Who Killed Gail Preston?
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Who Killed Gail Preston? |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1938 |
| length | 61 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Leon Barsha |
| script |
Robert E. Kent , Henry Taylor |
| production |
Irving Briskin , Ralph Cohn |
| music |
Milton Drake , Ben Oakland |
| camera | Henry Freulich |
| cut | Byron Robinson |
| occupation | |
| |
Who Killed Gail Preston? is an American crime film with Rita Hayworth from 1938. It was based on the story Murder in Swingtime by Fred Pedersen .
action
The spirited Gail Preston is a singer in a hip nightclub that is equipped like a prison, in which guests can choose to enjoy their drinks in cells. Because of her self-centered and high-handed manner, Gail quickly makes enemies among the other staff at the club. When she is shot out of nowhere during one of her performances, many suspects come into question as murderers. Inspector Tom Kellogg and his clumsy assistant Cliff Connolly take the case. The trail of the crime first leads to a man named Owen. However, when he kills himself by jumping off the roof of a house and his pistol is not identified as a murder weapon, the search continues.
As a result, the suspects try to get hold of Gail's diary, in which she described the secrets of her colleagues in delicate detail. Kellogg gets them to reveal what they are hiding. As it turns out, most of them are more or less involved in illegal business, which, however, has no connection whatsoever with Gail. Nevertheless, the director of the club orchestra "Swing" Traynor is arrested for the time being, although his secret wife Ann Bishop protests violently. Kellogg hopes that the arrest will ensure that the real perpetrator will feel safe and will soon make a decisive mistake.
When Kellogg discovers that the murder weapon was mounted on a headlight and fired via a tricky structure, he has an idea. He has all the people, both employees and guests of the pub, who witnessed the murder, brought to the club to recreate the sequence of events. He lets the said headlight swivel over the heads of all the suspects, in the hope that the perpetrator fears the gun might go off again and therefore exposes himself in a panic. Indeed, Kellogg's plan works and Gail Preston's killer is finally caught.
background
Who Killed Gail Preston? is a remake of Columbia's 1934 crime film Crime of Helen Stanley, starring Gail Patrick and Ralph Bellamy .
The two vocal It's Twelve O'Clock and All Is Not Well and The Greatest Attraction in the World was Rita Hayworth voiced by Gloria Franklin. In order not to suggest to the audience prematurely that Hayworth was murdered very early in the film, Columbia's advertising department had Hayworth photographed for the press with other actors, with whom she does not actually share any scenes in the film.
Reviews
"Even as a melodrama in the B-film department" runs Who Killed Gail Preston? "Inevitably a rhetorical question," said Bosley Crowther of the New York Times . The "obvious answer" is: "'Who cares?'"
Web links
- Who Killed Gail Preston? in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Who Killed Gail Preston? at Turner Classic Movies (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Gene Ringgold: The Films of Rita Hayworth . Citadel Press, Secaucus 1974, pp. 90-91.
- ↑ “Even as Class B melodrama, Who Killed Gail Preston? , boils down to a rhetorical question. The obvious reply is, 'Who Cares?' ” Bosley Crowther in The New York Times quoted. after Gene Ringgold: The Films of Rita Hayworth . Citadel Press, Secaucus 1974, pp. 90-91.