The Longest Night

Robert Young is at the department store for the first time in five years to sell it. He is distracted by some of the goods on sale and clerk Florence Rice. He is delayed when a corpse tumbles out of his private elevator and the police come to investigate.

Robert Young may have been one of the stars at MGM, but with more stars than there were in heaven, he was not of the first magnitude. In this, the shortest of any MGM feature, there are a lot of character actors to fill up its 51 minutes, and lots of gimmicks on display, but not much for the bland Young to do. Even the support wind up fairly bland, with Ted Healy as a cop, Sidney Toler as a (Caucasian) police captain, Samuel Hinds as the store's manager and Etienne Giradot as a kleptomaniac millionaire. It's undistinguished and painless.

B-movies were short and relatively low-budgeted films intended as a second film in a double-feature. Usually, there was an A-movie, some more prestigious and larger-budgeted film as well as the B....along with various shorts (such as a cartoon and/or a news reel) shown at most theaters during this era. Many of them were made by small studios like Republic or Monogram and many more were made by practically microscopic studios that actually didn't own their own studio space but rented it from a larger studio and filmed mostly at night. But what many folks don't know is that the biggest studios ALSO made Bs, and "The Longest Night" is clearly a B...and it is from MGM...the largest and fanciest studio of the era.

So why is "The Longest Night" a B? Well, at only a paltry 51 minutes, this alone would make it a B-movie. But it's also a fancy B (almost a B+ film if there was such a thing), since it's cast has some A-list actors, such as Robert Young who is in the lead.

"The Longest Night" is a murder mystery. Apart from westerns this was probably the most common genre for Bs. A few of these mysteries were very good. Most, sadly, are filled with cliches and are very formulaic. Despite "The Longest Night" being a higher-budgeted B from MGM, I'd place it in the latter category...being mostly formulaic and cliched.

What are some of these cliches and formulas? Well, in this case you have the typical idiot cop investigating (Sidney Toler is particularly one-dimensional here), his even stupider sidekick (Ted Healy is practically sub-human in his stupidity and uselessness), a smart civilian who for no discernible reason is practically Sherlock Holmes (Robert Young) as well as predictable scenes, such as one where someone says "I didn't kill her, but I'll tell you who did..."....and a shot rings out and kills them!! In other words, no matter how enjoyable all this is, it's also predictable and a bit silly. This clearly is NOT a thinking person's mystery and it obviously was hastily written. On the plus side, however, the cinematography is unusually good and the film is slick looking and enjoyable. Overall, a very mixed bag.

Department store owner Robert Young (as Charles "Charley" Phelps Jr.) arrives to consider selling his asset, then stumbles upon a strangulation victim. He orders a lockdown and cooperates with lawmen Sidney Toler and Ted Healy. Connected to the victim is pretty Florence Rice (as Joan Sutton), who provides Mr. Young with romance. She is the sister of beautiful Julie Haydon (as Eve), who helps boyfriend Leslie Fenton (as Carl Briggs) rob a warehouse in the opening sequence. All are suspects, some are victims. "The Longest Night" is so short you don't have time to wonder who may be guilty.

**** The Longest Night (10/2/36) Errol Taggart ~ Robert Young, Florence Rice, Sidney Toler, Julie Haydon

A nice short (55 min) "B" picture with a good cast of MGM stock players. Robert Young is pleasant and keeps this murder mystery in proper perspective.

For me, the real highlight was seeing Sidney Tolar playing the police honcho who conducted the investigation. It's the only time that I have ever seen him in any role other than Charlie Chan. To hear him talk that tough New York police lingo without a Chinese accent was fun for me. If I had no other reason to watch this film, Tolar, alone, would be sufficient.

Being of such short duration, the movie moves quickly. It's a good thing because (and I say this with reverence) this flick has "B" movie written all over it. Enjoy............

Longest Night, The (1936)

*** (out of 4)

Surprisenly effective mystery from MGM runs just 50-minutes but there are plenty of smiles and drama along the way. A department store owner (Robert Young) shows up at the store to do some business when one of his workers is found strangled to death. The cops are called in and they demand that everyone there remain in the store until they can find the killer who in return keeps killing more people. THE LONGEST NIGHT is the shortest film I can think of that MGM made around this time but no matter what the length is, the film remains an entertaining little gem thanks in large part to some nice characters and performances. Even by 1936 this type of mystery film had ran its course but it's easy to see why studios made them since they could do them cheap and it probably wasn't too hard to turn a profit. The actual story here, outside taking place in a department store, really doesn't offer anything new or original as we get the typical story of a wide range of characters being thrown together and one of them is the killer. The nice thing here is that it's never obvious who is doing the killings or why and I really enjoyed how the film slowly gave out clues and pieces to what's actually going on. Another major plus is that the cast members are so entertaining that you can't help but have fun with them. Young is as charming as always and he has some nice chemistry with Florence Rice who plays one of the worker's whose sister might be involved in the crime. Ted Healy and Sidney Toler are both in fine form here so fans of theirs will enjoy seeing them here. Julie Haydon, Leslie Fenton and Samuel S. Hinds. At just 50-minutes there's really not too much time for a lot of plot but I think that's a good thing because the film is extremely fast-paced and this help builds up some nice drama at the end. There's also not any boring dialogue to slow things down so this is a good example of the running time fitting the story and had they forced ten or twenty more minutes worth of footage it's doubtful the film would have been as entertaining.