Main Cast: Carl Brisson, Victor McLaglen, Jack Oakie, Kitty Carlisle, Gertrude Michael, Dorothy Stickney
Release Year: 1934
Country: US
Run Time: 91 minutes
Plot
The Earl Carroll Vanities, a popular Broadway revue of the 1930s and '40s, is the setting for this murder mystery interspersed with an assortment of variety acts, including Duke Ellington performing "Ebony Rhapsody" and a novelty number called "Marijuana." Victor McLaglen stars as Bill Murdock, a detective investigating a series of murders during the opening night of a new edition of the Vanities. When private detective Sadie Evans (Gail Patrick) is found murdered, Murdock must investigate between musical numbers to find the killer. When Rita Rose (Gertrude Michael) next turns up dead, Murdock concludes young ingenue Ann Ware (Kitty Carlisle) is the next person marked for death. Murdock has to find the murderer before the ending of the show or else he or she could disappear in the departing crowd of theatergoers. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
Review
One of the more notorious of the pre-Code films, Murder at the Vanities is not a great film by any means, but it's a great deal of fun. Combining the musical and murder mystery genres was an interesting idea, and it works fairly well, despite a screenplay that, a few great wisecracks aside, is fairly lame. The story is delightfully lurid, but not especially well written, with red herrings thrown in willy-nilly yet still not able to make the unmasking of the killer a surprise. Vanities also has some terribly wooden acting from Kitty Carlisle and Carl Brisson (although both are in good voice for their musical numbers) and a disappointingly dull performance from Victor McLaglen. Jack Oakie is fun, Toby Wing livens things occasionally, and Dorothy Stickney has some good moments, but the real fun in Murder is in the musical numbers. "Cocktails for Two" is the score's "standard," but there's more fun to be had from the feather-filled "Live and Love Tonight" and even more fun from the film's two highlights, "Marihuana" and "Ebony Rhapsody." The former is a surreal reefer number featuring gigantic cacti (the flowers of which contain nude women) and a delirious, desire-laden Gertrude Michael performance; the latter is a bizarre desecration of the "Hungarian Rhapsody," with a swinging Duke Ellington performance, that ends with an actor portraying Franz Liszt gunning down the cast. These numbers alone, so strange and so utterly fantastic, make the film worth catching. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Mitchell Leisen - Director, William Shea - Editor, Arthur Johnston - Composer (Music Score), Leo Tover - Cinematographer, E. Lloyd Sheldon - Producer, Sam Hellman - Screenwriter, Carey Wilson - Screenwriter, Earl Carroll - Play Author, Rufus King - Play Author
The film is primarily a musical, based on Earl Carroll's long-running BroadwayrevueEarl Carroll's Vanities, combined with a murder mystery. Songs featured in the film by Arthur Johnston and Sam Coslow include "Cocktails for Two" sung by Brisson, "Marahuana" sung by Michael, "Where Do They Come From (and Where Do They Go)" sung by Carlisle, and "Ebony Rhapsody" by Ellington. In the film, Lucille Ball, Ann Sheridan, and Virginia Davis had small roles as chorines.
It was released on DVD (as part of a six disc set entitled "Pre-Code Hollywood Collection") on April 7, 2009.[1]
