Mysteries of New York #1
[From THE MAD MISS MANTON (Leigh Jason), a seriously silly, fun Manhattan Murder Mystery scripted by six separate writers yet actually good, even if the plot is impossible to follow. Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda are the leads, warming up their LADY EVE chemistry — crime-solving socialites is all I ought to have to say to you to get you excited — and the supporting cast has Hattie McDaniel, Sam Levene, John Qualen and Grady Sutton adding various forms of fun. Miles Mander adds thinness.]
shadowplay 
March 22, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Who doesn’t love a crime-solving socialite? I saw this as a kid and fell madly in love with Barbara Stanwyck.
Along with more than half the world.
March 22, 2011 at 2:14 pm
And the fabulous Whitney Bourne WAS a real “socialite” (her father headed Singer Sewing Machine Company).
Now the “socialites” we get include the likes of Paris Hilton and various Kardashians. And they’re not called socialites any more.
March 22, 2011 at 3:20 pm
There ISN’T a word for what they are.
“This film is respectfully dedicated to the memory of Mr. Elias Howe, who in 1846, invented the sewing machine.”
March 22, 2011 at 3:24 pm
This was one of those films that the staff of the local video store warned me off of. Snobs, every last one of them. I remember that this bunch also warned me off a Sturges film (Christmas In July). Luckily I never listened to them. I even liked to argue with them. I thought this film lightweight, but it was quite enjoyable, especially Stanwyck (was there anything she couldn’t play?). unfortunately I haven’t seen it in some time.
March 22, 2011 at 3:31 pm
Oh, it’s EXTREMELY lightweight, but very successfully so. You can finish it and say to yourself with enormous satisfaction, “That was very silly.”
Disliking a Sturges isn’t snobbery, it’s sheer lack of taste.
March 22, 2011 at 5:39 pm
Yeah, the only way I could imagine someone pooh-poohing Christmas In July out of snobbery would be if they said something like “It’s not as good as the original play,” and even that wouldn’t be true, though A Cup of Coffee is still a fascinating read. As one critic remarked, the play often feels more like Capra than Sturges.
March 22, 2011 at 5:41 pm
I gather the Ellen Drew character is sparkier in the original play. Other than that, the transformation from Capraesque to Sturgesian sounds like an all-round improvement, at least to this cynical curmudgeon.
March 22, 2011 at 5:42 pm
I love old films where by frame 100 you’re everything but promised a splitting headache, but by some miracle they end and you don’t have one.
The opposite is the worst, like Michael Curtiz’s The Kennel Murder Case. You expect light fare, but then you realize that by some horrible casting accident every male actor looks EXACTLY the same, even the old from the young, 5’10, 160 lbs with a gray suit and a pencil mustache. So you can’t follow the plot because the same two men plotting something are the same two trying to crack the case, and the same men having an argument are the same two men confiding in one another, on and on. Sometimes they even talk to themselves. It’s the most inadvertently confusing film EVER made.
March 22, 2011 at 6:22 pm
A hommage to “Little Me”
March 22, 2011 at 7:14 pm
Oh, the snobbery wasn’t due to any reference to the source play. I doubt they read it (I sure didn’t until the very late ’90s), but that it was “lesser Sturges” and not worth the time. Their opinion of Remember The Night was similarly boneheaded. Of course, if I rented, say a Resnais like Mon Oncle d’Amerique, they’d nod in approval. One of the more outre employees there programmed the best revival house in town. Well, he did until he got kicked out on his keister for arranging “private screenings” for his pals that the distributors took a very dim view of. Interestingly, he gave me less grief for my choices than most of the others.
Sometimes I don’t miss the Tower Records/Video/Books empire at all.
March 22, 2011 at 7:56 pm
I don’t know if Drew’s character is much sparkier in the play–I think she’s a bit livelier, but it’s been a long time since I read it. I do remember the play seeming more tense and desperate than the film–Waterbury’s speech about being a success is actually used toward the end, rather than showing up earlier as in the film (where it’s more ironically handled).
March 22, 2011 at 8:59 pm
I’m on Waterbury’s side! But Ellen Drew pretty much dismisses him as a sad old loser at the end. But one thing that’s fascinating is the way Sturges undercuts pretty much everything anybody says, including Drew — her big inspirational speech is the build-up to the boss deciding to let Dick Powell keep his job because his name’s on the door. With the result that Demarest and Snowflake end up as the voices of wisdom.
March 24, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Oh, BTW, you missed a couple of my character actor faves in TMMM – James Burke and Olin Howland!
March 24, 2011 at 4:46 pm
There are SO many!