MURDER IN GREENWICH VILLAGE

US, 1937, 68 minutes, Black and white.
Richard Arlen, Fay Wray, Raymond Walburn, Gene Morgan, Thurston Hall, Marc Lawrence, Leon Ames, Marjorie Reynolds.
Directed by Albert S.Rogell.

This is a murder mystery-lite! In fact, it is more in the vein of the screwball comedies so popular at the time.

Fay Wray is the wealthy heiress caught escaping from an artist’s apartment and, literally, falling into the hands of a commercial photographer, Steve Jackson, played by smiling but often exasperated Richard Arlen. The couple immediately go into bickering vein, she meeting all his associates in the photography company, especially an eccentric alcoholic who thinks he is a senator in the time of William McKinley?, played with exuberance by Raymond Walburn. Fay Wray then has to change clothes and Steve decides to take a photo of her for a commercial.

It emerges then that the original artist has been murdered. His gangster brother (Marc Lawrence in an early role – still 43 years before he appeared with Goldie Hawn in Foul Play) is determined to avenge his brother whom he brought up. There is a jealous rival because of the girlfriend flirting with the artist. However, the police (an irritatingly intrusive/portrusive performance by Gene Morgan) target Steve – and the couple pretend to be engaged.

The wealthy father wants to avoid a scandal. An advertiser, Leon Ames, would like to be engaged to the heiress is persuaded to get a contract for Steve to do all the photography for a Chromium company.

But, while the various clues are pursued, that is somewhat in the background, and the film is really a comedy, with romantic undertones, of a battle of the sexes.

Steve manages to bamboozle the policeman. His cleaner’s father is security in a department store there is a long sequence where the whole team go to the store in order to take photographs to impress the Chromium company -with some comedy as they have to pose as mannequins.

The mystery is solved very quickly in the final few moments of the film, surprisingly finding that Leon Ames is the villain and his motivation quickly explained before he is shot.

Entertaining its way – slight.