DANGEROUS LADY
US, 1941, 63 minutes, Black and white.
Neil Hamilton, June Storey, Douglas Fowler, Evelyn Brent, Greta Granstedt, John Holland.
Directed by B. B. Ray.
This is a small B-budget, supporting feature, murder mystery. It is akin to the Thin Man series with William Powell and Myrna Loy, husband-and-wife, solving mysteries.
This time June Storey is a lawyer and Neil Hamilton is her private detective husband. The action takes place over several hours one night – quite a busy night’s work.
The private detective has been listening to a released prisoner who arrives at his apartment door in the early hours, shot and dying. The police have a tipoff and Brent, the private detective’s rival and nemesis from the past in the police force, takes the detective to headquarters and his wife, initially unwilling to become involved in solving crimes, goes along as the lawyer for the deceased.
There are quite some complications and some flashbacks. These involve a prisoner who has witnessed the murder of a judge and has confided this to his fellow prisoner. The witness then is found hanged in his cell. A young woman, in litigation before the judge, has been tried for his murder. Her rival, a former partner who has taken her to court, has a very suave manner and is very convincing. Also involved is the judge’s secretary.
There are scenes of interrogation at headquarters, visit to the prison cell, visits to the apartment of the secretary, visits to the apartment of the business rival, the detective, commandeering a taxi, his wife following, even further complications with the wife having all the solution to what went on (the young woman falling down the stairs, her rival taking her gun and shooting the judge, brutalising the secretary) and the police coming in after the wife has trapped the crooked prison doctor under a table and her husband has a rather lengthy fistfight with the murderer. The film ends with him getting a note indicating a further case…
A fairly easy watch, complicated plot, some incidental comedy with pratfalls by an apartment janitor. June Storey, who was the leading lady to Gene Autry in 10 films, is the lawyer and Neil Hamilton, a man with a career over 50 years from silent times to 1980 is the detective. John Holland, a suave presence and a strong voice, is the villain.
