Moonlight Murder (1936)
Passing Reflections on 'Moonlight Murder,' at the Rialto, and 'Dancing Feet,' at the Roxy.
By Frank S. Nugent
Published: March 28, 1936
The supply of victims for murder mysteries appears to be running low, and Hollywood, in its quest for interesting corpora delicti, has begun to practice cannibalism. Last week there was "The Preview Murder Mystery," in which an actor and a director marched gloriously to their doom; now, again at the Rialto, we are privileged to enjoy murder in the Hollywood Bowl. It is not much of a privilege at that, for "Moonlight Murder" is a precise little film with cultural aspirations. When it is not decimating its cast by poison gas, it is indulging in "Il Trovatore," and with an effect equally deadly.
If you are curious about opera's invasion of the mystery-film field, then he informed that Leo Carrillo, who is the picture's first and most important casualty, is the tenor in the opera company singing nightly in Hollywood's famous stadium. Not merely is he a warbler, but a lovebird, and his simultaneous affairs with a prima donna and a dancer are no less a matter of jealous concern to the rival young women than to their respective admirers—the conductor and the dancing partner. For good measure, in the motive line, there is an escaped lunatic whose opera Carrillo has scorned; an understudy who wishes him out of the way, and a swami who broods over the cast like Mr. Poe's well-known raven.
So Mr. Carrillo dies in full view of 20,329 opera lovers, and Chester Morris, as a brash young detective, and Madge Evans, as a decorative chemist, move lightly through the usual frenzied business of motion picture crime detection. Quite frankly, we never for a moment suspected the guilty man, but that may be because we always have refused, on principle, to solve these mystery pictures by eliminating every one with a motive and singling out the only possible player who couldn't have done it.
This may be a silly scruple, because we are forever being taunted by persons with an amateur detecting average of 98 per cent, who go around bragging, "I knew he must have been the one because he looked too innocent." Anyway, we insist that the solution isn't as important as the picture's earlier sixty minutes, and that is where "Moonlight Murder" falls down.
MOONLIGHT MURDER, from a story suggested by Albert J. Cohen and Robert T. Shannon; screen play by Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf; directed by Edwin L. Marin; produced by Lucien Hubbard and Ned Marin for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. At the Rialto.
Steve Farrell . . . . . Chester Morris
Toni Adams . . . . . Madge Evans
Gino D'Acosta . . . . . Leo Carrillo
William . . . . . Frank McHugh
Diana . . . . . Benita Hume
Dr. Adams . . . . . Grant Mitchell
Louisa . . . . . Katharine Alexander
Bejac . . . . . J. Carrol Naish
Godfred Chiltern . . . . . H. B. Warner
Pedro . . . . . Duncan Renaldo
Ivan Bosloff . . . . . Leonard Ceeley
Quinlan . . . . . Robert McWade
Swami . . . . . Pedro de Cordoba
Stage Manager . . . . . Charles Trowbridge
