Mr. District Attorney

This film is a few steps up from the Lippert films which predominate the Forgotten Noir Vol. 4 series. It's a Republic Film offering a much better cast than the Lippert films, including: Dennis O'Keefe, Peter Lorre and character actors Charles Halton, Dick O'Neil, Norma Varden and Grady Sutton. Mr. District Attorney doesn't take itself as seriously as the others and has a strong comedic edge to it. It's like a combination of screwball comedy and film noir. Story involves graft perpetrated by Lorre and a wacky reporter and rookie D.A. O'Keefe vying to solve the case. The cast helps move the proceedings along. One of the odder efforts in Forgotten Noir Vol. 4.

This is one of three movies bundled on a DVD entitled "Forgotten Noir", though I really wouldn't consider it an example of film noir. It's more a kooky movie where one of the characters just happens to work for the District Attorney. Dennis O'Keefe plays a recent Harvard Law graduate and from the start he irritates his boss to no end. So, to punish him, he's given a dead case--one no one else wants. However, when the missing witness suddenly shows up, this becomes a very hot case and O'Keefe and his spunky female reporter friend (what a cliché!!) do what any assistant DA would do--investigate the crime and get caught up in the middle of it.

The bottom line is that none of this is the least bit believable and the idea of these two kooky characters solving a crime is silly. But, the characters are likable and if you only look at it as a kooky B-mystery, you'll not be disappointed. Not bad, but clearly a low-budget B-film.

Someone decided that the radio series, Mr. District Attorney, was too serious and the film version should be crammed with comic relief. Thus you have Dennis O'Keefe as a Harvard law school graduate (summa cum laude no less) who's a nutcase in the courtroom and equally muddle-headed when he's assigned to find a master criminal named Hyde. From time to time, he literally bumps into Florence Rice as a newspaperwoman who's out to outwit the competition by solving the Hyde mystery. When O'Keefe isn't accidentally plunking her on her prat, she goes all out to get a scoop, hiding in the trunk of a car she suspects is en route to pick up Hyde. Fortunately, no key is required to open the trunk from the outside or the inside. Meanwhile, Peter Lorre -- as Hyde -- obviously thinks he's in a totally different movie, playing it psychotically straight, projecting the kind of sibilant menace of which he's the acknowledged master. As usual, he's terrific. Too bad the movie isn't, as well.

Mr. District Attorney (1941) is a particularly well-produced Republic Picture, coming as it does from a studio better known for its quickie Westerns and B-picture programmers. It is extremely well-staged and paced by British-born director William Morgan, who had begun his film career as a film editor. His previous experience shows. The script was co-written by Karl Brown, one of the few cinematographers ever to leave the camera behind to become a successful screenwriter; Karl had begun as a teen-age camera operator working for D. W. Griffith in the silent days. This film is a typical screwball comedy with an improbable crime plot, a genre popular back then, and features Dennis O'Keefe as the uptight Harvard lawyer, and Florence Rice as the wise-cracking girl reporter. They are not quite up to the dazzle of a Cary Grant and a Roz Russell, but they are both attractive and perfectly acceptable. Republic must have spent a good deal of money surrounding them with some of the ablest character actors in town, faces all of us recognize even if we can't name them-- among them, Minor Watson, Stanley Ridges, Charles Halton, Vince Barnett, and, for a flash, Dave Wilcox. Peter Lorre, who must have cost Republic a pretty penny to borrow from Warner Bros, is his usual evil self. Of all the fine cast, the ever-dependable Charles Arnt is the most memorable as the little sucker who falls for the no-good dame. As was so often the case, director Morgan went on from picture to picture, and as an editor, from TV series to series, rarely ever getting a chance to show his comic talents as a director again. Too bad.

1941's Republic version of the radio series "Mr. District Attorney" is far more lighthearted than its source, starring Dennis O'Keefe as Prince Cadwallader Jones, rookie assistant to DA Winton (Stanley Ridges), assigned to an old case involving the missing Paul Hyde (Peter Lorre), whose hidden cache of embezzled loot mysteriously turns up at the race track. There are red herrings and murder victims, but it's a waste of Lorre, in a criminally small role. Florence Rice supplies much comedy as nosy reporter Terry Parker, who also shows a tendency to get into hot water. The 1947 version from Columbia was probably more faithful than this one, certainly more serious; highly enjoyable in a breezy style, upper class for Poverty Row's Republic Pictures, who followed it with a pair of little seen sequels, "Mr. District Attorney in the Carter Case" and "Secrets of the Underground" (both featuring different actors in the lead).