Tag: Richard Tucker

The Benson Murder Case (1930, Frank Tuttle)

The most interesting part of The Benson Murder Case is the Black Tuesday setting. I missed the newspaper dates for the montage about the stock market crash so I’m not sure if they do the Black Tuesday or just a Black Tuesday, but the movie opens with broker Richard Tucker selling off all his clients’ positions. They come to the office and yell at him and threaten him, so we get a parade of the suspects.

There’s gigolo Paul Lukas, who used the money his sugar momma May Beatty sent to cover her stock positions on pearls for Natalie Moorhead, which he then stole from her to give to Tucker as collateral on a forged check. It’s wordy complicated, not useful complicated; they just need to establish motive. Moorhead’s a working girl made good, but she believes Lukas loves her because… it’s unclear. Tucker wants to whisk Moorhead off her feet but she won’t go for him, money or not, because he’s ugly.

Then there’s gambler, rich guy, and apparently indicted but never convicted killer William 'Stage' Boyd, who’s pals with Tucker because they’re both in it to win it. Apparently it’s a bond.

After everyone meets at Tucker’s office to yell at him and get the light bulb about bumping him off, they soon end up at his country house to plead with him for financial mercy and maybe kill him. Mostly it’s just Tucker berating them for being thinly written characters and Boyd being slightly creepy.

Coincidentally and conveniently, Tucker lives next door to the district attorney, E.H. Calvert, who stops by for a chat during the gathering of the potential murderers. Again coincidentally and conveniently, Calvert’s got his pal—playboy amateur sleuth Philo Vance (William Powell)—along with him. So right before the murder there’s a lot of Boyd posturing for Powell.

After the murder, numbskull police sergeant Eugene Pallette shows up for a lot of solid comic relief. The murder happens around twenty-five minutes into the picture, which runs just over an hour, so Pallette’s got a lot to keep moving because the red herring suspicions Calvert’s got are obviously red herrings. He’s ranting about them while Powell just sits calmly and says wait for the last seven or eight minutes then they’ll know everything.

Benson Murder Case is mildly engaging, not much more. Director Tuttle showcases everyone except Powell (and maybe Beatty) and gives Tucker and Boyd the spotlight. They’re both fine. Powell’s charming, Pallette’s funny….

The mystery itself is kind of blah—the biggest reveal happens offscreen; besides Powell, Pallette, and maybe Boyd, the biggest selling point is the short runtime.

Back Page (1934, Anton Lorenze)

It makes sense director Lorenze never made any other films after Back Page because there’s no easy way to describe the disinterested direction. Well, outside Lorenze and cinematographer James S. Brown Jr. using the same exact camera composition for what seems like ninety percent of the film. When there’s an actual reaction close-up of someone (besides lead Peggy Shannon, who gets them occasionally), it feels like a momentous occasion, like Lorenze is finally going to take an interest.

He does not.

And it’s fine. Back Page is only sixty-five minutes, which is how long lead Shannon has to carry the thing on her charm alone.

Shannon is a big time New York newspaper reporter who gets canned for doing a story about a rich guy (Richard Tucker) writing to his mistress she should kill herself and then she kills herself. Shannon just refuses to learn the first rule of newspapering—rich white men are not accountable.

Her work buddy Russell Hopton sets her up with a job out in nowheresville California running a tiny newspaper. Hopton knows the newspaper owner (Claude Gillingwater) and knows he won’t hire a woman, so it’s good Shannon’s name is “Jerry” so everyone assumes she’s a dude.

Shannon does have to talk Gillingwater into a trial run before it becomes really obvious she knows more about how to run a newspaper than Gillingwater ever did, plus she isn’t going to kowtow to the local businessmen just because.

Pretty soon—like after a terrible scene introducing Shannon to the office staff (Sterling Holloway is profoundly, exponentially bad to the point Fred Bain’s editing can be described as misanthropic for subjecting the audience to more Holloway)—Shannon discovers there might be something hinky going on with local Scrooge Edwin Maxwell and the oil well he suspiciously encouraged the town to invest in.

Also it turns out Gillingwater’s got some arrangements with Maxwell he hasn’t told Shannon about and then Hopton shows up to throw an addition spanner in the works.

Outside Holloway none of the acting is particularly bad. Not even David Callis, who starts as a buffoonish business owner but ends up being one of the better characters. A better director would’ve helped Callis (and probably Holloway) but the script is fairly tepid too.

Shannon’s reasonably engaging and always sympathetic throughout. And she and Gillingwater are genuinely cute. Shame the same can’t be said about her and Hopton. Though Hopton’s definitely the weakest performance outside Holloway.

Luckily, it’s only sixty-five minutes and only tedious for ten of them.

Murder in the Fleet (1935, Edward Sedgwick)

Murder in the Fleet is a reasonably diverting little B murder mystery; Frank Wead and Joseph Sherman’s script is almost better than the film deserves, given it doesn’t even run seventy minutes and doesn’t even bother pretending it’s got subplots. Well, outside top-billed and sort of lead Robert Taylor’s romantic troubles with blue blood Jean Parker. And then the slapstick rivalry between Nat Pendleton and Ted Healy, mostly over Una Merkel.

It’s visitor day on a Navy cruiser–the film obviously shot on one, sometimes to better effect than other times (the constant projection shots for the exterior deck scenes are flat)–but it’s also the day a new firing system needs to get installed. A top secret firing system. Taylor’s in charge of that installation, Pendleton’s on his crew. Only both men want to see their respective gals, Parker and Merkel. Thanks to the contrived presence of civilian mechanical something or other Healy (who’s had a rivalry with Pendleton for some time), Merkel ends up onboard. Parker’s there to try to get Taylor to quit his low-paying Navy job and go work for her dad. Her character’s a hideous human being, something the captain (Arthur Byron) tells her to her face in a lively scene.

There’s also a foreign dignitary visiting–Mischa Auer in semi-yellowface, an uncredited Keye Luke as his secretary–and the film throws some suspicion their way once the murders start taking place.

Donald Cook is in charge of investigating, but he’s a dipshit (and Taylor’s ostensible rival in general), so whenever there’s action to be taken, it’s on Taylor.

It’s a solid cast and the screenwriters give the supporting characters enough personality in their dialogue to make them somewhat sympathetic most of the time. As Fleet goes on, it gets more and more difficult to suspect any of the crew. Even the obvious targets. Cook, for example, would make a lot of sense personality-wise–he’s jealous no one tries to bribe him, just Taylor–but he’s got an onscreen alibi.

Taylor’s a strong lead. Byron’s great as the captain. Pendleton and Healy are fun. Pendleton and Merkel are cute. The whole thing about her throwing over Pendleton for the odious Healy… doesn’t give Merkel much credit. Parker’s successful being a terrible human being? The movie reforms her along the way, won over by the U.S. Navy, which shouldn’t a surprise given the U.S. Navy’s involvement in the making of the film.

Director Sedgwick does all right too. He’ll occasionally have some really interesting shots, then he’ll also have some really boring ones. The interesting ones tend to be in the cruiser interior, where he’s presumably constrained and has to be inventive. On deck, he’s got the same medium two shot over and over again. Or a long two shot. They’re always the same boring profile shots against projection. But when he’s actually got depth of in the shot? Usually decent. Cinematographer Milton R. Krasner does well shooting both the mediocre and the inventive, he’s more than capable.

Murder in the Fleet is never exciting (the murderer reveal is a shrug), but it’s always fine. Except Merkel taking Healy seriously as a suitor, of course. Pendleton might be a bit of a doof, but he’s an adorable doof.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by Edward Sedgwick; screenplay by Frank Wead and Joseph Sherman, based on a story by Sedgwick; director of photography, Milton R. Krasner; edited by Conrad A. Nervig; produced by Lucien Hubbard; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring Robert Taylor (Lt. Tom Randolph), Arthur Byron (Capt. John Winslow), Nat Pendleton (‘Spud’ Burke), Ted Healy (Mac O’Neill), Jean Parker (Betty Lansing), Una Merkel (‘Toots’ Timmons), Donald Cook (Lt. Cmdr. David Tucker), Raymond Hatton (Al Duval), Jean Hersholt (Victor Hanson), Richard Tucker (Jeffries), Tom Dugan (‘Greasy’), Mischa Auer (Kamchukan Consul).

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The Benson Murder Case (1930, Frank Tuttle)

I wonder how Eugene Pallette felt–more, how his co-stars felt–about having the closest thing to a close-up in The Benson Murder Case. I’ve never been more acutely aware of shot distance than I was during the film. Tuttle has a standard pattern. Long shot–usually a lengthy long shot, sometimes an entire scene is one shot–followed by a medium shot for emphasis. At the end, Pallette gets the European medium shot (waist up) for one of his punch lines. Sadly, Pallette’s only got three or four jokes as his befuddled police detective in this Philo Vance entry. He and William Powell–who work well together–probably only have five scenes together.

What makes Benson Murder Case even more peculiar is its pacing. It’s a murder mystery where the murder doesn’t occur until almost a third of the way into the film–the film runs just under seventy-minutes and I don’t think Richard Tucker dies until after minute twenty. I wondered, as the film concentrated on Tucker’s dealings with his various co-stars, if there was supposed to be some confusion about who was going to die. Then I remember it was called The Benson Murder Case, which just made it stranger. While Tucker is supposed to be an unlikable jerk–he’s a stock broker who puts solvency ahead of his clients’ whims during the Crash of 1929–anticipating his death isn’t really all that interesting. After minute ten, I figured there was a chance he’d make it through most of the film. It would have been more interesting if he had.

The long first act introduces not just Tucker, but his antagonists–Natalie Moorhead, Paul Lukas, William ‘Stage’ Boyd and May Beatty–and then the second act refocuses on Powell and the investigation. There’s also district attorney E.H. Calvert’s re-election bid, which the film’s running time can’t make space. The result is the film’s initial characters disappearing for a while, only to reappear as subjects–Powell’s not even the protagonist until the latter half of the second act (remember, the film’s only seventy minutes), spending almost an entire interrogation off camera.

It’s a disjointed experience, bound together by some competent acting and a sufficiently mysterious mystery. Boyd is a fine villain, Moorhead and Lukas are good. Powell’s good, but Benson really shows how an actor needs close-ups to identify with the viewer. He’s got a character here, not a personality.

Tuttle’s quizzical direction also draws attention to the artifice. It’s obvious the film was shot on three-sided sets. They’re real high and well-decorated, so they’re interesting to look at (they have to be, given the length of the takes), but they’re empty of any meaningful content.

It’s an amiable seventy minutes, the kind of film good for passing time and nothing else.