revived for a couple months in the summer of 1954 with Tennessee Ernie Ford as host. Kay Kyser was listed as "consultant" and showed up as a special guest on one telecast. By then, Kay was nearly five years into an early retirement that started at age 45. Back in North Carolina he enjoyed family life and remained quite active as a spokesman for the Church of Christian Science and for the Public Broadcasting Service. Kay Kyser passed away in 1985.

Ish Kabibble (real name Merwyn Bogue) died in 1994. His stage name was derived from a Yiddish expression that roughly translates into "What? Me Worry?" a phrase familiar to readers of Mad magazine, whose fictional cover boy, Alfred E. Newman, bore a resemblance to good old Ish. Sully Mason, Ginny Simms and Harry Babbitt have likewise departed to that great bandstand in the sky.

Karloff and Lugosi had paired before and since (read more about that in the HORROR-WOOD archives). Karloff and Lorre would team up in the comedies The Boogie Man Will Get You (Columbia, 1942), The Raven (American International, 1963) and The Comedy Of Terrors (American International, 1964), but You’ll Find Out represents the only time that Karloff, Lorre and Lugosi would all appear in a film together.

Some say this once-in-a-lifetime gathering of ghouls is a disappointment. Not at all; each is suitably suave and sinister, just as they should be, as guests in Kay Kyser’s movie. With all this, plus music written by Jimmy McHugh and Johnny Mercer, You’ll Find Out was the big melody, mirth and mystery show its poster claimed. Today it remains a pleasing blend of songs and spooks to make you forget your troubles, just as it did for audiences all those years ago.

Thanks, Joe.  You're right, they're wrong. You'll Find Out should not be dismissed by either classic horror fans or critics simply because it has snappy music, fast patter, usually bearable humor (although Ish Kabibble does push the envelope occasionally), and is played for fun and laughs...any more than Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein should.  In point of fact, You'll Find Out has a nice creepy old house set, a really well-done hidden tunnel and basement lair, and it pretty much plays the scary stuff straight to the end.  Plus, it teams Karloff, Lugosi, and Lorre for the first and only time.  What's not to like about this flick?

Article copyright © Joe Winters

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