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Sunday, February 3, 2019

MISSING WITNESSES (1937)

This Warner Bros. programmer, from ‘King of the Bs’ producer Bryan Foy, gets off to a good start (snappy direction from William Clemens, Sid Hickox’s stylish lensing and newspaper headlines doing half the storytelling*) as a protection racket roughs up a restaurateur & his establishment just as Detective Dick Purcell walks by. But a clean arrest goes for nought when the owner clams up in court, afraid to testify against the thugs, no doubt threatened by some unknown Mr. Big. Enter John Litel, commissioned by the Governor to get to the bottom of things by discovering who’s on top, and hiring Purcell as one of his agents. It’s all downhill from there, as Purcell’s tough guy cop, more moxie than brains, hasn’t the charm or charisma to pull off his minor-league James Cagney routine and Litel is no Edward G. Robinson as flinty fatherly mentor. The girl in the case, debuting Virginia Dale, a secretary with inside info on Mr. Big and Purcell’s on/off romantic interest, shows promise, but her part is so inconsistently written, she can’t always connect. And the film peters out in a series of quick/confused explanations and dud comic beats.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: *Foy might just as well have been called ‘King of Newspaper Headlines’ as his reliance on them for narrative shorthand was something of an inside Hollywood joke. See Rudy Behlmer’s book of studio memos INSIDE WARNER BROTHERS for details.

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