Sometimes I think these movies intentionally try to annoy me. Even when they have a good thing going they'll do something to muck it all up just to get under my skin. "Red Haired Alibi" waited until the end to be irksome.
It began with a mercurial guy named Trent Travers (Theodore von Eltz) meeting and employing a woman named Lynn Monith (Merna Kennedy). A condition of her employment was that she had to mostly keep her mouth shut. Lynn didn't have sense enough to ask anymore questions, but I would think that any job requiring you to "keep your trap closed" is a job you shouldn't take. Lynn and I didn't have the same upbringing, so she took the well-paying job.
Predictably, the job landed her in hot water. Trent killed a rival named Morgan (John Vosper) then gave the gun to Lynn to throw away. He also wanted her to alibi him by telling the police that he was in Cleveland instead of in New York CIty where the murder took place. Lynn did all of that then skipped town. She was done with Trent and his criminal lifestyle.
She went to White Plains, NY where she met up with Bob Shelton (Grant Withers), a man she'd already crossed paths with before. Bob needed a nanny and Lynn needed a job; it was perfect. Bob got an attractive red-headed nanny, and his daughter Gloria (Shirley Temple) got a surrogate mother. Eventually, Bob and Lynn fell in love and got married. Things couldn't have been more perfect, but you knew that Trent would enter the picture again at some point.
Trent spotted Lynn days, weeks, or months after she had split from him. He saw her at the train station in New York City then followed her home. From this point on the movie was a sh-t show.
Trent demanded $10,000 from Lynn. He had been on the lam for a while now and was all out of dough. I figured that he'd threaten to tell her husband about her and that she'd be so afraid of him leaving her that she'd give Trent the money. It was a regular trick used back then, however lame. But that's not what happened. He made a vague threat which I couldn't interpret, but Lynn interpreted it as he was going to kill her husband. A scary threat, yes, but a stupid one too. Lynn was the only person who could definitively place Trent at the scene of the crime. She had been quiet up until this point, so why would he upset the apple cart? Lynn was holding all the cards.
What Lynn should've done was flip the script and gave Trent an ultimatum. "Get out of this house. Leave me and my family alone, and I won't talk to the police," is what she should've said. Instead, she agreed to meet him and give him the $10,000.
She met Trent at a hotel in White Plains. Trent was feeling really good about himself, as though he was in the driver's seat. Instead of just wanting $10,000 to stay hidden, he wanted some of Lynn too. She meekly refused to entertain his fancies and she told him that she didn't even have the $10,000 either. She said she couldn't get that kind of money without arousing her husband's suspicions.
At this point Trent threatened to call the police.
"Huh? Why in the world would HE be calling the police?" is what you should be asking just as I was.
He said that he would tell the police that she handled the gun that killed Morgan.
Really!? Surely, he must be bluffing. Did he really plan to call the police and try to convince them that Lynn committed the murder? He may as well had handed himself over to the cops because that's what it would amount to.
Lynn should've seen this as either a bluff or a suicidal move on Trent's part, but instead she saw it as a legitimate threat to her freedom and/or marriage.
When Trent got on the phone (to the police oddly enough), Lynn pulled out a gun and shot him. Or so we thought. It turns out that she missed Trent at point blank range and some third party outside the window shot Trent in the back AT THE EXACT SAME TIME Lynn pulled the trigger.
The whole scenario was absurd. To begin with, Lynn should've gone to the police herself to protect her family. She should've at least used the threat of the police to back Trent off of her being that she was the only person who'd protected Trent's dumbass AND was the only one who could put him away. However, she went to meet with him anyway and decided that killing him was the only option. The writers made it so she shot AT him, but we were led to believe she shot him due to the highly improbable scenario which was her shooting at the EXACT same time as some mysterious figure off camera.
I didn't like it. I didn't like it one bit.
Trent was needed for drama, I get that, but sometimes writers try to be so clever that they look dumb in the process. In their efforts to be creative they overlook the simple things. If they were to run some of these ideas by an average person, a lot of times they'd see their mistakes. All they have to do is run the idea by an average Joe or Joanna and answer their questions. If the writer can't answer the simple questions, then rewrite it. If the writer can answer the questions, then put the answers in the script, but in a way that is seamless .
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It began with a mercurial guy named Trent Travers (Theodore von Eltz) meeting and employing a woman named Lynn Monith (Merna Kennedy). A condition of her employment was that she had to mostly keep her mouth shut. Lynn didn't have sense enough to ask anymore questions, but I would think that any job requiring you to "keep your trap closed" is a job you shouldn't take. Lynn and I didn't have the same upbringing, so she took the well-paying job.
Predictably, the job landed her in hot water. Trent killed a rival named Morgan (John Vosper) then gave the gun to Lynn to throw away. He also wanted her to alibi him by telling the police that he was in Cleveland instead of in New York CIty where the murder took place. Lynn did all of that then skipped town. She was done with Trent and his criminal lifestyle.
She went to White Plains, NY where she met up with Bob Shelton (Grant Withers), a man she'd already crossed paths with before. Bob needed a nanny and Lynn needed a job; it was perfect. Bob got an attractive red-headed nanny, and his daughter Gloria (Shirley Temple) got a surrogate mother. Eventually, Bob and Lynn fell in love and got married. Things couldn't have been more perfect, but you knew that Trent would enter the picture again at some point.
Trent spotted Lynn days, weeks, or months after she had split from him. He saw her at the train station in New York City then followed her home. From this point on the movie was a sh-t show.
Trent demanded $10,000 from Lynn. He had been on the lam for a while now and was all out of dough. I figured that he'd threaten to tell her husband about her and that she'd be so afraid of him leaving her that she'd give Trent the money. It was a regular trick used back then, however lame. But that's not what happened. He made a vague threat which I couldn't interpret, but Lynn interpreted it as he was going to kill her husband. A scary threat, yes, but a stupid one too. Lynn was the only person who could definitively place Trent at the scene of the crime. She had been quiet up until this point, so why would he upset the apple cart? Lynn was holding all the cards.
What Lynn should've done was flip the script and gave Trent an ultimatum. "Get out of this house. Leave me and my family alone, and I won't talk to the police," is what she should've said. Instead, she agreed to meet him and give him the $10,000.
She met Trent at a hotel in White Plains. Trent was feeling really good about himself, as though he was in the driver's seat. Instead of just wanting $10,000 to stay hidden, he wanted some of Lynn too. She meekly refused to entertain his fancies and she told him that she didn't even have the $10,000 either. She said she couldn't get that kind of money without arousing her husband's suspicions.
At this point Trent threatened to call the police.
"Huh? Why in the world would HE be calling the police?" is what you should be asking just as I was.
He said that he would tell the police that she handled the gun that killed Morgan.
Really!? Surely, he must be bluffing. Did he really plan to call the police and try to convince them that Lynn committed the murder? He may as well had handed himself over to the cops because that's what it would amount to.
Lynn should've seen this as either a bluff or a suicidal move on Trent's part, but instead she saw it as a legitimate threat to her freedom and/or marriage.
When Trent got on the phone (to the police oddly enough), Lynn pulled out a gun and shot him. Or so we thought. It turns out that she missed Trent at point blank range and some third party outside the window shot Trent in the back AT THE EXACT SAME TIME Lynn pulled the trigger.
The whole scenario was absurd. To begin with, Lynn should've gone to the police herself to protect her family. She should've at least used the threat of the police to back Trent off of her being that she was the only person who'd protected Trent's dumbass AND was the only one who could put him away. However, she went to meet with him anyway and decided that killing him was the only option. The writers made it so she shot AT him, but we were led to believe she shot him due to the highly improbable scenario which was her shooting at the EXACT same time as some mysterious figure off camera.
I didn't like it. I didn't like it one bit.
Trent was needed for drama, I get that, but sometimes writers try to be so clever that they look dumb in the process. In their efforts to be creative they overlook the simple things. If they were to run some of these ideas by an average person, a lot of times they'd see their mistakes. All they have to do is run the idea by an average Joe or Joanna and answer their questions. If the writer can't answer the simple questions, then rewrite it. If the writer can answer the questions, then put the answers in the script, but in a way that is seamless .
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