The beginning of the film shows how Broadway actress Valerie Stanton (Rosalind Russell) came to accidentally kill her mentor, producer, and past lover Gordon Dunning (Leon Ames). Yes, he was threatening to tell her fiancé, architect Michael Morrell (Leo Genn) about their torrid affair - exaggerating if he had to - so he could keep her around professionally, but this is really a personal obsession in his case.
However, Dunning actually is assaulting her and physically refusing to let her leave his office by grabbing her. It's not a stretch to think someone as off balance as Dunning was at that moment could have been capable of rape. So technically Valerie was within her rights to strike him as hard as she had to in order to get away. It's just unfortunate that when she strikes him with his own award statue that she kills him.
If Valerie had called the police right then, chances are she would not have even been charged. But no, she simply leaves the office - it is late, long after her final performance of this particular show - and descends the theater staircase and escapes the scene undetected. The ace in the hole is that she always wears long gloves - an idea of Dunning's - so ironically Dunning has set up his killer to leave no fingerprints.
To make matters even easier on Valerie, a woman who loved Dunning before Valerie came along and took him away, Claire Trevor as Marian Webster, finds the body, picks up the statuette, and cries out in horror and loss over the body of the man she has always loved but who has not loved her in a very long time. She is suspect number one, tied down in a mental hospital.
Valerie can leave the scene and allow the law to make the obvious judgment that a jealous Marian killed Dunning, but she cannot leave her conscience behind.
Rosalind Russell is terrific as a woman who basically emotionally unravels ... until she settles on a course of action. Sydney Greenstreet is the police detective sent out to see if this case is as open and shut as it seems. He plays the role with elegant charm, and you never know if, like Columbo, he has suspected what really happened all along. Genn plays the fiancé who turns out to be more insightful than he has been putting on, and nobody plays the mistreated woman who won't let go no matter what like Claire Trevor.
The score does not reflect a noir or a crime drama, but the elegance of Broadway as it is portrayed here - the restaurants, the parties, the rehearsals, and the ornate theaters that are shrines to great architecture. I'd recommend this one.
However, Dunning actually is assaulting her and physically refusing to let her leave his office by grabbing her. It's not a stretch to think someone as off balance as Dunning was at that moment could have been capable of rape. So technically Valerie was within her rights to strike him as hard as she had to in order to get away. It's just unfortunate that when she strikes him with his own award statue that she kills him.
If Valerie had called the police right then, chances are she would not have even been charged. But no, she simply leaves the office - it is late, long after her final performance of this particular show - and descends the theater staircase and escapes the scene undetected. The ace in the hole is that she always wears long gloves - an idea of Dunning's - so ironically Dunning has set up his killer to leave no fingerprints.
To make matters even easier on Valerie, a woman who loved Dunning before Valerie came along and took him away, Claire Trevor as Marian Webster, finds the body, picks up the statuette, and cries out in horror and loss over the body of the man she has always loved but who has not loved her in a very long time. She is suspect number one, tied down in a mental hospital.
Valerie can leave the scene and allow the law to make the obvious judgment that a jealous Marian killed Dunning, but she cannot leave her conscience behind.
Rosalind Russell is terrific as a woman who basically emotionally unravels ... until she settles on a course of action. Sydney Greenstreet is the police detective sent out to see if this case is as open and shut as it seems. He plays the role with elegant charm, and you never know if, like Columbo, he has suspected what really happened all along. Genn plays the fiancé who turns out to be more insightful than he has been putting on, and nobody plays the mistreated woman who won't let go no matter what like Claire Trevor.
The score does not reflect a noir or a crime drama, but the elegance of Broadway as it is portrayed here - the restaurants, the parties, the rehearsals, and the ornate theaters that are shrines to great architecture. I'd recommend this one.