The Lady in the Morgue

"The Lady in the Morgue" is the 3rd of 11 Crime Club Mysteries...mysteries based on crime novels under the same umbrella title.

The story begins with a woman found dead...hanging in a cheap hotel. Bill Crane, a private detective, responds to the case, as he thinks she might actually be a missing rich woman. But when he goes to the morgue to check out the body, the attendant there has been murdered and the corpse has been stolen! Clearly this is no run of the mill case for Crane.

This is a decent but otherwise unremarkable mystery. During this era, Hollywood made hundreds (if not thousands) of them and while it's slightly better than average (the acting and production values put it above similar films from Monogram and other similar studios), there's little that distinguishes it over the rest of the lot...and much of it is because Crane needed to spend MUCH of the finale of the film explaining everything! At least Crane is a private eye...in most of these sorts of films they are newspaper reporters or amateurs! Well made but one you don't need to rush to see.

The Lady in the Morgue is part of a three-film Crime Club series from Universal, this one starring Preston Foster as detective Bill Crane.

The body of a woman, Alice Ross, is found in a cheap hotel, dead from an apparent suicide. The police believe it to be Kathryn Courtland, a woman from a wealthy family who has gone missing.

When Crane, hired by the family, arrives at the morgue with his assistant Doc (Frank Jenks), the body is gone and the morgue attendant is dead. The police suspect Crane.

It seems that several factions have different ideas about the identity of this woman. As Crane endeavors to learn who she is, he gets cracked over the head with a liquor bottle, appears at an inquest, and has a night at the cemetery.

One awful, thoughtless scene, when Crane, testing whether the woman really hung herself, experiments with the device using a black hotel attendant who accompanies him to the hotel room.

Preston Foster was an interesting man, with careers as an actor, singer, and composer. He handles the role of Crane well, with lively support from Jenks. Wild Bill Elliott pre his cowboy days plays a Courtland relative, and the very exotic-looking ex-silent screen actor Roland Drew plays a band leader.

The film moves fast - maybe too fast given all the different identity stories - with a little finesse, this could have been a solid mystery film. But here we're in the land of the cheap Bs. The director, Otis Garett, was quite good. However, he sadly died three years later.

A woman hangs herself at a hotel, and no one can identify her. PI Preston Foster is hired to look into the matter by a wealthy family. Soon the corpses and the mysteries pile up in this nicely tangled CRIME CLUB entry.

It's based on a mystery series by Jonathan Latimer, and it's a good mystery. Even if the screenwriters and director Otis Garrett can't put much snap into the dialogue, and there's an awful large amount of backscreen projection, the good cast keeps things moving along in a confused way throughout. Frank Jenks is Foster's stooge, Patricia Ellis is the leading lady, and the usual fine supporting players show up in this Universal programmer.

Latimer started turning out screenplays the next year, and seems to have peaked in the mid-1940s with nicely confusing noirs like THE BIG CLOCK. He would contribute to the PERRY MASON TV series, and die in 1983 at the age of 76.

Preston Foster plays a PI hired to investigate the case of a missing body. It's a fast-paced mystery, though a little too fast. It can be confusing with so many characters, and though the dialogue is snappy and humorous, it lacked clarity. Still it's enjoyable, and a great insight into the era. Plus, it's good to see one of my favourite 1940's b-western star Wild Bill Elliott. I didn't recognise him at first.

A few years before this Universal cheapie was made in 1938, the Laemmles, father and son, were ousted from the studio because of the excessive amount of money they overspent on their 1936 prestige production of the Irene Dunne SHOWBOAT. This typical lowest-budget B picture shows what the same studio could do for pennies. Stanley Cortez, who was to go on to photograph MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, must have lit these cheap sets in five minutes. The music is all stock, some borrowed from THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. The director, the talented former editor Otis Garrett, does a commendable job. He shoots close angles to hide the bare sets and minimal furniture, and keeps the actors moving and talking so frantically that no one need bother to follow the plot. Lots of good wisecracking dialogue,and excellent no-nonsense acting from the usual tough guy and tough girl regulars. Well worth a visit if only to see the butler in the penthouse scene.