IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 13 minutes, rated 6.6 by 682
Genre: krimi
Verdict: Snappy
Successful gold digger (Goldie) is about to elope with Money Bags in his private railway car on a siding at the vast Grand Central Station yards when….! She is murdered in the shower! Yet the corpse seems untouched, as well as unseen, per the censorship of the day.
Earlier we saw a felon in transit elude his police escort using the oldest trick in the book, throwing a dime on the ground and while they fought over it, he legged it, but only to the nearest phone booth where he used his last dime to call Goldie with threats many. In the bowels of the Station the two police escorts run around and bump into a Smart Mouth PI and his wife Off-Sider.
There is more to’ing and fro’ing until the usual suspects have been rounded up: Felon, PI, Mrs PI, jilted crim financier played by the Falcon’s Brother, Money Bags, Money Bags’s previous fiancee before Goldie moved in, and assorted others who become a chorus moving back and forth to reconstruct everyone’s movements in the theatre, conveniently located near Grand Central Station, and the private railway car.
This is largely incoherent but gives the players a chance to act. All the while Smart Mouth cracks wise while concealing evidence and after protests Plod complies with Smart Mouth’s directions. There are some bon mots and even a few surprises.
In a twist on the formula we do not find out the cause of Goldie’s death until near the very end, and the means implicated a very unlikely villain. Indeed my disbelief vaporised at this point. Would the top-hatted and white silk-scarfed senior gentleman of sixty, if a day, clamber around the third rail in a top hat with electrician’s gloves on….?
The pace is fast enough to paper over the plot gaps and the players are lively. And none of the women are the stumbling, fainting ilk so common in films of the era. Indeed Mrs Smart Mouth gives as good as she gets.
It was released in May 1942 and ends with an appeal for War Bonds. The Doolittle Raid had been in April 1942. The Battle of the Coral Sea occurred in early May and blunted Japanese plans to cut off shipping between Australia and the USA. The last Filipinos and Americans on Corregidor had surrendered to a terrible fate. At the end of May a Japanese midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour and torpedoed a naval training craft, while the raid was a failure it did alarm authorities and Harbour defences were enhanced and a blackout was more vigorously enforced.