“He uses the word I so often no one would suspect you’re in the story.”
Nate Girard (Onslow Stevens) has just been acquitted of murder. Ken Murdock (Lew Ayers) is a newspaper photographer who is at the courthouse for the verdict. He franticly takes pictures of Girard and his lawyer Stanley Redfield (Ernest Cossart). A woman stops Girard before he enters his suite. Girard takes a picture of the mystery woman.
Later Girard and Redfield have a party and invite reporters and photographers. The mystery woman is there. Murdock romances her until his sort of fiancé Hester Boone (Joyce Compton), the bubble dancer, shows up and takes him away to his apartment. A fight ensues and she leaves but not before throwing a drink at him.
While he is cleaning up, someone at the party shoots Redfield. The mystery woman slips into Murdock’s apartment asking for help. She turns out to be Meg Archer (Gail Patrick) her father had been swindled by Girard and Redfield and reportedly killed himself. Meg knows that she will be looked at as a suspect.
Police Inspector Bacon (Joe Sawyer) shows up looking for Meg. Murdock hides her. Murdock finds out from the cops that Redfield was killed while the photographers were taking pictures. After Redfield fell Meg left. Then the reporters scattered to report their stories. Now the cops are trying to piece everything together.
When rival reporter I.B. McGoogin (Paul Kelley) slips Murdock a photograph plate Murdock knows there is more going on than just trying to prove Meg innocent. The plate could very well show who the actual murderer is.
“Murder With Pictures” was released in 1936 and was directed by Charles Barton. It is based on a book by George Harmon Coxe. Coxe also co-wrote the screenplay with Sidney Salkow.
The plot seems to get quite complicated at times. There were a few twists and turns. With the fast patter and many threads, it could be easy to lose your way. Many of the characters seem to have their own ulterior motives. What you need to keep in mind is that, although some people had ulterior motives for how they acted, the important motive was, who wanted Redfield dead? Not a lot of people had that kind of motive. There were enough red herrings that it looked like quite a few people may have done it.
Even if you lose track of what’s going on there is still quite a lot of entertainment here. The pacing was good, the dialogue snappy and the acting on par. Altogether quite a lively and entertaining who-done-it.
A”B” movie mystery, but quite well done.