Night in New Orleans

Preston Foster is in competition with Albert Dekker for the new captaincy that's just opened up.... and the police commissioner's job is also up for grabs. So when a man that Foster is investigating turns up dead and the evidence indicates that Foster might have a hand in it, he has to keep arguing his way out of having Dekker arrest him with the help of his loving but silly wife, Patricia Morrison, and faithful manservant Dooley Wilson.

It's a bright little mystery comedy, with easy play between Foster and Miss Morrison; although it might seem that New Orleans has little to do with the movie, it is set just before the Mardis Gras, and it actually has some relevance. I figured the wrongplayer for the murderer until he was eliminated, so it turned out to be a fairly good time. With Charles Butterworth, Paul Hurst, Cecil Kellaway, and Yola D'Avril.

Steve Abbott and Bill Richards are both lieutenants in the New Orleans police department, colleagues and rivals alike. Steve, seeking love letters his wife Ethel once wrote to a Phillip Wallace, finds the man's dead body and immediately becomes Bill's prime suspect. Both report to Dan Odell, their chief. Ethel, an amateur detective, investigates on her own while her husband's under suspicion.

A standard yet entertaining comedy thriller with good performances by Preston Foster and Patricia Morrison as his wife who is quite a humorous character. This mystery film is done mostly for laugh, the dialogue snappy and the pace is breezy - it's not earth shatteringly great but it's still fun.

Lovely Patricia Morison had a minor and dreary career in the movies before she became known for her soprano voice and her starring role in the original production of Kiss Me, Kate. This film shows how sadly mistreated she was--her black hair is dyed blonde, and the hairstyle and makeup also make her look like Joan Blondell, the star of several comedy mysteries like this one. She was also told to act like Blondell, with lots of wide-eyed pouting and fuming, and the dialogue makes her out to be, as even her police lieutenant husband says, "a birdbrain."

Since the husband is the always likable Preston Foster, and since he does have to put up with a lot from this ninny, we can forgive him. But it seems a bit much for him to take her on a search of a suspect's apartment and say, "Help me look for clues" to someone who just swivels her head and stares blankly. The script is as low in consistency as it is in respect for women.

That said, the dialogue is often quite funny, and the story jogs on at a decent pace. The comedy mystery is a peculiar and, some feel, distasteful genre (what's funny about corpses and police brutality?). but if you're not bothered, you can count on being passably entertained.