DETECTIVE KITTY O’DAY
US, 1944, 61 minutes, Black and white.
Jean Parker, Peter Cookson, Tim Ryan, Veda Ann Borg, Edward Gargan, Douglas Fowler, Pat Gleason.
Directed by William Baudine.
With its brief running time and its role as a supporting feature, this comedy with touches of the police investigation and thriller, is the equivalent of a more contemporary episode of a television series. In fact, these films were intended as a series, with Jean Parker as Kitty O’ Day, a secretary who can’t help herself and becomes involved in investigations of murder.
The film has quite a deal of slapstick comedy, with Jean Parker caught up in the murder of her boss, then an ex-criminal being murdered, then the butler – and the police discovering her and her boyfriend, Peter Cookson, at each scene of the crime.
The murder involves the stealing of bonds, the manager of the company not getting on well with his wife, her involvement with an ex-criminal, the role of the lawyer who advises – and who, of course, turns out to be the criminal mastermind with a gang.
Audiences will find the investigating couple, a variation on Nick and Nora from the Thin Man films, either attractive or irritating. She is rather ditzy, venturing into all kinds of situations, pretending that the two were cleaners in a hotel to get into the rooms and then being caught, going out on the ledge of a skyscraper, taxi rides, been caught by the criminal lawyer… On the other hand, he is genial, anxious about Kitty, but on the whole pretty dumb…
The taxi driver is crucial to the plot, overhearing the hero saying he would like to murder the boss, observing the suspicious behaviour of the couple, giving them a lift, the hiding of the bonds in the taxi – and his being suspicious which leads him to go to the police at the end and deliver them to the headquarters of the criminal.
Jean Parker made one sequel, The Adventures of Kitty O’ Day.
A curiosity item for movie historians – but, probably, the performance to catch is that of Ed Gargan as the dumb policeman, kowtowing to his superior, getting into all kinds of difficult situations and with many a humorous ironic remark.
