Meurtre au music-hall

This movie is up there with "Silver City Kid", "The Phantom Speaks" and "The Blazing Sun" as John English's (I) best features. A classic mystery movie with some brilliant performances, especially from Vera Ralston and Ann Rutherford. It's pretty much your standard mystery story all about being in the wrong place at the right time. Vera Ralston plays the unlucky heroine, accused of a murder she didn't commit or did she......

Murder in the Music Hall is actually an incorrect title for this movie because that's not where the murder occurs. Nevertheless this is actually a good mystery story that is marred by the "acting" of the two lead protagonists: Vera Ralston and William Marshall. I gather Vera Ralston's career can be attributed to her affair and then marriage to the head of Republic Pictures, Herbert Yates.

The film does do okay thanks to the supporting actors like William Gargan, Jerome Cowan, Helen Walker, and Ann Rutherford. And this film is worth watching if only to catch the three minute performance of Mary Field who has the best lines in the picture and the acting chops to make them memorable.

The plot will keep you guessing and their are some excellent suspects, and the viewer will feel they have not been cheated when the murderer is revealed.

Edward Norris gets out of prison after five years and meets up with his old girl friend, Vera Hruba Ralston. She a lead ice dancer at the Radio City Music Hall, and the man he went to prison for killing was her skating partner and lover. Norris says he took the plea because he loves her, and now he wants his pay-off: come with him to Europe. She's moved on, to libretttist William Marshall and turns him down. Later that evening, Norris is murdered, and Miss Ralston looks like a prime suspect, so she and Marshall go looking for the murderer.

When she's not doing routines on ice, of course. There seem to be four or five numbers in which she stars, and she seems all right. Republic Pictures boss Herbert Yates was smitten with the ice skater, and said he would make her a star. Although they eventually married, and he kept putting her in leads, she never turned into much of an actress.

Fortunately, she didn't need to be much of one here. A couple of the ice dancing routines are good, the mystery script is nicely tangled, with a blind man the principal witness, and there are plenty of other talented actors around, including Jerome Cowan, Helen Walker, Nancy Kelly and Julie Bishop. While the editing could have been tighter, it's a pretty good movie.

Ice-skating headliner Vera Ralston (Lila) is being blackmailed to quit her show and team up with ex-partner Edward Norris (Carl). Norris is stabbed and dies after a meeting with her and Ralston is in a sticky situation. Her current boyfriend William Marshall (Don) sets about solving the mystery.

We are introduced to a cast of characters and one of them is a murderer. The cast are fine in this story set in a music-hall environment. We get to watch some ice-skating performances which is pleasant enough - nothing too special - while the story develops between performances. I must give credit to these girls who run around and chase after clues within their own appearances within the same show! Wow. Anyway, the film is a murder mystery that starts to go off the rails a bit when we focus on the 'blind man' character. At this point, the audience just wants to wrap up the proceedings - just tell us who did it. Unfortunately, the sound quality of the film is poor.

And nothing in the film indicates otherwise. But it is overrun with ice-skaters and hacked-off former ice-skaters. Dang, you'd think there was only one Music Hall in the world.

This one has Lila Leighton (Vera Hruba Ralston), the lovely ice ballerina, meeting Carl Lang (Edward Norris), former ice-show producer, at his New York City penthouse apartment, from which one might have been able to see Radio City Music Hall if the film had been shot on location in New York rather then Republic Studios in the San Fernando Valley, but it wasn't. Lia refuses Lang's offer to star in his new Music Hall Ice Show---no this isn't the Ice Capades, either---and takes her leave.

Back at "this" Music Hall, Lila discovers she has left her purse at Lang's apartment and returns there, and is followed by orchestra-leader Don Jordan (William Marshall.) There, they discover that Carl has been stabbed to death, probably by somebody using a knife. Gracie (Ann Rutherford), Lila's pert-and-pretty understudy, has also followed them there (don't read too much in that), and helps them remove traces of Lila's visit, an indication that she may have left more than her purse.

They also find a pair of kid-gloves (made from a goat kid and not belonging to a human kid), and the laundry mark leads Don to Rita Morgan (Nancy Kelly), wealthy socialite, wife of George Morgan (not the singer for those who jump to assumptions), and Rita turns out to be a former ice-skating star for Carl Lang's Music Hall shows. Rita 'fesses right up about being in Lang's apartment but says he was in excellent health when she left, and says she passed no one except a blind man.

By some means or another Don and Lila discover that the 'blind man' was really Rita's husband, George Morgan (Jerome Cowan), who claims he used the disguise in order to trail and protect his wife. He may or may not be guilty but in most films Jerome Cowan shows up in, he either did it or he will solve it, other than in "The Maltese Falcon," in which he did neither. By this time, the NYC police are on the case, and with the help of Don and Lila, succeed in solving the murder.

Director John English didn't pay any attention to the urging of Associate Producer Herman Millakowsky and co-screenplay writer Laszlo Gorog to give this one a "European Touch," and, consequently, came away with 84 minutes (unless one has the TV-edited short version) of a good straight-ahead mystery meller.