Thu 7 Sep 2017
Archived Movie Review: MURDER ON THE WATERFRONT (1943).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[2] Comments
MURDER ON THE WATERFRONT. Warner Brothers, 1943. Warren Douglas, Joan Winfield, John Loder, Ruth Ford, Bill Crago, Bill Kennedy. Director: B. Reeves Eason.
A no-name cast, and it matches the script. An inventor of a new type of thermostat for the Navy is murdered, and a mysterious “rajah,” one of a group of entertainers brought down to the shipyard, is suspected. It turns out that he was court-martialed years earlier, and Mr. Lewis (that’s the inventor’s name) was one of those who testified against him.
Several hand grenades, stabbings, shootings and general high jinks later, the case is solved, but which one of the many navy personnel is was, I couldn’t say. They all looked alike to me. (Obviously it wasn’t the rajah, mostly because that would be too obvious.) It may be a cliché, but it’s true. They certainly don’t make movies like this any more.
September 7th, 2017 at 6:58 pm
Actor Bill Kennedy went on to regional fame as the movie host of Detroit TV’s popular “Bill Kennedy at the Movies” (formerly “Bill Kennedy’s Showtime”), which ran for many years. He’s also the opening credits announcer for “The Adventures of Superman” and did other voice work for some episodes of the series.
September 7th, 2017 at 7:06 pm
Gary
Since writing this review some 27 years ago, I’ve learned to recognize some of the names of the folks involved in making this movie, but Bill Kennedy is one I knew back then.
I didn’t watch his movie program on local Detroit TV very often back then, but when my wife and I lived in Ann Arbor in the mid- to late 60s, he was hard not to know about. He was quite a celebrity at the time, in spite of having, when it came down to it, not much of a movie career.