Before Morning

Louis Jean Heydt (in his first movie role) has come from the premiere of his first Broadway show. He drops in on Lora Baxter, and tells her that if it is a success, he wants her to star in his next. She turns him down. She's retiring and getting married. After he leaves, her old lover, Russell Hicks comes in. He doesn't feel too well and lies down. When Miss Baxter checks on him, he is dead.

She makes some phone calls. A dead married man in her apartment is not something she wants bruited about. In comes Doctor Leo Carillo. He says it was not a heart attack, but nicotine poisoning, that he found Hicks' will in his breast pocket -- where people always keep them -- and it leaves $200,000 to Miss Baxter. He suggests that he can take the corpse to his sanitarium and report the death as a heart attack for $200,000 in cash by the next day.

This interesting written murder mystery suffers a common issue for Poverty Row dramas of the era: very stagy line readings. However, the excellence of the story and Leo Carillo makes it very worthwhile. Although Carillo is probably best remembered as Pancho on TV's CISCO KID, and frequently played with a Mexican accent, in truth he came from a wealthy Los Angeles family who could trace themselves back to the Conquistadors. His grandfather had been the first provisional governor of California, and his father the first mayor of Santa Monica. Carillo himself was a trained engineer and cartoonist. In the 1930s he excelled at playing threatening villains, although his career turned into one of more standard accent parts in the 1940s. He died in 1961 at the age of 80.

The bad things about this movie are mainly due to its age. It is black and white. The sound and picture quality are not up to most movie goers expectations. The acting is very slow. There are long pauses between the spoken sentences. It is like the actor or actress is waiting for a truck to drive by.

The good thing is the end of the movie. It actually goes somewhere. It could be redone today with a crisp delivery and the right cast. There are a few surprises that make the movie worth watching.

Leo Carrillo is actually good, but for some reason the acting is slowed down in almost every scene. There also is a great concern about a man and woman having an affair, which seems laughable today.

Is the first line "Good evening, Elvis?" I think that is what she says. Watch it and give me your opinion. This film was made two years before Elvis was born.

In answer to a previous reviewer, the opening line is clearly: "Good evening, Albert."

I agree the film is in a very poor state, though it's not surprising nobody bothered to preserve it - the direction, staging, and acting, along with photography and editing are appalling, even for it's age - there were hundreds of decently, and professionally made films at that time - this is not one of them.

I expect it worked better in the more intimate environment of theatre but it's transference to the screen leaves a lot to be desired... Even many silent movies were more exciting than this.

The gaps in the delivery are almost big enough for the 'prompter' to get the words in... :)

"Before Morning" was originally a play and it looks as if they were filming a play when they made this movie. This is NOT a good thing....as the acting is very stagy, there's no incidental music and the pace is glacially slow. It's a shame, as the basic idea of the story isn't bad at all.

An actress is planning on getting married and she tells a male friend about this. The man isn't feeling very good and goes to her bedroom to lie down. Soon, however, she finds the friend is dead and she is worried what the man's wife will think. Nothing happened unseemly, but she's worried about the appearance of impropriety. One of her friends recommends they call a trusted doctor (Leo Carillo). Unfortunately, this plan is not a good one, as the doctor is evil and uses this as an opportunity to shake down the actress as well as the man's wife!

As I said, the idea was interesting...the execution was clunky and dull. I blame the director for this...as the pacing and acting are his responsibility. It also didn't help that the big twist came long before the movie ended and the film kept dragging on and on afterwards.

One of the difficulties of the transition from silent to talkies was that not enough actors could successfully make that transition, and even those that did needed time to get the hang of it. That's why so many movies from the early to mid-thirties don't vocalize well. The actors either sound stiff and wooden or else too loud and dramatic, which is the case here.

It came as no surprise that "Before Morning" had been a stage play first, because it's acted as if it's still one, with over-the-top dramatization and lines being spoken as if the folks in the rear balcony have to be heard. Also, the storyline (death, cover-up, blackmail, deception, secret identity, etc.) would work well on stage, but somehow didn't work so well on film.

It was a nice try, though.