The Missing Lady (1946)
IMDb meta-data is run time 59 minutes, rated 4.9 by 72 cinematizens
Genre: Mystery
Verdict: There is nothing to spoil with a spoiler.
Off camera a collector of orientalia is murdered in his luxurious apartment and along with chopsticks a jade statuette of a lady is stolen. Plod in the form of West Point graduate James Flavin arrives and arrests Lamont Cranston who lives next door with his faithful bumbler. In the dumb sweepstakes, leaving aside the entire membership of the current Republican Party, this plod is The Champion. (James should have stayed in the Army rather than play this crap.) It takes him fifty of the fifty-nine minutes to realise that the missing lady is the statuette and not a dame. Of course, the real stupidity traces back to the scriptwriter who thought this was funny, one George Callaghan. Guilty as seen.
The very name Lamont Cranston conjures magic to the cognoscenti (that’s me). He is the Shadow. THE SHADOW! He knows what evil lurks in the heart of men! This knowledge is the forbidden fruit of violating the NSW privacy laws. The same goes for Santa Claus. Moreover, the Shadow has the power to cloud men’s minds. Of course, the fraternity brothers, like viewers of Pox News, were born that way so it’s not that big a deal.
Only one scene makes use of the Shadow’s much-anticipated shadow on a staircase. It is excellent and in lieu of doing anything else creative it is shown a second time. Even the fraternity brothers noticed this repetition. And that’s it. There is no clouding of minds, but rather this shadow dons a black cat suit under a trench coat or something. On the radio The Shadow had the power to cloud men’s mind, but on the screen he has the power to bore any and everyone.
While on radio Margo Lane is Lamont’s very clever and plucky helpmate who often turned the tables on villains who underestimated her, in this rendering she is vain imbecile in a series of hats no one wants to sit behind in the movie theatre. Still if this film was playing, then hiding behind those hats might be a good idea.
The cast is replete with surplus characters evidently from the producer’s extended family who contribute nothing to anything. With that ability they should have been in Congress.
George Chandler played Lamont’s flunky. He had been a doughboy in World War I and made a subsequent career out of fourth and fifth bananas in the old vaudeville phrase. He racked up 462 credits on the IMDb. He was a regular on Lassie in the 1950s. HIs major claim to fame may be that he succeeded Ronald Reagan as President … of the Screen Actors Guild.
Kane Richmond played Cranston, sort of. He was a poster boy with a jaw to park a car under, the confident manner of schoolyard bully, broad shoulders of a gym rat, and the dark good looks of a young wanna be. In short, one of scores of triers in Hollywoodland at the time. His career highlights include: Spy Smashers (1942), Haunted Harbor (1944), and Jungle Raiders (1945). No more needs to be said.
The comic relief was supplied by two sisters, Miss Effie and Miss Millie, who raced the elevators in the apartment building. The story, such as it was, being so trite, these two added some welcome distraction for which much thanks. Integrating their shenanigans into the story was beyond the scriptwriter.