No Place for a Lady

The original title of the film was called Thirteen Steps to Heaven. Production took place from September 2, 1942 to September 16, 1942. Private detective Jess Arno and his realtor fiancée June attempt to solve the murder when the body of a tire magnate is found in a beach house.

PI William Gargan and his fiancee, Margaret Lindsay, look at his newly acquired vacation property. It's perfect, except for the corpse they find. Fortunately it turns out to be a waxwork figure, but they soon are embroiled in a clearly WWII comedy-mystery which inolves nightclubs, air raid wardens, and rubber tires.

This is far more a knockabout farce than the Ellery Queen mysteries they were leading, so they're playing generic characters. It's a decently done B from director James Hogan, with Phyllis Brooks, James Purcell, Jerome Cowan and Thomas Jackson as a cop along for the ride.

This was meant to be the first film in a new crime detection series to replace the run of Ellery Queen movies by Columbia. But my guess is that they may have scuppered this idea by suggesting that Jess Arno, the lead character, was about to join the army in this story. Arno has turned private detective when we meet him as he springs Dolly Adair from a San Franciscan jail. Arno's girlfriend is supposed to prepare a beachside house at Sandhaven for Dolly so that the rehabilitated jailbird can be secreted away from reporters. June, the girlfriend in question, is livid that Arno is prepared to protect the "blonde menace" at his secret seaside hideaway. She sets up a practical joke with a 'murdered' wax blonde dummy at the house and deliberately forgets to have the electricity switched on. But a real murdered body turns up on the premises and then it disappears. So it's a good setup for this witty wartime mystery starring William Gargan as Arno and Margaret Lindsay as June. It also has the versatile Jerome Cowan as the chief suspect whose rich lady friend has gone missing. He is a singer at an upmarket dining place where Cowan underlines his versatility by singing a song with the appropriate tile of 'A Cottage By The Sea.' This is a good entertaining 66 minutes of comic-sinister shenanigans accompanied by the type of mysterioso music I always enjoy in these old movies.

At a warehouse in Los Angeles, trucks are loaded with piles of tires to be shipped to a San Francisco warehouse. On a country road in the shadows of darkness, tires are transferred to Joe Wembley (Frank M. Thomas), an underworld magnate and operator of a beach nightclub. With $50,000 raised from the transaction, Evelyn Harris (Doris Lloyd), who inherited the tire business from her late husband, plans to marry Eddie Moore (Jerome Cowan), a singer at a Wembley cafe. The two lovebirds head for New York City, but Moore insists on stopping at an empty cabin that he notices from the street.

In San Francisco, private detective Jess Arno (William Gargan) manages to acquit actress Dolly Adair (Phyllis Brooks) of murder and becomes a media sensation. After the trial is over, Jess rushes to call her boyfriend, June Terry (Margaret Lindsay), a real estate agent on the beach. June, jealous of Dolly, is angry when Jess informs her that she plans to protect Dolly from the reporters by hiding her in her beach hut.

A private detective and a blonde acquaintance whom he has rescued from a misdirected murder charge, discover a body in his beachside cottage; only it has disappeared by the time the police arrive, leaving him to be charged with hoaxing the police. With his license in jeopardy, his would-be fiancee and an inquiring reporter set out to investigate.

Interesting idea of a prank gone wrong, and there's the usual fast-talking and witty dialogue, and lively performance from Margaret Lindsay, however the plot can be a bit muddled and confusing - overall, a watchable yet not too striking.the air raid siren scenes are quite poignant.