Pun Salad

I seem to have seen at least part of this movie before; in this 2015 post (a book report for Lileks' The Casablanca Tango) I claim that I had "just watched a bit" of the movie "on the local old-movie channel".

But I'm pretty sure I didn't see the whole thing.

Victor Mature plays Frankie Christopher, a "promoter" who specializes in making other people rich and famous. That was apparently a thing back in 1941. As the movie opens, he's being grilled by the cops for the murder of one of them: Vicky Lynn (Carole Landis). In flashback, it's revealed that she was a hash-slinger at a local restaurant. On a dare from his buddies, Frankie sets out to work his magic on her.

This works only too well. Shortly after Vicky announces that she's off to Hollywood for a movie career, she's found dead in her apartment. Her sister Jill (Betty Grable) walks in to find Frankie kneeling over her cooling corpse. Who done it? There are a host of suspects. The cops like Frankie for the crime, but they can't prove anything.

Jill and Frankie develop a relationship. Because of course they do. They cooperate in trying to find the Real Killer.

The best performance here is from Laird Cregar, playing a cop involved with the investigation, but also is revealed to have been kind of creepily obsessed with Vicky from back in her waitress days.

There are some comic touches here too. That's pretty rare for a noir. I'm pretty sure nobody wakes up screaming, though. I think I would have noticed that.