Fri 1 Aug 2014
FRAMED FOR MURDER. Goldsmith Productions, 1934. Wallace Ford, June Clyde, Bradley Page, Fuzzy Knight, Barbara Rogers, Shirley Lee. Also released as I Hate Women. Director: Aubrey Scotto.
If you were to do an accurate measurement of how many of the 70 or so minutes of this murder mystery movie are those of an actual murder mystery movie and how many are those of a romantic comedy, I’d be willing to wager that it would come out to about half and half, plus or minus five minutes.
The comedy is corny and the romance is sappy — who’d ever think of Wallace Ford as a romantic leading man? — but Wallace Ford as a hard-drinking newspaper reporter who accidentally ends up sharing an apartment with the widow (June Clyde) of a murdered millionaire who’s on the run from the police who think she had a hand in it — why that you might believe.
The murder mystery portion of the movie is OK, which is the technical term used to describe a murder investigation that moves forward in fits and starts but hangs together at the end, sort of. Part of Ford’s problem, besides decides who gets to sleep in the one bed in the apartment they’re sharing, he or the widow, now a blonde, is another reporter intent on snatching the story right from under Ford’s nose.
Also worth mentioning is the date of release of Framed for Murder, 10 May 1934, which according to my sources, makes this predate the enforcement of the Movie Code, and just barely, it shows. No pun intended. Besides the byplay about who sleeps in the bed, June Clyde’s character was previously seen hiding in a shower with no clothes on with another good-looking and easy-going lady who happens to be Ford’s next door neighbor. (All we really see is two pair of very shapely legs as they step in unison from behind the curtain.)
The actual killer (Shirley Lee) is so far down in the list of cast members, that if you dig for her name, you might never be able to come up for air, but she does a night club act in the skimpiest of apparel that has to be seen to be believed. (This was her only movie.)
How’s that for a come on?
August 2nd, 2014 at 10:51 am
Aubrey Scotto is a really obscure director.
The only reference I’ve ever seen by a film historian to Aubrey Scotto is is Don Miller’s ever reliable book “B Movies” (1973). He mildly likes Scotto’s “Blazing Barriers” (1937), about the Civilian Conservation Corps, and “I Was a Convict” (1939), where ex-con Barton MacLane tries to go straight. I detect a note of New Deal political commentary in plot synopses. But I’ve never seen any of Scotto’s work.
Thanks for the review!