The Whistler Collection

A man, despondent over the death of his wife, wants to commit suicide but can't bring himself to do it. He hires a man to hire a professional killer to do the job. However, he soon finds out that his wife isn't really dead - but the man he paid to hire the hitman is, and he has no idea who the man hired or how to get him to call off the hit.

A drifter claims the money in an old bank account by impersonating someone else with the same name. Soon he finds himself the target of a man who turns out to be the son of the old partner of the impersonated man's father, who caused his partner to do time in prison.

A woman uses a deck of cards to predict death within 24 hours for a stranger sitting at a bar, then tries to help him remember who he is based on items in his pockets.

The 4th film of the Columbia series based on the CBS radio program, "The Whistler", finds wealthy John Sinclair, with no health or friends, being advised by his doctor to take a long vacation. Heading for the Great Lakes, he becomes ill in the cab operated by Ernie Sparrow an is taken to a clinic where he meets nurse Joan Martin, who is engaged to intern Fred Graham. Doctors now tell him he has only a few months to live and advise him to go to Maine (where, evidently, it will seem longer.) He asks Joan to marry him, promising to leave her his fortune. She, no dummy, accepts but hard-loser Fred doesn't like it even though she says she is doing it for him. After six months of living in a lighthouse with only Joan and Sparrow, whom he has hired as his aide, Sinclaie seemingly regains his health and has really fallen in love with Joan. She tells him she can no longer tolerate the loneliness just as Fred arrives for a visit, and John invites him to stay. In a chess game, John facetiously outlines to Fred how he would murder him if he chose to. Fred, decides to beat him to the punch and enters his bedroom that night and attempts to kill John with a poker. The figure in the bed turns out to be a dummy and John, who has been hiding, clubs Fred to death. He tries to throw the body from the bedroom window but it won't open and, planning to return and force it open later, he carries the body to the rocks and then hits Fred's head with a stone. Returning to the lighthouse, John meets Sparrow and tells him that Fred fell from a window but Sparrow knows all the windows have been nailed shut. And Joan, who saw John carry the body out, has summoned the police.

An artist married to a wealthy but ill woman begins an affair with one of his models, who is after him solely for his money. His wife discovers the affair and threatens to cut him out of her will. In order to be able to keep both the wife's money and his girlfriend, he begins to secretly poison his wife - but events take a surprising turn after she eventually dies.

In the 7th of Columbia's "Whistler" series, truck-firm owner Steve Reynolds gets involved in a feud with a rival firm, and shortly thereafter is slugged by a masked assailant who steals the truck he is driving. The assailant runs down a policeman in the truck and leaves other clues pointing to Reynolds as the cop killer. With only a glove, with diamonds stuck in the thumb, as a clue, and while evading the police and other characters after him and the diamonds, Reynolds finally runs down the guilty party and clears himself.

On the eve of his marriage, a young man's fiance disappears. He hires a private detective to help him track her down, but soon finds himself entangled in a web of lies, intrigue and murder revolving around his fiance's dead ex-husband and his wealthy, corrupt family.

The fifth entry in the Columbia series based on the CBS radio program, "The Whistler", opens with kindly old music store owner Edward Stillwell (Paul E. Burns) hiring private detective Don Gale (Richard Dix) to find a girl Stillwell hasn't seen in seven years. Gale sends Freida Hanson (Helen Mowery') to pose as the missing Elora Lund (Pamela Blake), and she learns that some items left by Elora's mother are now extremely valuable before Harry Pontos (Mike Mazurki) comes into the room and kills Stillwell. He also kidnaps Freida but releases her when Don announces she is an impostor. With Freida's help, Gale locates Pontos' apartment, who is shot down in a gun battle with the arriving police. Gale returns to his place but is arrested by detectives Taggart and Burns and jailed. The detectives later find the real Elora, who has been in a sanitarium recovering from an accident. Gale is released and Elora is sent by the detectives to see if he will disclose why Stillwell was looking for her. Gale, planning to cheat her, tells her what the secret treasure is. Gales disappears and becomes the object of a manhunt when he is wrongfully accused of killing Freida, who has been killed by James Summers, her apartment manager, who has also discovered the secret. Joan Hill, Gale's secretary, locates and warns him about the police. He tells her he is going to the record store to find some recordings made by Jenny Lind worth $200,000.