8 Best Mysteries From the Golden Age of Hollywood to Stream This Fall

Fall is a great time for some warm cider, a hot meal, and a classic mystery from the Golden Age of Hollywood. There’s something particularly cozy about watching old movies, and mysteries are a great gateway before heading into classic Universal monster movies for Halloween. With so many streaming options today, watching these titles has never been easier.

The 1930s to the 1950s were a busy time for noir, hard-boiled detectives, and slow-burn psychological thrillers. We’ve got Alfred Hitchcock on this list. We’ve got Cary Grant. We’ve got Bette Davis. There is even a Katharine Hepburn movie. So, it’s time to sit back, pull up a blanket, and get lost in these Golden Age of Hollywood mysteries.

‘North by Northwest’ (1959)

Streaming on Tubi

North by Northwest is a classic MGM spy thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho) with a screenplay by Ernest Lehman (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). Cary Grant (His Girl Friday) stars as advertising executive Roger Thornhill, who goes on the run after being mistaken for a government agent wrapped up in international espionage. Along the way, he meets Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) on a train, and she helps him hide from the police…but can she be trusted? Or is she just another spy?

Grant was a popular actor in his time, and North by Northwest remains one of his most well-known dramas. It was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay. The movie continues to be featured on top movie lists around the world. It is certified fresh with a 97% rating from critics and a 94% rating for audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.

‘Mr. Arkadin’ (1955)

Streaming on HBO Max and Tubi

Originally released under the title Confidential Report, Mr. Arkadin is a noir-style thriller based on Ernest Bornemann’s radio program The Lives of Harry Lime. Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) wrote, directed, and starred in this film adaptation. Welles plays a famous oligarch named Gregory Arkadin, who enlists small-time smuggler and criminal Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden) to investigate his own past. Arkadin tells Statten that he has amnesia and cannot remember anything before the year 1927.

There are several edited versions of Mr. Arkadin that have been released over the years. HBO Max has two of these versions available: a European release where it is called Confidential Report and an American edit under the title Mr. Arkadin, which is referred to as the “Corinth Version”. Only the “Corinth Version” is available on Tubi. Mr. Arkadin has a 72% rating from critics and an 80% rating from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.

‘Another Man’s Poison’ (1952)

Streaming on Amazon Prime and Tubi

Amazon Prime has a number of Bette Davis (Jezebel) titles, but if you’re looking for a good mystery, then Another Man’s Poison fits the bill. Based on Leslie Sands’s stage play Deadlock, Another Man’s Poison is directed by Irving Rapper (The Glass Menagerie) with a screenplay by Val Guest (Happy Go Lovely). Davis stars as mystery novelist Janet Frobisher, who gets entangled in a murderous web reminiscent of her own novels.

Another Man’s Poison‘s received mixed reviews upon release. Some critics praised the film, and others scrutinized the script. One thing everyone seems to have agreed on is that Bette Davis gives an exceptional performance. She sells the role like few women of her talent during this era would or could. The supporting cast includes Gary Merrill (All About Eve), Emlyn Williams (David Copperfield), Anthony Steel (The Wooden Horse), Barbara Murray (The Frightened Man), and Reginald Beckwith (Curse of the Demon).

‘And Then There Were None’ (1945)

Streaming on Amazon Prime

Based on Agatha Christie’s popular 1939 novel, And Then There Were None is a whodunit directed by René Clair (I Married a Witch) and adapted for the screen by Dudley Nichols (The Informer). Eight strangers are invited to a small island off the coast of England and realize the stakes are more than they could have imagined when someone begins killing them off one by one. The cast features Barry Fitzgerald (Bringing Up Baby), Walter Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), Louis Hayward (Young Widow), Roland Young (Topper), June Duprez (The Thief of Bagdad), Mischa Auer (My Man Godfrey), C. Aubrey Smith (Little Women), and Judith Anderson (Rebecca) as the guests. Richard Haydn (The Sound of Music) and Queenie Leonard (This Above All) play the hired servants, Thomas and Ethel Rogers.

Initially, the movie received mixed reviews from critics, though it did win Best Film at the Locarno Film Festival in 1946. There have been numerous screen adaptations of And Then There Were None over the years, and as time has passed, public opinion has shifted. The 1945 version is one of the most beloved today. It has a 100% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

‘Keeper of the Flame’ (1942)

Streaming on HBO Max and Tubi

Based on I. A. R. Wylie’s novel of the same name, Keeper of the Flame is a political drama and mystery film directed by George Cukor with a screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart. Cukor and Stewart had previously worked together on The Philadelphia Story in 1940. Keeper of the Flame stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, the same legendary duo who would go on to star together in films like State of the Union and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

Tracy plays Stephen O’Malley, a journalist writing a biography about a notional hero named Robert V. Forrest, who may or may not be as heroic as the public believes him to be. Hepburn plays Robert’s widow, Christine, a secretive woman who refuses to talk to the press after Robert’s death. O’Malley slowly gains Christine’s trust, but he can still tell that she is holding something back.

‘The Lady Vanishes’ (1938)

Streaming on HBO Max and Tubi

The Lady Vanishes is a mystery film based on Ethel Lina White’s 1936 novel, The Wheel Spins. It is directed by Alfred Hitchcock with a screenplay by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder — the writing team who would go on to pen the screenplay for Night Train to Munich two years later. The premise for The Lady Vanishes is a simple one.

English tourist Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood) meets a music teacher named Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) on a train in Europe. They have tea together. Iris returns to her compartment and falls asleep, but when she wakes up, Miss Froy is gone. In fact, no one on the train remembers seeing Miss Froy at all. The Lady Vanishes was a huge hit. It was nominated for Best Film and Best Director at the 1938 New York Film Critics Circle Awards, with a win for Hitchcock in the directing category. It is certified fresh with a 98% rating from critics and an 88% rating from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.

‘The 39 Steps’ (1935)

Streaming on HBO Max and Tubi

Three years before Alfred Hitchcock made The Lady Vanishes, he directed this movie. Based on John Buchan’s 1915 novel of the same name, The 39 Steps was adapted by Charles Bennett (Sabotage) and Ian Hay (The Frog). Robert Donat (The Count of Monte Cristo) stars as Richard Hannay, who is attending a theater show when the performance is cut short by gunfire. He brings a frightened woman to his apartment to recover from the scare, but then she reveals that she is a spy and actually fired the gun as a diversion so she could escape. Soon after this encounter, the mysterious woman is killed, and Hannay finds himself on the run.

The 39 Steps received great reviews from the very beginning. In September 1935, it won Best Picture of the Month and Best Performance of the Month for Robert Donat at the Photoplay Awards (which predate the Academy Awards). Hitchcock was also nominated for Best Director at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. The 39 Steps is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a 96% score from critics. It has an 85% score from audiences.

‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’ (1934)

Streaming on HBO Max

Alfred Hitchcock was a prolific director in the 1930s, and in 1934, he made The Man Who Knew Too Much with a screenplay by Charles Bennett and D.B. Wyndham-Lewis (The Cardinal). Leslie Banks (The Most Dangerous Game) and Edna Best (Swiss Family Robinson) star as Bob and Jill Lawrence, a British couple vacationing in Switzerland who befriend a man at their hotel named Louis Bernard (Pierre Fresnay). When Louis is murdered, Bob and Jill find themselves caught up in international espionage. Famous character actor Peter Lorre (Casablanca) plays Mr. Abbott, the leader of a criminal organization.

The Man Who Knew Too Much did well when it was released in England and currently holds an 88% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. If the title sounds familiar, that’s because Hitchcock remade it for American audiences in 1956, with James Stewart (Rear Window) and Doris Day (Pillow Talk) starring as the central couple. The 1956 version even won Best Original Song at the Academy Award for “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)” by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans.