One of a series of tie-in projects between Paramount and Liberty Magazine (click on bonus poster below to see the details), this little crime story sports lots of Pre-Code action as NYC party girl Nancy Carroll goes the distance against former lover Louis Calhern to keep new fiancé Cary Grant out of harm’s way. Sneaking up the fire escape to confront the cad in his penthouse lair, Carroll stops him from phoning in a ‘hit’ on Grant with a hit of her own. Then, with Calhern still warm to the touch, she slips off on a three-day Prohibition Cruise (Grant none the wiser) while her maid cleans up the murder site before Calhern pal John Halliday starts figuring things out. And while Halliday quickly puts two-and-two together, proving it won’t be so easy. These machinations are modest fun (Halliday makes like Hamlet putting on The Mousetrap to catch her out), but there’s real interest seeing Grant, fresh off his breakthru against Mae West in SHE DONE HIM WRONG/'32, starting to transform himself into the sleek leading man of everyone’s dreams. Plus all those Pre-Code moves: Carroll’s past living in sin with Calhern; spending a night at sea in Grant’s cabin; a smirking reference to a dead man wearing lip rouge; even the sound of a flushing toilet. Plus Carroll getting away scot-free on a murder.
With journeyman director Paul Sloan calling the shots, Carroll must have known she was on her way out at Paramount (Colbert, Hopkins, Sidney & Dietrich made for tough competition). But properly cast, as here, she holds her own, an adorable delight. So too the whole cast.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Watch for a editing error that has Calhern dial up the ‘hit’ using an eight-digit phone number.
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