Murder at a Hollywood Preview!

Note: The Gail Patrick film festival continues, having viewed If I Had a Million, The Phantom Broadcast, The Murders in the Zoo, Death Takes a Holiday, The Crime of Helen Stanley, and Murder at the Vanities. What’s with all the attention, a reader wonders, to a forgotten actress on what is largely a Perry Mason blog? Gail Patrick Jackson was the executive producer of the greatest courtroom drama TV show in the history of creation: Perry Mason.

 The Preview Murder Mystery
1936 / 1:00
Tagline: “Murder at a Hollywood Preview!”
[internet archive]

This B-picture is a murder mystery set in a movie studio during the Golden Era of Hollywood. While the fast-paced story isn’t too far-fetched and the characterization amusing, the main draw is the “behind the scenes in Tinseltown” feeling and look.

That is, the mise en scene is literally the back lots and the soundstages of World Attractions, Inc. Director Robert Florey is known for being a pioneer of noir so this collaboration with cinematographer Karl Struss is worth seeing simply for its look. Silhouettes, outlines, profiles, and shadows make images striking, especially intense faces talking on phones. Florey, like Bergman and Fellini and Spielberg, likes eye-catching faces. Without being too arty they make shots from angles above and below. Inevitably he uses mirrors, but not too much and always to unusual effect. The pace and the rhythm of the movie are really fast, with a few fluid images lasting mere seconds; see the scene at minute 22 when the homicide detective is questioning a group of scared witnesses.

Imparting a feeling of unreality is the Thirties tech of switch banks, lights, lifts, dollies, and other equipment so antique as to be unidentifiable. Also putting us off kilter are the actors mingling in a variety of costumes from various time periods.

I got the feeling the writers were telling inside gags about Hollywood. The horror star Batboy (or something) is upbraided by the director for being a scaredy-cat though he is the one notorious for keeping little kids up at night sleepless and scared with his character. But when the director takes a close look at Batboy’s Igor (or whatever), he is so unnerved he calls for a break. Ironically, the killer is trapped because the big clunky technology of movie-making is used against him.

Giving a funny meta feeling is the movie within a movie when we are watching people watch the preview of a bad musical The Song of the Toreador. Over the top musicals are thus parodied with silent heart-throb Rod LaRocque, who looks slightly embarrassed to be singing. Gail Patrick assumes the melty and dewy look that damsels don for being sung to in musicals.

All the professionals like the director and the actors are watching the preview with a calculating look, that dispassionate eye of artists, crafters, and creative professionals not wholly satisfied with the version they see, convinced they could have done something better or planning to do a technique in another way in the future. "When I do this again, I am convinced that I will do it more effectively" seems like it would be a healthy stance in an artist or a crafter.

Contrary to my expectations, the print posted at IA was VG+, with good contrasts and nothing washed out nor any dropouts of sound. Gail Patrick and Frances Drake both look wonderful in their bodacious brunetitude. Patrick does not have all that much to do but the air around her seems charged, as if she’s a pulsar funneling particles. Drake, with her expressive eyes and luminous smile, plays the astrology-smitten girlfriend of Reginald Denny. Drake plays a steadying influence on the boisterous Denny who was prone to hyperactivity.

In what must be an in-joke of some kind, the end cast list provides not the real stars but only the supporting players like Chester Conklin - like LaRocque, another unexpected blast from the past.