A Tragedy at Midnight

Let's get over all this stuff about Powell-Loy. Howard-Lindsay hold their own in this Republic gem. I am all for 'the Republic for which it stands'.

The plot, not too original but, who cares? It was carried out beautifully by a cast of some of the era's most popular character actors.

The dialog, penned by a femme, was great fun and so well handled by John Howard and Margaret Lindsay. Why she never achieved greater fame, I will never know. She has a Lamarr-like beauty, gorgeous from any angle, and when it comes to line delivery excuse me - but - she equals Loy.

The chemistry between the stars - and they are that - is beautiful, the dialog is clever and witty.

The judo moves were very convincing as delivered by Keye Luke who also was A-plus in line delivery.

"A Tragedy at Midnight" is thoroughly enjoyable at any hour.

Entertaining crime comedy with a radio detective and his girlfriend (called Mommy, very bad idea in my way) about a crime of a woman found stabbed in Mommy's bed. It's kind of Thin Man adventure, quite silly. I really love the shadows scene. Not a must.

In the best of circumstances, meaning complete and uncut, "A Tragedy at Midnight" still could not be called a good movie. The writing is awful, the direction slipshod--shots rarely match, and in some scenes the actors don't seem to realize they're on camera; they stare down until their cue comes, at which time they suddenly leap into character--and the acting in many cases is pure burlesque. Most Abbott and Costello movies are more realistic. The goal was obviously to do a screwball mystery, ala "The Thin Man," with a little "Ghost Breakers" thrown in, but the characters here act like imbeciles. Having said that, the version of this film that is readily available on Netflix makes matters even worse by having had about one-quarter of its original running time chopped out, so as to fit into an hour time slot for television. This 53 minute version makes no sense--none--since the eliminated footage was apparently all exposition. What's left of the film involves a radio sleuth who makes the cops look like idiots (no big task here), and wakes up one hungover morning next to the corpse of a woman, not his wife. Can he solve the mystery, clear himself, elude the police, appease his wife, and still make his Wednesday broadcast? John Howard and Margaret Lindsay have very little chemistry, and Keye Luke's servant role makes the work of Mantan Moreland look dignified. There is also a huge cast of solid solid character actors, mostly wasted in virtual extra roles. Republic should have stuck to serials.

"A Tragedy AT MIDNIGHT" was a very entertaining mystery romance. John Howard and Margaret Lindsay made a great romantic detective team. Keye Luke, was also good as their ingenious servant, always on the spot to get them out of trouble.They were always one step ahead of the police in solving crimes and broadcasting solutions of crimes on their radio program, thereby frustrating the police who then wanted to get them off the air by finding something they could be arrested for.this appeared to be solved when our hero woke up one morning and found a woman with a knife in her back in his wife's bed.They then proceed to unravel the mystery. In some ways this picture is similar to the Thin Man series.

I had a VHS copy of this film that I made off the air but the tape oxide eventually went bad. I hope the last remaining copy on nitrate based film is restored before the nitrate turns to powder. it would be a shame if the picture were lost.

A ripoff of The Thin Man series, but entertaining in its own right. But the TV prints (like the one used by Netflix streaming) slash about 15 minutes out of this 69-minute movie! There's a big chunk missing at the beginning, which is apparently where the relationships with the neighbors is set up and who is sleeping where (an important fact). And there's another few minutes eliminated about halfway through the film.

In the early days of TV Republic would edit its movies down to about 53 minutes so that TV stations could run them in an hour time slot (back then they only had 3 minutes of commercials per half hour!). So beware the edited TV prints of this title.