THE PHANTOM OF 42nd STREET

US, 1945, 61 minutes, Black-and-white.

Dave O'Brien, Alan Mowbray, Kay Aldridge, Frank Jenks, Edythe Elliott, Jack Mulhall.

Directed by Albert Herman.

A very brief supporting feature, a murder mystery, three murders, in fact.

It is set in the theatre district of Broadway, a focus on a critic, played by Dave O’Brien (very familiar to older audiences from the MGM shorts, Pete Smith Specialties, and as later writer for the Red Skeleton Show). He reviews a play with a renowned actor, Alan Mowbray, and interviews his daughter, Kate Eldridge. He is busy reviewing the play but his editor wants him to investigate the murders.

The theatre critic relies on his taxi driver, Frank Jenks, so often a comic sidekick in this kind of film.

A lot of time is spent in the theatre, the critic becoming more involved, attracted to the daughter, interviewing the father, suspecting some kind of revenge because each body was found with a threatening note and a Shakespearian quote.

The critic also looks at a past program, discovers a leading lady who now owns a boarding house, interviews her, she goes to the theatre, identifies some of the staff there from the old days, the revelation that she was in a relationship with the actor and the actress is her daughter!

Instead of a gathering of all the suspects in an Agatha Christie style, there is a re-enactment of the death of Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s play, hoping to lure out the murderer to stab the actor. The critic is right, it is a revenge story, an actor from the past was jealous, in love with the landlady, and he disappeared…

An enjoyable time-passing revisiting of this kind of supporting feature.