An artist on trial for homicide has his lover's husband for an attorney.
Complete credited cast: | |||
Ricardo Cortez | ... | Robert Mitchell | |
Barbara Robbins | ... | Dorothea Mitchell | |
John Beal | ... | Jerry Hutchins | |
Dorothy Burgess | ... | Ann Brewster | |
Paul Harvey | ... | The Prosecuting Attorney | |
Sara Haden | ... | The Secretary | |
Margaret Hamilton | ... | Madame Du Barry | |
David Durand | ... | Thomas Sullivan | |
Murray Kinnell | ... | The Judge | |
Frederick Sullivan | ... | The Court Clerk | |
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Gayle Evers | ... | The Saleslady |
An artist on trial for homicide has his lover's husband for an attorney.
You know that a film is going to be a camp precode treat when it begins with the protagonist, attorney Robert Mitchell (Ricardo Cortez), waxing poetic about mannequins, to the point that even the department store sales staff is giving him odd looks.
Robert is separated from his wife, Dorothea, because she wants it that way, not him. She is in love with Jerry Hutchins (John Beal). Unfortunately for Jerry, he had a brief affair with what today we would call a stalker, Ann Brewster (Dorothy Burgess). Nobody could play the precode crazy woman like Dorothy Burgess.
Ann shows up in Jerry's apartment one night, in his bed, in a negligee, demanding he love her back. He leaves and goes to see Dorothea. Robert goes to have a man to man with Jerry and winds up trapped with crazy Ann, who, for some strange reason, knows Jerry has a gun and where he keeps it. She decides to kill herself, she calls what she thinks is Dorothea's number but misdials, Robert struggles to get the gun from her but it goes off, and Ann falls dead.
The next day this woman with one deadly bullet in her is mentioned as "the bullet riddled body" in all of the newspapers and Jerry is blamed for the crime. His alibi, though, was that he spent the night with Dorothea, and he doesn't want to create a scandal and use that alibi. But he wouldn't have this problem if Robert had just called the police and said what happened. He didn't have any past relationship with Ann and she did have a history of suicide attempts. Instead Robert just left the scene, stealthily.
So Dorothea appeals to her estranged husband to save her lover by defending him in court. He agrees, as long as she agrees to come back to him. Was this his plan all along or did he just panic the night before? The trial is a riot with lots of nuttiness that only one person sees through. And then the highlight of the film is Margaret Hamilton as a milliner with a "stage name" of Madame Du Barry. That's first name "Du", last name "Barry". This great character actress steals the entire film out from under the script, cast, and director.
Lots of people pan this film, but for ridiculous dialogue and a ludicrous plot full of precode naughtiness that was actually released after the code, this one fits the bill.