STAR OF MIDNIGHT. RKO Radio Pictures. William Powell, Ginger Rogers, Paul Kelly, Gene Lockhart. Director: Stephen Roberts.

   In this case a suave lawyer must both solve a murder and find a missing leading lady. He’s aided in this by his determined young girl friend, who is equally determined to make the relationship permanent.

   The plot is complicated, but the result is not much of a detective story, when it comes down to it. Powell, who is his usual urbane self, finds the killer, but only in cooperation with a police lieutenant whose aching feet nearly steal the show.

HOLLYWOOD STORY. Universal International, 1951. Richard Conte, Julia Adams, Richard Egan, Henry Hull, Fred Clark, Jim Backus, with Francis X. Bushman, Betty Blythe, William Farnum, Helen Gibson & Joel McCrea. Director: William Castle.

   A movie about movies. A heartfelt tribute to the silent movie era with all its salaciousness and scandals, Hollywood Story follows film producer Larry O’Brien (Richard Conte) who becomes obsessed with the unsolved 1929 murder of silent film director Franklin Ferrara. So much so that he has decided to make a movie about Ferrara’s death. But to make the movie authentic, he realizes he needs to play PI and solve the crime. This, of course, puts a target on his back.

   There’s a wide range of characters who could all be suspects, including Sally Rousseau (Julia Adams), whose mother Amanda was an actress who worked with Ferrara. There’s also O’Brien’s friend, Sam Collyer (Fred Clark) whose gun was used in the killing. And then there’s a gaggle of former silent movie stars, all of whom may have had a reason to want Ferrara out of the way. Complicating matters is the longstanding rumor that Ferrara had an estranged brother who died in China.

   It’s just convoluted enough to work. At least that’s my opinion. With William Castle at the helm and with plenty of on-location shots in LA, the movie never stalls. It moves along at a solid clip and provides plenty of suspense about who or what may lie behind the Ferrara murder. While the ultimate resolution may be a bit of a letdown, it’s plausible enough to make Hollywood Story worth a casual watch should you find the premise intriguing. Just don’t go in with the highest of expectations. Sunset Boulevard (1950), this is not.

GRIEF STREET. Chesterfield, 1931. Barbara Kent, John Holland, Dorothy Christy, Crauford Kent, Lillian Rich, James P. Burtis, Larry Steers. Screenplay: Arthur Hoerl. Director: Richard Thorpe.

   A noted Broadway actor is found strangled in his dressing room. There is only the one door, and it was under observation by the stage doorman from the time the man entered until his body was found. While the cops are quite visibly busy enough, most of the investigation follows a reporter around (stalwartly played by John Holland).

   The fellow’s nose for news primarily (and most notably) comes up with a young actress (saucily played by Barbara Kent) who has been let go from the current production but who seems strangely determined to keep hanging around.

   There are a lot of players in this aged pre-Code production, and a lot of romantic playing around has been going on, or so it turns out. It is difficult to keep all of this straight, but if you keep your eye on where it needs to be, you may well deduce how the deed was done. Nevertheless I have my doubts you will remember who the killer is when at last his or her identity is uncovered. It’s that kind of mystery, and one not particularly recommended.
   

JO PAGANO – Die Screaming. Zenith ZB-4, paperback, 1958. Published earlier as The Condemned (Prentice-Hall, hardcover, 1947), and by Perma Star 286, paperback, 1954. Film: The Sound of Fury (United Artists, 1950), re-released as Try and Get Me.

   A little gem I recently picked up almost by accident is Jo Pagano’s Die Screaming, which was filmed in 1950 as Try and Get Me. I exaggerated just then for dramatic effect. Die Screaming is the Cheapo-house paperback reprint title of a work which was originally (and rather uninspiredly) titled The Condemned. And the title of the movie was originally (equally pretentious) The Sound of Fury. Fortunately for both book and movie, trashier heads prevailed.

   Content-wise, they both book and film are intelligently done, but marred by attempts to pump Social Significance into their slender frames. Howard Tyler, broke, married with child, hard-working but jobless and luckless (well-played in the film by Frank Lovejoy) hooks up with smart guy Jerry Slocum and ends up pulling a few quick robberies.

   As Howard flounders in bewilderment, the robberies turn into kidnapping and murder: Movie and book both brilliantly describe Howard’s total inability to come to grips with what has happened. Overwhelmed with guilt and fear, totally incapable of hiding his emotions from his family or even from strangers on the street, he seems like some vividly-drawn, well-tortured animal.

   Unfortunately, both book and movie dissipate the energy of all this with endings that come off as self-important and preachy. But while the ride lasts, it has its moments. I particularly liked the intelligent writing that went into the Jerry Slocum character, played in the film by Lloyd Bridges. (An actor, it seems, who came to Hollywood too late. In an expanding film industry, he could have been another Dan Duryea.)  The implicit sexuality of his dominance over Howard is cunningly conveyed in meaningless little requests that somehow sound like orders.

   When I talk (as I often do) of the way cheap books and B-movies sometimes surprise one with the care and thoughtfulness that goes into them, I’m talking about efforts like Die Screaming.

THE WEB. Universal International, 1947. Ella Raines, Edmond O’Brien, William Bendix, Vincent Price, Maria Palmer. Directed by Michael Gordon.

   A mild-mannered mystery movie which with a little stronger punch might be remembered by more of us fans of old black and white films than I think is the case. To wit: Edmond O’Brien’s brashness as a small hick attorney garners him a job as a bodyguard for a rich man (Vincent Price) who tells him that a former business associate, just released from prison, has been making threats against him.

   Also in the story, as it plays out, is Ella Raines, who plays the rich man’s (very) personal secretary, and whom Edmond O’Brien’s character takes a strong liking to. She’s the sleek kind of young lady who holds secrets well, and whom we the viewer are never quite sure exactly how close to her boss (the rich man) she is.

   The problem is is that Edmond O’Brien is as always a very good actor, but let’s face it, he just isn’t in Ella Raines’ league. Vincent Price is, of course, as smarmy and unctuous player as he always is, and when his newly found bodyguard kills the former business associate (see paragraph one), we know there’s something going on that our hero is slow in catching up with.

   Enter William Bendix as the tough guy detective handling the case. Even though there’s a previous connection between them, he handles Mr. O’Brien a lot tougher than the circumstances seem to warrant. It is a puzzle, but not a overly challenging one.

   It all makes for a good movie, but in the mind of no one, I imagine, is The Web more than a mere entertainment, once seen and soon forgotten. Watch this one for Ella Raines’ elegant grace, aloof and yet most charming.

TRANSATLANTIC. Fox Films, 1931. Edmund Lowe, Lois Moran, John Halliday, Greta Nissen, Myrna Loy, Jean Hersholt. Director: William K. Howard

   Just lately I’ve been catching up to a lot of films I’ve wanted to see — or see again — for quite some time, films lost or just unavailable for a generation or more. First and best of the bunch is Transatlantic,   which I’ve been keen to watch ever since I saw a still from it in a book on Hollywood Cameramen thirty years ago.

   Made at the dawn (or early morning anyway) of talking pictures, Transatlantic defies every notion you ever had about early talkies; it’s a fast-paced, highly visual thriller, set on a luxury liner with a clever story (by Guy Standing, whose credits include the book for Anything Goes) centered around Edmond Lowe as a shady character fleeing the law, mingling aboard ship with con men, kept women, and the loyal trophy wife (Myrna Loy, back when she usually played oriental temptresses) of a nearly murdered millionaire — who apparently ran a bit of a con himself.

   Director William K. Howard and photographer James Wong Howe take this snappy mystery and serve it up with splendid sets that give the huge ship the appearance of a Byzantine palace or gothic cathedral, jazzed up with snappy editing and a restless, roving camera that follows the action perfectly. All capped off very effectively by a tour-de-force cat-and-mouse shoot-out in the labyrinthine guts of the ship itself.

   Simply dazzling. Not a well-known film, but one I can recommend highly.

WITNESS TO MURDER. United Artists, 1954. Barbara Stanwyck, George Sanders, Gary Merrill, Jesse White, Harry Shannon, Juanita Moore, and Claude Akins (uncredited). Directed by Roy Rowland.

   A young unmarried businesswoman (played to sharp perfection by Barbara Stanwyck), unable to sleep one night, happens to see a man choking a woman to death in the apartment across the street from her. Immediately calling the police, she is dismayed to learn that the man (George Sanders, in his most urbane manner) has hidden the body, and the police have no evidence to take the case any further.

   Obviously this comes as a shock to Miss Stanwyck’s character, and while puzzled, the homicide detective in charge of the case (Gary Merrill. as stolid as always) finds himself trying to shield her from accusations of mental non-capability, furthered on by Sanders’ own furtive manipulations behind the scenes (but not to us, the viewer). She ends up spending one or two nights in a crudely constructed mental institution before Merrill can bail her out.

   And while we the viewer know full well the story will end well, the story as told in pure noir fashion is gripping and well told, as if the budding romance will shatter and break at any moment of the proceedings. The ending, though, while predictable, of course – and equally breathtaking – is the weakest link. Over the top, one might say, but still within the limits of credibility, barely.

   It’s all nicely done, though. Nicely done.

A TRAGEDY AT MIDNIGHT. Republic Pictures, 1942) John Howard, Margaret Lindsey, Keye Luke, Mona Barrie, Roscoe Karns, Miles Mande.r Screenplay by Isabel Dawn, based on a story by Hal Hudson and Sam Duncan. Directed by Joseph Santley. Currently streaming on YouTube (added below, but see Comment #1).

   Radio detective Greg Sherman (John Howard) is roundly disliked by the police who he harasses with his weekly program solving crimes while they twiddle their thumbs, so when he wakes up to find a murdered woman in the twin bed in the borrowed apartment of Dr. and Mrs. Wilton (Miles Mander and Mona Barrie) where his new wife Beth (Margaret Lindsey) should be, while their apartment across the hall is being painted, it looks bad, and when Lt. Cassidy (Roscoe Karns) shows up and arrests him, it looks even worse.

   Luckily for Sherman, with a little help from his wife and houseboy Ah Foo (Keye Luke), he quickly escapes, but now he is on the run not even knowing the name of the murder victim.

   Obviously modeled on The Thin Man, and despite the stereotyped Chinese houseboy who speaks in pidgin English (but luckily has brains and knows judo) this film from Republic Pictures moves fast and has a decent mystery at its heart, as Sherman and his attractive wife discover the dead woman had two names, two apartments, and two lovers, one a club owning gangster.

   As murder and circumstance eliminates their best suspects Sherman races to find the solution and manage to make the deadline for his next broadcast where he has to produce the killer.

   Howard and Lindsey make for an attractive minor substitute for William Powell and Myrna Loy and have some natural presence playing off of each other. The suspects are the usual lot. and there are a number of decent red herrings along the way before Howard closes in on the real killer on the air.

   Of course there are holes in the plot. and you probably don’t want to think too much about it, but the solution is satisfying and one of those “that was obvious” endings that aren’t really obvious until you actually hear them explained.

   The whole stereotyped Chinese houseboy business is. as you might suspect, offensive, but frankly Luke seems to be playing it tongue ’n cheek and brings such energy to the part, it’s hard to dwell on the injustice. He was an actor who was invariably better than the material he was given. It’s hard to imagine why the pidgin English though, considering his years as the thoroughly American Jimmie Chan. He’s at least integral to the plot and not just comedy relief.

   There’s nothing new here, but it is done with energy and at least some thought to the mystery and not merely the comedy and quick patter. As a B, it does exactly what it aims to, which is worth commending in any film.
   

ACCUSED OF MURDER. Republic Pictures, 1956. David Brian, Vera Ralston, Sidney Blackmer, Virginia Grey, Warren Stevens, Lee Van Cleef, Barry Kelley, Elisha Cook Jr. Screenplay by W. R. Burnett, based on his novel, Vanity Row. Director: Joseph Kane. Currently available on YouTube (see below). (The book is reviewed by Dan Stumpf here.)

   Time was starting to run out for Republic Pictures when this film was produced, and as it so happened, the end of Vera (Hruba) Ralston’s motion picture career was close to ending as well. Republic lasted until 1959, while Miss Ralston’s last appearance on film was in 1958. That their fortunes were so long tied together is due to one fact: she was the longtime protege of Republic Pictures studio head Herbert J. Yates, whose last year on top was also — you guessed it — 1958.

   Her acting abilities, never regarded very highly, were probably adequate for most of the generally low budget films she was in, and over the years, there were 27 of them. In Accused of Murder she’s a night club singer who’s suspected of murdering a high-flying attorney (Sidney Blackmer) in debt to the mob, but luckily for her, the homicide lieutenant in charge of case (David Brian) finds himself falling in love with her, and he’s the only person standing between her and a life in prison.

   Definitely not believing her story is Brian’s second-in-command, a very young Lee Van Cleef, whose way of carrying himself reminded me a lot of Lee Marvin, lean and lanky and in so smooth control of himself.

   There’s more to the story than this, including a scar-faced hit man (Warren Stevens) whom we see being paid for killing Blackmer, and a would-be blackmailer, a dime-a-dance girl (Virginia Grey) who saw Stevens at the scene of the crime. There are a few twists to the tale, some of them quite clever, or there would have been if we (the viewer) hadn’t been shown too much in the beginning, and yet not enough to stop us from puzzling over whatever it was that wasn’t shown. Speaking entirely for myself, you understand.

   Adequate, therefore, but all around? Only adequate. There’s no other word that might apply, unless it was mediocre, and truthfully, Accused of Murder is a step above that. It’s a small step, but a step, nonetheless.

UPDATE: This review was first posted on this blog on 17 November 2011. The reason for its revival is that it’s the second listing (alphabetically) in Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of FILM NOIR, by Arthur Lyons (Da Capo Press, 2000). I’m in the process of working my way through it, one movie at a time. The first nine Comments that follow are from its earlier posting.
   

ACCOMPLICE. Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), 1946. Richard Arlen (Simon Lash), Veda Ann Borg, Tom Dugan, Michael Brandon, Marjorie Manners, Earle Hodgins, Francis Ford. Based on the novel Simon Lash, Private Detective, by Frank Gruber. Director: Walter Colmes.

   Sometimes it doesn’t pay to get what you’ve been wishing for, even if you’ve been looking for it for a long time. Case in point: This movie, based on a private eye yarn by a long time master of pulp fiction, Frank Gruber.

   Gruber also had a hand in on the screenplay, but I have to be honest. This is one of the worst assembled detective movies I’ve had the occasion to watch in a long time. It’s a jumbled up mess, one put together by a gang of ham-fisted amateurs, or so it seems.

   Luckily it’s only 68 minutes long, and at that it felt a whole lot longer. PRC didn’t have a lot of money to splurge on their productions, and even so you get the feeling that they cut the budget on Accomplice by thirty percent about halfway through to save it for the next film out of their hopper.

   Another problem, perhaps, is that they tried to film the book fairly closely, but that’s only a guess, not having read the book in over 50 years, but that’s what it feels like. There’s simply too much story, which goes hither and yon and there, and in 68 minutes, there’s not nearly enough time to stitch the pieces of a nicely complicated plot together so the seams don’t show, and badly.

   But as for the story, since you are asking, it starts out in fine fashion. Simon Lash (a mid-career but still dashing Richard Arlen) is a private eye, and not only that, one of my favorite kinds of private eyes, a book collecting PI, mostly non-fiction about the West and how it was Won. He also has an assistant named Eddie (Tom Dugan) who seems to do a lot of the heavy lifting around the office.

   He’s hired in Accomplice by brash blonde Joyce Bonniwell (played to perfection by brash blonde Veda Ann Borg) to find her husband, a bank manager who suffers from periodic bouts of amnesia. (We’ve heard that before, and so has Simon Lash.) What makes things hinky here is that Joyce once dumped Simon at the altar.

   So far, so good. What comes next is fast and furious. There is a mistress on the side (red-headed, as if you could tell in a black and white movie), a mink ranch, a missing bank president who’s been seen with a mysterious brunette, a body found with its head blown off, and — skipping a whole lot — a Castle in the desert being used for nefarious purposes, lorded over by Francis Ford (brother of John Ford, a fact which is of course totally irrelevant to the rest of this paragraph).

   There things come to a flashy and violent end. I had stopped caring about 30 minutes earlier, but the ending, I’d have to admit, is nearly worth waiting for. Almost, but not quite.