SHADOW OF DOUBT (1935)

Bereft of the snazzy production values & star wattage that kept M-G-M commercially atop Golden Age Hollywood, the studio’s programmers had to rely on just the sort of independent moviemaking moxie and quick-witted invention officially discouraged (even punished) on the lot.  A safe, dulled response in contrast to studios where B-pics could loosen up a bit with so little at stake.*  Ergo this sub-par M-G-M murder mystery, slackly directed by George B. Seitz, amid Society toffs and nightclub toughs where every Manhattanite is a Man-About-Town, even the gals, and all is fodder for tomorrow’s gossip columns.*  Our murder victim is Bradkey Page, a ‘handsy’ producer with too many girlfriends and too many enemies.  Beginning with an insulted Ricardo Cortez who publicly punched him at the club for leaving putative fiancée Virginia Bruce in the lurch for golddigger Betty Furness.  The usual list of shady characters, chorines and market manipulators fill in a long list of suspects and . . .  Ho-hum.  But halfway along, something unusual happens.  The script pivots almost entirely to Constance Collier, Cortez’s ultra-rich/eccentric Aunt, getting her out of the manse for the first time in decades to take the lead as amateur detective, solving the case along with antagonistic ‘help’ from detective Edward Brophy.  Collier, a near legendary stage performer in pre-’20s Britain making an unlikely Hollywood debut at 57 (she’d go on to a series of character turns as a fallen dowager in films like STAGE DOOR/’37 and ROPE/’48) walks off with the film. (Presumably, Collier and Brophy were test-running a possible series along the lines of what Edna May Oliver & James Gleason were doing over at Universal starting with THE PENGUIN POOL MURDER/’32.)  Collier proved too rich a taste for anything but the smallest of parts, but she’s certainly something to see in this, her sole lead role.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Actually, there's one nice bit of movement when a taxi getaway ride gets stuck in city traffic and becomes a foot chase.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Warners had just shown how these things are done in WONDER BAR/’34, exposing how crude & backward M-G-M’s default house style was at the time by comparison.  Just be warned, WONDER BAR may be the best of Al Jolson’s films, but racially it’s the most appalling.  (And BlackFace the least of it.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/01/wonder-bar-1933.html