Adventures of Kitty O Day 1944 Fashion Model 1945

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Two B-feature criminal offense comedies starring the vivacious Jean Parker!

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Detective Kitty O'Day

US / 61 minutes / bw / Monogram Dir: William Beaudine Pr: Lindsley Parsons Scr: Tim Ryan, Victor Hammond Story: Victor Hammond Cinematics: Ira Morgan Cast: Jean Parker, Peter Cookson, Tim Ryan, Veda Ann Borg, Edward Gargan, Douglas Fowley, Herbert Heyes, Pat Gleason, Olaf Hytten, Edward Earle.

A high-spirited comedy thriller/mystery from Monogram, the first in an intended series that for some reason never fabricated it past the second outing.

Kitty O'Day (Parker) is secretary to broker Oliver M. Wentworth (Earle) and girlfriend of ane of Wentworth's gofers, Johnny Jones (Cookson). I evening, after Johnny has brought a fortune in securities to Wentworth, the banker tells Kitty to go and fetch train tickets to Boston for the following twenty-four hour period and to run across him later on at his home for a final couple of urgent messages. Johnny, who'd bought theater tickets for tonight, is naturally miffed, and sounds off on the sidewalk to her nigh what he'd like to do with their boss. His tirade is overheard by a nearby taxi driver (Gleason), who's especially startled by the line: "I'd like to impale him."

Johnny (Peter Cookson) and Kitty (Jean Parker) — can the ii lovers find happiness?

When Kitty reaches the Wentworth institution she finds information technology's suffering a power outage. A candle-begetting butler, Charles (Hytten), tells her that his primary is having a shower and guides her to the written report, where she finds a half-typed memo and an unusual cigarette lighter. Naturally the lighter's going to be an important clue further down the line.

You sense that Kitty (Jean Parker) is accustomed to men telling her that, oops, quelle surprise, the lights have unexpectedly failed, but on this occasion she takes butler Charles's (Olaf Hytten) word for it.

She also discovers, soon afterward, Wentworth's body hanging in the bathroom. The cops make it in the clichéd class of the moronic Inspector Clancy (Ryan, who also co-scripted) and his even more moronic sergeant, Mike Storm (Gargan)—the typical law team for a flick of this kind. Mike discovers Johnny unconscious in the garden; it seems he jealously followed Kitty to the house, but someone knocked him over the head.

Clancy (Time Ryan) and sidekick Mike (Ed Gargan) interrogate Kitty (Jean Parker).

Soon Wentworth's widow (Borg) arrives with her lover, Harry Downs (Fowley), in tow. As well on the scene is the dead human's lawyer, Robert Jeffers (Heyes). No longer on the scene is Charles the butler, who has mysterious disappeared.

The plot from here on is the kind of thing you lot'd expect in this sort of picture show, with more bodies turning upwardly, Clancy repeatedly threatening to arrest Kitty and Johnny for murder, and a off-white amount of 18-carat bamboozlement as to who might be the guilty party. Alas, since the flick's budget could conspicuously beget no more than a smallish bandage, the bamboozlement decreases steeply as people become knocked off: it's largely a question of checking to run into who'south even so upright.

There are a couple of standout comic sequences and some vigorous slapstick.

The first of those sequences occurs in the snazzy Fenton Arms, where Mrs. Wentworth and Downs have adjacent apartments. Kitty dresses herself equally a maid to become through Downs's apartment for possible clues and pressurizes Johnny into donning a page's uniform to do the aforementioned for Mrs. Wentworth'southward. Alas for Johnny, Mrs. Wentworth arrives back unexpectedly, and there begins something like to a bedroom farce as he evades an increasingly suspicious widow. Matters go nonetheless more than complicated with the arrival of Kitty, initially unrealizing that Mrs. Wentworth is irresolute her clothes in the dorsum room.

Mrs. Wentworth (the immortal Veda Ann Borg) notices aught amiss as she goes to option up her negligee.

Downs arrives to tell Mrs. Wentworth that he'south just discovered his own apartment has been burgled. The cheating couple phone the cops and then decide to go out for the nighttime. Yes, it's Clancy and Mike again, and, yes, they take hold of Kitty and Johnny in Downs'due south flat—well, not quite in information technology, because our chums have climbed out of the window to balance precariously on a ledge that seems at least a couple of miles in a higher place the nighttime street. And Clancy sends Mike out to chase them effectually the building . . .

This, the 2nd of the ii fine sequences I mentioned, is something of a humdinger. Information technology'due south superbly staged while being both extremely funny, as all three participants stagger off-rest from time to time, and quite terrifying, for the same reason. As this is supposedly happening at night, the lighting's kept low, presumably in social club to minimize the expenditure on effects; this once again increases the tension. Anyone with fifty-fifty a balmy instance of acrophobia should have a friend or significant other handy to cling onto.

How better for Kitty (Jean Parker) and Johnny (Peter Cookson) to escape than out through a window well-nigh fifty stories up?

Oops.

As for the slapstick? Well, at that place's humor that arises from the unexpected and humor that arises from the fulfillment of expectations, and the slapstick here depends mainly on the latter style. A textbook case occurs towards the end. Kitty and Johnny accept been abducted by the bad guys and are being held in a seedy flat. Clancy and Mike make it on the scene and, as Mike prepares buffoonishly to accuse downwardly the door, we know exactly where this is going. Sure enough, the resourceful Kitty manages to get the door open up right on cue. Mike sails direct through the room, past a maul of fighting men, and straight into the bathroom on the other side. It'southward simply then we call back that the crooks had just run a bath for waterboarding purposes. Very cleverly, the splash from beyond is delayed past perhaps a second to increase the impact of the clownery.

It takes a while, but information technology eventually dawns on Clancy (Tim Ryan) that Mrs. Wentworth (Veda Ann Borg) might exist a suspect.

Virtually of the cast will be familiar to anyone who's watched (likewise) many noir or deadline noir movies from the period, Cookson being the major exception. His Johnny Jones is a somewhat colorless, ineffectual fellow; while, every bit such, he'south the perfect foil for the spirited Kitty, at the same fourth dimension y'all can't help wondering why on world she keeps him around. Borg is in fine femme fatale form here; she manages to skid adroitly between frost and sweetness. Ryan, who made quite a career at Monogram as both actor and screenwriter, is deliberately irritating in his usual role equally the numbskull detective, while Gargan is, well, Gargan. A further movie discussed on this site in which Ryan featured as histrion and screenwriter is Mystery of the 13th Guest (1943); I'k sure others will come along in due course.

Adventures of Kitty O'Twenty-four hours

US / 63 minutes / bw / Anglo–Amalgamated Dir: William Beaudine Pr: Lindsley Parsons Scr: George Callahan, Tim Ryan, Victor Hammond Story: Victor Hammond Cinematics: Mack Stengler Cast: Jean Parker, Peter Cookson, Tim Ryan, Lorna Greyness, Jan Wiley, Ralph Sanford, William Forrest, Byron Foulger, Hugh Prosser, Dick Elliott, William Ruhl, Shelton Brooks.

The sequel, Adventures of Kitty O'Day, essentially repeated the formula. Kitty and Johnny are now amid the lobby staff of the swankorama Hotel Townley, she equally switchboard operator. While putting through a call for the hotel'due south possessor, Williams (uncredited), she'southward startled to hear shots band out, and rightly deduces that Williams has been gunned downwards. Johnny goes with night porter Jeff (Brooks, uncredited) to check and they observe the trunk. By the fourth dimension Clancy and his new sidekick, Mack (Sanford), arrive the torso'south nowhere to be plant . . .

Over again there'southward the unfaithful widow (Gray, who soon afterwards adopted the professional person name Adrian Booth), the smarmy lover (Prosser), an accumulation of bodies and some slapstick. This is definitely the bottom of the two movies, though, not just considering there's nothing in it that can compete with the loftier-ledge sequence of its predecessor just also considering of the inclusion of one of those sequences mocking the supposed deficiencies of blackness people: cowardice, unreliability, stupidity, full general fecklessness. Jeff, the night porter, is included solely for the purpose of having the stereotype ridiculed. It'south the kind of role an player like Mantan Moreland might have done something with, turning things around in parodic fashion until it became clear to all just the slow-wittedest in the audience just who was laughing at whom, simply Brooks was no Mantan Moreland.

In the sequel, Kitty believes she has competition for Johnny'due south affections in the shapely shape of trainee masseuse Carla Brant (Jan Wiley).

The first of the two movies is certainly worth tracking down. The second has much to like, only is distinctly skippable unless you lot're a Jean Parker completist.

The movie Fashion Model (1945), also dir Beaudine, is sometimes regarded as #3 in the series. It has a very similar premise—yacky young woman solves crimes despite reluctant fellow and doltish cops—but the actress is Marjorie Weaver rather than Jean Parker, and her role is as Peggy Rooney rather than Kitty O'Day. The primary connectedness is Tim Ryan both onscreen equally the thwarted detective inspector (now called O'Hara rather than Clancy) and offscreen as the mainspring of the scripting team.

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