STAR OF MIDNIGHT (1935)

More William Powell from TCM's birthday salute. This seems clearly to have been an attempt to create more "Thin Man" magic, here between William Powell and Ginger Rogers, and in fact the two do work up some star chemistry, though they don't quite spark like Powell and Loy did. Powell is a lawyer who admits he enjoys detective work more than being in the courtroom; he agrees to help old friend Rogers get some incriminating letters back from a gangster (Paul Kelly). This plotline winds up being a red herring: it turns out the letters aren't hers (she's just helping out a friend in trouble) and Rogers starts throwing herself at Powell, who treats her more like a kid sister than a romantic interest. The real story involves the mysterious musical star named Mary Smith, who always wears a mask in public. A man who is in the audience of her show "Midnight" (Leslie Fenton) recognizes Mary as his missing girlfriend Alice, and calls out her name, which unnerves her and apparently causes her to bolt from the theater during intermission, never to return. Fenton hires Powell to help find her and Rogers tags along. A reporter who was present at the show claims to know something about the case, but is shot and killed in Powell's apartment (and Powell is wounded). Fenton, who was hiding in another room, vanishes and is immediately the police's number one suspect, but there are other suspects as well, including Ralph Morgan, a lawyer who is also searching for Alice; his wife (Vivien Oakland); the producer of "Midnight" (Frank Reicher), and even Powell's butler (Gene Lockhart). After some Thin Man-like scrapes, there is a fairly ingenious finale in which Powell telephones all the suspects and sets up a nice little trap for the guilty party.

The solution to the mystery feels like something arrived at rather randomly by the writers, but it doesn't matter because the pleasures of this film are mostly in the characters and performances. Kelly's gangster is a threatening figure at first, but becomes somewhat more likeable and less one-dimensional than the average movie thug. Gene Lockhart is quite good as the butler in a change-of-pace role here (though this early in his sound film career, I guess he really didn't have a "pace" yet). Perhaps best of all is J. Farrell MacDonald as the police inspector; instead of being an adversary to Powell, he is more an admiring onlooker, slyly enjoying watching Powell work around the police, and fully collaborating with him in the climax. At times, the comic pacing is a bit too slow, but it always recovers, and there is a very amusing bit with a toilet that plays "Pop Goes the Weasel" when it is occupied. I'm guessing the movie didn't do well enough to justify a sequel or two, but it's certainly fun to watch. [TCM]