Ruth Hussey is murdered while getting the time from the telephone operator -- the girl running the switchboard will swear to it. Ace reporter Michael Whelan and his photographer pal Chick Chandler try to get the story, figuring night-club owner Douglas Fowley is the natural suspect -- she was stiffing him on a big gambling debt. Along the way they rope in top-billed repo girl Gloria Stuart.
In a murder mystery where almost everyone is known by a nickname, I immediately suspected the three characters who went by their proper names. Once you threw out Miss Hussey, that made it two. But there were some curve balls thrown along the way, and everyone talked as fast as they used to in a Warner Brothers pre-code movie. There's absolutely zero social content; interest in bringing a murderer to justice seems to be completely a matter of getting some headlines for the paper, but this zips along. This being a Twentieth Century-Fox B movie, there's an amazing assortment of performers playing small roles, from Jane Darwell to Brooks Benedict to Edward Gargan.
In a murder mystery where almost everyone is known by a nickname, I immediately suspected the three characters who went by their proper names. Once you threw out Miss Hussey, that made it two. But there were some curve balls thrown along the way, and everyone talked as fast as they used to in a Warner Brothers pre-code movie. There's absolutely zero social content; interest in bringing a murderer to justice seems to be completely a matter of getting some headlines for the paper, but this zips along. This being a Twentieth Century-Fox B movie, there's an amazing assortment of performers playing small roles, from Jane Darwell to Brooks Benedict to Edward Gargan.