The Arsenal Stadium Mystery

The Arsenal Stadium Mystery

Arsenal manager George Allison gives a tactical team-talk to his players
Directed by Thorold Dickinson
Produced by Josef Somlo
Written by Leonard Gribble (novel)
Thorold Dickinson
Donald Bull
Patrick Kirwan
Alan Hyman
Starring Leslie Banks
Greta Gynt
Ian McLean
Liane Linden
Anthony Bushell
Esmond Knight
Music by Miklós Rózsa
Cinematography Desmond Dickinson
Edited by Sidney Stone
Production
company
Greenspan & Seligman (G&S Films)
Denham Studios
Distributed by General Film Distributors
Release dates
  • November 1939 (1939-11)
Running time
 84 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English

The Arsenal Stadium Mystery is a 1939 British mystery film and one of the first feature films wherein football is a central element in the plot. The film was directed by Thorold Dickinson, and shot at Denham Film Studios and on location at Arsenal Stadium. It was written by Dickinson, Donald Bull, and Alan Hyman, adapted from a novel by Leonard Gribble.

The film is a murder mystery set, as the title suggests, at the Arsenal Stadium, Highbury, London, then the home of Arsenal Football Club, who were at the time one the dominant teams in English football. The backdrop is a friendly match between Arsenal and The Trojans, a fictitious amateur side; one of the Trojans' players drops dead during the match, and when it is revealed he has been poisoned, suspicion falls on his teammates as well as his former mistress. Detective Inspector Slade (Leslie Banks) is called in to solve the crime.

The film stars several Arsenal players and staff (such as Cliff Bastin and Eddie Hapgood), although only manager George Allison has a speaking part. The Trojans' body doubles on the pitch were players from Brentford, during the First Division fixture between the two sides on 6 May 1939; this was the last match of the 1938–39 season and Arsenal's last official league fixture before the outbreak of the Second World War.

It is often said that the Brentford players wore a special striped kit for the occasion.[1]

Dickinson planned a follow-up, The Denham Studio Mystery, which was intended to incorporate footage from the abortive film I Claudius, but this fell through.[2]

Cast

References

  1. ↑ Dutta, Avijit Kumar (17 February 2015). "The Arsenal Stadium Mystery: When Highbury hit the silver screen". Sports-nova.com. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  2. ↑ Horne, Philip (5 August 2005). "He was a premier-league director". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 12 January 2010.
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