MIDNIGHT ALIBI (1934)

This second feature crime thriller is based on a Damon Runyon story, which helps it stand out a bit from most of the other crime movies of the time; it's not a great movie, but it is a little different. Richard Barthelmess plays a small-time gambler returning to New York from overseas; on the ship, he falls in love with Ann Dvorak, and he offers to go straight for her, but it turns out she is the sister of Robert Barrat, a powerful mobster, and the two men are on the outs. On the run from an underworld hit, Barthelmess ducks into the mansion of "old doll" Helen Lowell, a rich spinster who always leaves her back door unlocked. She tells him the tragic story of her own youthful romance, which was ended when her father (Henry O'Neill) shot and killed her boyfriend when he was trying to get into the house through the door, which was locked; O'Neill didn’t like the boy and took the opportunity to shoot, claiming he thought the boy was an intruder. She has left the door unlocked ever since. Barthelmess tells Lowell about his own romantic troubles and she counsels him to do whatever it takes to win Dvorak. Barthelmess visits Barrat to ask for his sister's hand, but they get into a fight; a henchman of Barthelmess's stumbles in and shoots and kills Barrat, but Barthelmess is arrested for the killing. As anyone can figure out from the title, the stories of the old doll and the gambler converge at the trial when she lies in the courtroom to give Barthelmess an alibi so he can be freed and live happily ever after with Dvorak--but in a final O. Henry twist, it turns out the alibi isn't really a lie after all.

In the old lady's flashback, Helen Chandler is the Lowell character and Barthelmess plays the doomed boyfriend. Barthelmess, toward the end of his career, is fine in the role, as is everyone else except Dvorak, who, to be fair, has little to do. In addition to the "old doll" terminology, other Runyon touches include characters named Angie the Ox and Babe the Butcher, and a passing appearance by a grifter posing as a blind man. At just under an hour, it's painless entertainment, and better than the single-star ratings it receives from some critics. BTW, All Movie Guide and TV Guide get an important plot point wrong (as they frequently do in their summaries of B-movies) when they say that Barthelmess and Barrat are brothers. [TCM]