Just a Cineast

This weekend is Labor Day here in the States, which is the traditional end of summer even though astronomical summer doesn't end until the 21st or 22nd. Most people, not just government-sector workers, get Monday off, before school and work pick up again, coronavirus notwithstanding.

Anyhow, TCM is using this particular Labor Day weekend to run a whole bunch of concert movies since going to rock concerts is (or was before people freaked out this year) a big summer thing. For the next three nights in prime time, and then all day on Monday, TCM will be running concert movies.

There's an eclectic line-up of genres. Tonight kicks off at 8:00 PM with what I think is the TCM premiere of The T.A.M.I. Show, one that I've wanted to see for quite some time.

For something completely different, there's ABBA: The Movie overnight at 3:30 AM. There are a couple of festival movies in prime time Monday; a new-to-me Les Blank documentary with country music stars early Monday morning, and some British invasion movies sprinkled in, so there's something for everybody.

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week's theme is Domestic Thrillers, which made me think of several movies right off the bat. However, I had a feeling I'd already used them in a previous challenge, and it turns out I was right, to a point. I had wanted to use Frank Sinatra's 1954 movie Suddenly, and when I searched the blog, it turns out that the theme for Thursday Movie Picks #221 back in October 2018 was Home Invasions. So another of my thoughts, He Ran All the Way, was also out. So I had to do a little more thinking, but it still wasn't all that difficult to come up with three movies:

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). Drifter John Garfield winds up at a diner/service station owned by Cecil Kellaway and his young, hot wife Lana Turner. Turner, being dissatisfied with her marriage to Kellaway, immediately starts putting the moves on Garfield who is unsurprisingly attracted to her and eventually goes along with her plan to bump off Kellaway. If it weren't for the Production Code, you'd think they might be able to get away with murder....

Rope (1948). John Dall and Farley Granger play a pair of recent college graduate classmates (and obvious, but never stated, gay lovers) who took too much to heart one of their professors' (James Stewart) theories about the superiority of some men. So they strangle another of their classmates, stuff the body in a large chest, and then in a fit of hubris put a tablecloth over that and serve a buffet dinner off of the chest at a party they hold with Stewart and the dead guy's girlfriend among those in attendance.

Body Heat (1981). William Hurt plays a small-town Florida lawyer who meets Kathleen Turner, a bored wife who married into wealth. They have sex and she convinces him to take part in a scheme in which will result in his killing her husband (Richard Crenna) in a way that will supposedly make it look like a botched arson. Turner, however, was "stupid" enough to leave all sorts of clues that the authorities will discover. Ted Danson does surprisingly well as a prosecuting attorney.

If you're not sick of the cult-like hero worship surrounding the so-called heroes on the so-called frontlines of coronavirus, you're in luck. TCM has decided to get in on the action with a spotlight on doctors in the movies. Every Thursday in September the prime time lineup will feature doctors. This first Thursday has medical researchers with multiple biopics. (Not all of tongiht's movies are biopics, however, as Arrowsmith is on at 2:15 AM.) One I haven't blogged about before is Sister Kenny, which will be on at 10:00 PM.

Rosalind Russell stars as Elizabeth Kenny, who returns home from nursing school to a small village in Queensland, Australia circa 1910. She's got a boyfriend who would like to marry her, and the feeling is mutual, in the form of Kevin Connors (Dean Jagger). However, on pretty much her first day home, she's called to attend to little Dorrie McIntyre (Doreen McCann). She's suffering from fever and some sort of horrendous muscle cramping that's left her paralyzed.

Now, if you were an audience in 1946 when the movie was released, you can probably guess the diagnosis. But Elizabeth didn't know and was only a nurse, not a doctor, so she telegraphs the doctors in the city hospital, Dr. McDonnell (Alexander Knox) and Dr. Brack (Philip Merivale) the symptoms and awaits the response. They unsurprisingly tell her that the child most likely has "infantile paralysis", which is a euphemism for polio, for which a vaccine wouldn't come until several years after the movie was released (and a few years after the real-life Kenny's death). Their advice is to treat the symptoms as best she can.

For Elizabeth, this means applying heat and then, figuring that one of the muscles in a muscle pair can't relax, use physical therapy to force the muscle to relax and then "re-educate" the muscles. Amazingly, this works, since little Dorrie is eventually able to get up and walk. And the local outbreak has several other cases of children who, with the same therapy, are also able to walk, something that medical science considered extremely abnormal to say the least.

So Elizabeth and the sympathetic Dr. McDonnell take Dorrie to see Dr. Brack to show him the results of her therapy. Dr. Brack, being an expert on poliomyelitis with a library full of books by other learned experts, is sceptical. He suggests that perhaps these children had something other than polio; to be fair, he didn't actually get to examine them personally when they were actually lying in bed paralyzed with fever. But there's also a strong helping of doctors looking to protect their own turf.

World War I comes and Kevin, not yet having married Elizabeth because she's been too busy applying the "Kenny method" to sick children, goes off to Europe to fight. Elizabeth takes time away from treating the children to help the soldiers in France, which is how she gets the title "Sister", that being used in Australia for a military nurse. But when World War I ends, she's still not going to marry Kevin, sacrificing a family for all those children who shouldn't have to grow up wearing leg braces.

As much as Sister Kenny continues promoting the "Kenny method" of treating children with polio, Dr. Brack and the rest of the medical establishment stand in firm opposition. A meeting with all of them doesn't work, with maybe one doctor other than McDonnell showing sympathy. So when America comes calling, off she goes to use the Kenny treatment on America's sick kids.

Sister Kenny is a well-made Hollywood biopic, although you have to be aware that it's a) a biopic and b) a Hollywood studio production, both of which mean there's a lot of baggage in terms of storytelling. I didn't know much about Elizabeth Kenny going in, and I'm not certain how much more I know having watched the movie. The movie clearly takes Kenny's side, seemingly never suggesting that the Kenny method might have had less than a 100% success rate. To be fair to Kenny, however, it seems as though she did have an important role in the field of physiotherapy. I can also see why the film might have resonated with audiences upon its 1946 release.

Regardless of how much embellishment the movie has, Rosalind Russell still does a very good job with her role, picking up an Oscar nomination in the process. The male actors are all in supporting roles and do them well. This being an RKO movie, the production values aren't quite up to what they'd be over at MGM, but they also don't detract from the movie. If you want a good example of a Hollywood biopic for all the strengths and flaws in the genre, Sister Kenny is a good movie to watch.

There have been several movies released with the title Easy Money. Indeed, two of them are coming up on various premium channels in the next couple of days. One of them is a 1983 comedy, and that airs tomorrow morning at 11:39 AM on MovieMax, part of the Cinemax package.

Rodney Dangerfield plays Monty Capuletti, a portrait and event photographer, mostly of young children living in a blue-collar part of Staten Island. He's got a wife Rose (Candy Azzara), two daughters including elder daughter Allison (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and a best friend in Nicky (Joe Pesci). Allison is set to get married soon to a man Monty doesn't like, and Monty has to pick up the cake, with some help from Nicky. Well, it's not exactly help. Nicky decides to stop at a couple of bars on the way home, eventually destroying the cake in a car accident.

One person who isn't going to be happy about this is Monty's mother-in-law, Mrs. Monahan (Geraldine Fitzgerald). She's the heir to a department store, richer than Croesus, and pissed that her daughter Rose married down. Indeed, that side of the family has nothing to do with the department store, with nephew Clive (Jeffrey Jones) being the manager-in-waiting and Monahan being helped by her lawyer Scrappleton (Tom Ewell). She's only at the wedding for the granddaughter's sake.

It's also going to be the last time Monahan sees the rest of the family. Not long after the wedding, news comes out that Monahan has been killed in a plane crash. In one of those typical movie scenes, there's a reading of the will that has all sorts of wacky clauses. Clive is scheduled to receive a stipend of $5,000 a year, which wasn't all that much money even in 1983. For reasons known only to Monahan, it's Monty who's set to inherit the department store.

But there's a catch, and it's a big one. Monty is going to have to go through an entire year of clean living, which means no drugs, no smoking, no drinking -- and Monty is going to have to get his weight down to 175, although the movie doesn't say how much he weighs at the start of the year. Monty unsurprisingly bristles at the idea. But the department store is worth $10 million, and that would enable Monty and his family to live comfortably for the rest of their lives.

So Rose and the kids set about cleaning Monty up. Nicky, along with Monty's more peripheral friends, show that they really are true friends by helping Monty and the family keep Monty on the straight and narrow. And as tough as it it, Monty actually seems to be committing to it. Clive, of course, isn't. If Monty fails, then the department store reverts to Clive, so he tries to sabotage Monty by doing things like having a bunch of pizzas delivered to Monty's house.

Clive gets a bigger chance to derail Monty's plans. The family has apparently been so estranged from the late Mrs. Monahan that they don't know what the department store is even like. Monty goes there with Nicky, and they find that it's an upscale place that's clearly too hoity-toity for people of Monty's social standing. He complains that the menswear on display is nothing like what average schlubs such as himself and Nick would want to wear.

This gives Clive the idea to bring in Monty to make suggestions as to what regular guys would like, and then turn those ideas up to 11, offering the most outrageous blue-collar stuff that supposedly would never sell in a fashion show. (Have they never seen a real fashion show? The stuff here looks more like clothes regular people would wear.) Will this drive Monty back to drink?

Easy Money was clearly designed as a showcase for Rodney Dangerfield's talents (he co-wrote along with P.J. O'Rourke), and in that regard it succeeds quite well, but making him look good and entertaining the audience. Dangerfield's character reminds me of early Homer Simpson, who was at heart a decent man trying to do the best for his family even if he wasn't always the sharpest tool in the shed. Monty may drink and smoke, but he clearly always means well. Indeed, not liking Allison's boyfriend is part of that as she sees she may not have made the right choice, and the husband tries to reform, even though he might be more incompetent at it than Monty. It's also nice to see a couple of names from the past in Fitzgerald and Ewell.

I was able to pick up this version of Easy Money on DVD in a cheap box set with Throw Momma From the Train and Blame It on Rio. That set looks to be out of print, as do the other releases. Other movies with the same title are in print, and multiple Easy Money movies are on Amazon streaming depending on which channel packages you get.

Tonight's lineup on TCM is a night of movies directed by Bob Fosse. I see that Cabaret is on at 1:00 AM. Having recorded it the last time it was on TCM, I decided to watch it to do a post on now.

Joel Grey plays the Master of Ceremonies (no real name given), who runs the show in full stage make-up and even sings some of the songs at the Kit Kat Club, a decadent cabaret in Weimar-era Berlin. Among the entertainers who perform there from time to time is Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), an American abroad who lives a bohemian life and rooms in a boarding house since she's apparently not making enough to do well.

One day, Sally meets Brian Roberts (Michael York), a British scholar who's doing work on his doctorate that's taken him to Berlin; he's hoping to go back to Britain after finishing and becoming a professor at Oxford or Cambridge. He's also gay (or maybe bisexual by convenience), telling Sally at one point that he's slept with three women before meeting her and that it's always ended disastrously. Before all that, however, Sally helps Brian get a room in the house where she lives, as well as clients to whom he teaches English.

This brings Brian and Sally into contact with a bunch of people, of whom the most notable for our story are wealthy Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem), Jewish woman Natalia Landauer (Marisa Berenson), and Protestant with a secret to hide Fritz Wendel (Fritz Wepper). The last two are important because this being early 1930s Weimar Germany, the rise of the Nazis isn't far behind, and is a theme that permeates the movie. The Nazis attack the Landauer family, while Fritz loves Natalia and would like to marry her, but to do that he's going to have to come clean and admit that he was born Jewish and is passing himself off as a Protestant to escape the anti-semitism.

As for Max, he invites Sally and Brian to a weekend at his three, and of the three possible sexual pairings between the threesome, all three happen. It results in Sally getting pregnant and not knowing who the father is. Meanwhile, the Kit Kat Club goes on, seemingly in its own little world....

Cabaret won a bunch of Oscars, and it's easy to see why. The production design is excellent; the story is quite good, and Liza Minnelli shows she could act, winning an Oscar for her role. Joel Grey won a Supporting Actor Oscar, for a role that in many ways is not a dramatic role, in the sense that his MC is not really involved with any of the plot goings on in the world outside the Kit Kat Club. The songs, however, engage in increasingly pointed if subtle commentary on what's taking place in Weimar Berlin, often shown by intercutting the numbers with the outside action.

The songs, however, might be a problem for some viewers. That sort of cabaret-style music is definitely an acquired taste, and there were points in the movie where a musical number came up and it felt as it was bringing the movie to a screeching halt. It's somewhat like a Kathryn Grayson or Jeannette MacDonald movie in that yes, both of those singers are talented, but you might have a visceral dislike for that style of music.

If you haven't seen Cabaret before, it's definitely worth a watch. It's also available on Blu-ray should you miss tonight's TCM airing.

One of this month's TCM Spotlights is Women Make Film, a series of movies directed by women, about 100 in all. Every Tuesday in prime time, going through to sometime in December, we'll get a night of movies leading into the early hours of Wednesday morning which are all directed by women. There's also a documentary kicking off tonight (I'll admit to not checking whether it's a one-off documentary or like The Story of Film, something with a weekly episode throughout the spotlight.) A movie that I recently watched because saw that it was coming up as part of this spotlight is Mädchen in Uniform, which is on tomorrow morning at 7:15 AM.

The setting is a girls' boarding school in Prussia in the Weimar Republic attended by the daughters of army officers and run by the Oberin (Emilia Unda). She's informed at the beginning of the movie about a new student who's going to be attending, Manuela von Meinhardis (Hertha Thiele). Manuela's mother died some time back and she was raised by an aunt, since Dad was off in the army doing whatever it was that soldiers of that era did.

Manuela is shown around the place, and eventually informed that she's going to be sleeping in the dorm that has as its house mother (think Mrs. Garrett from The Facts of Life, but in this case much younger) Fräulein von Bernburg (Dorothea Wieck). This is apparently a big deal, since all of the girls really like and admire Bernburg because she's not only grown up, but better-looking and more womanly than the other, much older faculty members, and more sympathetic to boot. Among the classmates is Ilse (Ellen Schwanneke), who is the one all the students look up to as a sort of leader among the students.

This isn't an easy school to attend, because times are tough and money is tight. The girls complain about being hungry all the time, and they'd write their parents about it too. Except that the Oberin is so strict that only approved letters out are allowed; trying to smuggle a letter out is a big deal as we find when one student does just that. It's particularly tough for Manuela, who of course no longer has a mother and came from much more modest means. When Bernburg talks to Manuela and finds out about Manuela's situation, Bernburg gives Manuela one of her undergarments!

This is a big deal for Manuela. All of the students have looked up to Bernburg and had the sort of "crush" that seems to be a not-uncommon thing among girls who see someone who to them looks a much more worldly and grown-up woman. But for Manuela, it's more than that, most likely sexual desire as well. (Apparently, the play makes it much more explicit than the movie, but I haven't seen the play.)

The girls put on a performance of Friedrich Schiller's Don Juan for the Oberin's birthday, and at a party afterwards, Manuela drinks too much spiked punch; getting tipsy, she tells all the other students how she really feels about Bernburg. Word obviously gets to the Oberin, who is pissed. Will the Oberin's punishment of Manuela lead to tragic consequences?

Mädchen in Uniform is a really interesting movie, in that it touches on themes that would have been extremely taboo a few short years later, in Germany thanks to the rise of the Nazis and in the US because of the Production Code; not that they weren't taboo when the movie was made, of course. The plot, to be honest, is fairly slow in developing, with most of the interesting stuff coming in the final half hour. That isn't to say the movie is at all bad, however. For whatever reason I also found myself thinking of The Children's Hour and Tea and Sympathy.

Mädchen in Uniform is absolutely worth watching. It received a Blu-ray release courtesy of Kino a few months back, too.

Tomorrow is the first day in September, which means that we're going to be getting some new programming spotlights on TCM, but more on those starting tomorrow since I've got several movies coming up on various channels to blog about.

But before we get to the ptime time spotlights, we have a morning and afternoon of seven films directed by Alfred Hitchcock. While most of Hitchcock's films, at least from about 1934 or 1935 on (starting either with the first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much or The 39 Steps) aren't particularly uncommon, all the rights issues means some movies wind up getting shown more often than others that are extremely well known.

Most of tomorrow's lineup comes closer to the lesser-known movies, instead of the tentpoles like North by Northwest (on last weekend as part of Eva Marie Saint's day in Summer Under the Stars), and it's good to see a few movies that really deserve to be better remembered, such as The Wrong Man at 5:45 PM.

The lineup goes in chronological order, starting at 6:00 AM with The 39 Steps, which helped cement Hitchcock as the "Master of Suspense".
That's followed at 7:45 AM by The Lady Vanishes, with Dame May Whitty vanishing on Margaret Lockwood.
Joel McCrea is a fresh, unused mind in Foreign Correspondent at 9:30 AM.
Suspicion, at 11:45 AM, would be a better movie if it didn't have a cop-out ending.
At 1:45 PM, Marlene Dietrich is a murder suspect in Stage Fright.
Grace Kelly plays one of her Hitchcock Blondes in Dial M for Murder at 3:45 PM; and
As already mentioned, Henry Fonda gets sent to prison as The Wrong Man at 5:45 PM. If you haven't seen this one, it's definitely worth a watch.

I didn't mean to do two British pictures back to back, as I like to vary genres, eras, and stars as much as possible depending as well as what's coming up on TV. But thanks to being busy the past couple of weekends, I was looking for something short on my DVR that's also available on DVD, and that led to my picking Man Bait from Diana Dors' day in Summer Under the Stars.

Dors gets an "introducing" credit here despite having been in over a dozen movies in the preceding five years; the nominal star is George Brent, this apparently being one of those British movies where the producers thought getting an aging Hollywood star would make getting distribution in the US easier. (The Man Bait title was also for US distribution; the original title was The Last Page.)

Brent plays John Harman, manager of a London bookstore where Dors' character, Ruby Bruce works. Ruby, however, isn't exactly the best worker since she keeps showing up late. One day at work, she catches a customer named Jeffrey Hart (Peter Reynolds) trying to get into a cabinet to take a rare book. Rather than reporting Hart to her boss, Ruby decides that since he puts the book back, there's nothing more to go after. Jeffrey, meanwhile, invites Ruby to the club where he's a member.

Harman's life is more complicated. He's got an invalid wife, but has been able to cash in an insurance policy that will enable her to get treatment in Sweden. Meanwhile, not having been able to get any physical pleasure from that invalid wife, he's been seeing one of his employees, Stella (Marguerite Chapman), who had tended to him while he was in a military hospital during the war.

Anyhow, Harman asks Ruby to stay late after work to get some shipments inventoried and out. Ruby accidentally rips her blouse on a filing cabinet, and Harman offers £3 for a new one, a princely sum for a shop clerk like Ruby in the early 1950s. The encounter also results in Ruby getting kissed by Harman. But when Ruby meets Jeffrey at the club and tells him what happened, he gets bigger ideas in his head. Seeing that a married man kissed one of his employees, this would be a good time for said employee to start blackmailing the boss for much bigger sums -- and as we know Harman has several hundred pounds from that insurance policy.

Ruby isn't happy with the arrangement but feels threatened and needs the money. She writes a letter to Mrs. Harman, and when Mrs. Harman receives the letter, she tries to get out of bed to burn it, which results in her having a heart attack or something that kills her. That's bad enough for Harman, but there's worse to come.

Jeffrey meets Ruby in the shop after hours one evening, trying to get his share of the £100 that was the plan for Ruby to blackmail from Harman. But Harman no longer having need of the insurance money and being pissed with Ruby, he just throws a giant wad of cash at Ruby, well over the £100 she wanted. Jeffrey finds out there's more, and when Harman comes downstairs to investigate, Jeffrey tries to shut Ruby up, strangling her to death in the process.

Ruby's disappearance is noted, and eventually her body is found in a shipping crate that was supposed to be full of books Harman was shipping to himself, so he realizes he's not the chief suspect in the murder of Ruby. As so often happens in these B movie mysteries, the suspect (who we of course know is innocent) has to try to prove his own innocence with the police hot on his tail. At least he's got a woman in Stella trying to help him.

Man Bait is certainly watchable, although I don't think it's as good as another British movie from the time with similar themes, Home at Seven. Brent isn't nearly as good an actor as Ralph Richardson, and the whole blackmail plot doesn't make much sense, since Ruby has no real reason to blackmail Harman.

Dors, for her part, does a more than adequate job, and as an American it's always interesting to see these decidedly non-prestige British movies. Despite the movie's flaws, Man Bait is definitely more than worth a watch. It's on a standalone DVD as well as a box set of Hammer noir.

Quite some time back, I read a review of an interesting-sounding movie called ffolkes, originally released in the UK as North Sea Hijack. I picked up the DVD under the ffolkes title, and not too long ago finally got around to watching it to do a review on here.

Roger Moore plays Rufus ffolkes, ex-military who is now working in counterterrorism and has what seems to be his own private unit. He consults for Lloyd's of London, the big insurance firm that will insure almost anything for a price. In this case, it's North Sea oil platforms, and how to keep these remote locations from being threatened.

Cut to the other side of the North Sea. Esther is a cargo ship that supplies various oil platforms in the North Sea. Kramer (Anthony Perkins) and Harold (Michael Parks) are part of a group of journalists doing a story on the oil rigs, which is how they're boarded on the Esther. Except that these guys aren't journalists; they're terrorists whose intent is to threaten the oil rigs for a huge ransom. They get to the main rig named Jennifer and attach magnetic mines to it, doing the same to Ruth, some miles away and supplied by Jennifer. They then demand a ransom of £25 million, to be paid out equally in five different currencies.

Needless to say, this is a national security issue, and the Prime Minister (Faith Brook) calls in the Admiralty. Admiral Brindsen (James Mason) thinks about getting Lloyd's to pay the ransom, which seems like a lousy idea. Fortunately for Brindsen, Lloyd's had been talking to ffolkes about how to deal with just the sort of threat the two oil platforms now face. ffolkes is called in, and he has a good idea what to do, even though he's not thrilled having to meet the Prime Minister because of his resentment of women.

The idea ffolkes has involves going to the platforms with Brindsen, from where they'll figure out a way to infiltrate the Esther. Meanwhile, back on the boat, the crew is trying to come up with ways to fight the terrorists who have taken over their boat, although their first idea doesn't work at all. One good idea ffolkes has come up with is to create a fake explosion that looks like it has destroyed Ruth: Kramer will see the explosion but won't see that Ruth has not in fact been destroyed; hopefully, it will buy time for ffolkes and Brindsen. Eventually, the ultimate plan is to send Brindsen and ffolkes over to the Esther in a sort of hostage exchange while ffolkes' divers can infiltrate the ship from below. But Kramer doesn't like ffolkes, threatning to bollix the whole operation.

ffolkes is in many ways a standard thriller of the era, although there's a lot to recommend it. Roger Moore was in the middle of his run as James Bond when he made this, but his character is changed to have a personality much different from Bond even if the the thriller aspects seem similar. Where Bond sleeps with women left and right, ffolkes has a thing against women and authority in general because of the way he was raised by some really nasty aunts. The irony, of course, is that the one female member of the Esther crew is going to wind up helping ffolkes at a key point in the climax.

The story of ffolkes works quite well, even if again there's not anything groundbreaking here. Moore, having played Bond, is able to do ffolkes easily, while Perkins is excellent as the head of the bad guys. James Mason's role is a supporting one, but he lends the appropriate gravitas to it. The rest of the supporting cast does just fine, and the twists and turns of the plot are more then entertaining.

So if you want another movie you can sit back and watch with a bowl of popcorn, ffolkes is one that definitely fits the bill.

I was looking for movies on my DVR that are available on DVD, and one of them is Star of Midnight, which is unsurpisingly available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive.

A brief introductory scene has Tim Winthrop (Leslie Fenton) talking with his girlfriend Alice Markham, with the agreement that they'll meet mid-evening. Cut to a shot of a clock showing a time much later when they were supposed to meet; a phone call to where Alice is supposed to be reveals that she's skipped town to head to New York.

Clay Dalzell (William Powell) is a lawyer in New York who has a young woman chasing him in the form of Donna Mantin (Ginger Rogers). Tim has reason to belive that Alice came to New York, and wants Clay to help find Alice. They do find her, playing the lead actress in a weird show called Midnight, where she's wearing a mask and performing under the name Mary Smith. When Tim calls her Alice, she leaves the stage and disappears, much to everybody's consternation. On leaving the theatre, Clay meets Jerry, an old flame who has been married several times and is now married to Roger (Ralph Morgan).

Meanwhile, Tommy Tennant is a newspaper gossip columnist who has been writing about Clay and Donna in ways that are quite unflattering to Clay. But he also has information on why Alice bolted from the show she was performing in, and he comes over to Clay's apartment to discuss it. However, before he can reveal what he knows, a mysterious hand holding a gun appears, firing the gun and shooting Tennant dead and grazing Clay before throwing the gun down near the two men.

Stupidly, Clay picks up the gun to chase the gunman, leaving his fingerprints all over it such that when the police come, Clay is going to be an obvious suspect. Clay realizes that he's going to have to do an investigation of his own to try to find both Alice and whoever it is that killed Tennant. (We of course already know that Clay is innocent.) Inspector Doremus (J. Farrell MacDonald) is on the case, and one suspect we haven't mentioned yet is shady lawyer Kinland (Paul Kelly).

William Powell investigates a murder, and he and his love interest drink a lot, so Star of Midnight brings up obvious resemblances to The Thin Man. This one was made at RKO as opposed to The Thin Man at MGM. so the whole production looks a little less polished than what we get over at MGM. The story itself is also a little more convoluted and doesn't work the way The Thin Man did, although to be fair the story is only part of the reason you watch a movie like this.

The other main reason is the chemistry between the two leads, and both of them shine here. Ginger Rogers holds her own as much as Myrna Loy did in the Thin Man movies. The movie is pretty much about the two of them even more than other "couples investigate a murder" movies are, as the rest of the characters are surprisingly unmemorable.

Star of Midnight is certainly worth a watch, although this is another of those movies that would be better served being on a four-film box set of the sort that Warner Home Video used to put out in conjunction with TCM.