The Crooked Circle - 1932 Zasu Pitts

1932 pre-Code comedy-mystery directed by H. Bruce Humberstone and starring Zasu Pitts, James Gleason, Ben Lyon, Irene Purcell, Raymond Hatton and Robert Frazer.

Amateur detectives in the Sphinx Club are rivals of an evil gang known as The Crooked Circle. (Not unlike Vegans vs Carnivores or Men vs Women, ((women being the evil gang.)) When a Sphinx tip leads to an arrest of a Crooked Circle member, they swear revenge on Sphinx member - the old Colonel.

The Crooked Circle was the first feature film shown on television. In Los Angeles, the Don Lee Broadcasting System showed the film on March 10, 1933, over their experimental station W6XAO, transmitting an 80-line resolution mechanical television picture to a half-dozen or fewer receiving sets in the greater Los Angeles area. The film was shown again on June 18, 1940 on the NBC Television experimental station WX2BS, now WNBC-TV in New York City.