Sandra Rogers (Valerie Hobson) is a beautiful young New York City socialite. She has been seeing the Police Commissioner, Robert Edmonds (Ralph Bellamy), and things are getting serious. Robert’s job, however, takes up most of his time and he has had to cancel plans with Sandra often. Sandra understands how busy he is but is still feeling a little neglected. To cheer herself up she decides to buy a new dress for their next date. She goes to a dress shop owned by Fernande (Catherine Doucet).
Fernande specializes in couture fashions; however, she is not opposed to selling more than one-of-a-kind frocks should the opportunity arise. Sandra picks out a beautiful dress that comes with a silver fox wrap. After she leaves Fernande sells the exact same dress to another patron, Mrs. Dewey (Kathlyn Williams). Mrs. Dewey is scheduled to leave for Europe the next day so Fernande is confident that the two women will never meet each.
After the dressmakers, Sandra visits Myles Crawford (Arthur Vinton), an old acquaintance. Myles is being investigated for corruption by the commissioner’s office. He tries to blackmail Sandra with some phony hotel receipts and threatening to tell Robert that they had an affair to try to get her to influence Robert into dropping his investigation. Sandra refuses and leaves.
An accident in the subway forces Robert to cancel his date with Sandra yet again. Sandra is feeling neglected, so she hatches a plan to force Robert to concentrate on her instead of his job. She sets up a fancy late supper then calls Robert and tells him that she has killed Myles not knowing that someone actually has killed him. Among the clues were some hairs from a fox fur. Robert is tasked with finding Myles’ murderer while hoping that the killer isn’t his girlfriend.
“Rendezvous at Midnight” was released in 1935 and was directed by Christy Cabanne. It is an American mystery film.
It takes quite a while to get to the murder, but there is a reason for that. The first part of the movie deals with the dressmaker’s shop and the two dresses. It’s not until later that all of that staging comes into play. All of this ‘setting up’ gets a little boring. After the actual murder, which is off screen, the rest of the movie is tying the two dresses together as part of solving the crime.
Comic relief is in the form of a slightly shrill and batty Catherine Doucet, the owner of the dress shop. Ralph Bellamy is good as the police commissioner but most memorable is Valerie Hobson as Sandra Rogers, the beautiful yet neglected socialite. My favorite though is Helen Eddy as Sandra’s no-nonsense housekeeper. Her role is small, but she somehow manages to dominate the screen.