Rita Gets Shot

Who Killed Gail Preston? (1938) is the question when the rather unpleasant singer (Rita Hayworth) is shot during a performance in the Swing Swing Club. Just before her murder, Gail called Inspector Tom Kellogg (Don Terry), so it’s up to him to find the killer.

Without being too snide, this film works primarily because it is short (it's 61 minutes). Though a few smoother transitions would have been helpful, it has a fast enough pace that you don't immediately notice the holes in the plot.  It's a B movie, with a cadre of actors who, with the exception of Ms. Hayworth, never made it out of Bs; like most B films, the sets on this are run of the mill, except for the club set where Ms. Hayworth stars. Called the Swing Swing Club, it's a prison setting, with the band and emcee wearing the striped garb of inmates and the guests seated in cells. One can almost see an imaginative set designer working with the scriptwriter to re-use a prison set within the film. It's quite an imaginative design.

In her approximately 20 minutes of screen time, Ms. Hayworth does a good job of making you loathe the nasty Gail. We're not sorry she is killed by the time she gets it (no spoiler here - the title tells you what is going to happen!). But there are a lot of red herrings scattered through the film that seemingly lead nowhere. If the screenwriters had ever talked to a police investigator, we'd be surprised. Gail's apartment, which should be under police protection after the murder is more like Grand Central Station than a crime scene - there are more people coming and going from it than from the nightclub!

The same year this was made, Ms. Hayworth had appeared in There's Always a Woman, where she made an uncredited appearance as a secretary. The following year, she played another villain in The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt. She still doesn't look quite like the Rita Hayworth we are used to. In this film, the studio decided to make her up to look more like Hedy Lamarr (who had just come out with Algiers, her first American picture). (AFI Catalog) And it is not Ms. Hayworth singing (it's Gloria Franklin); in fact, she only got to sing in her films once - the guitar solo in Gilda is actually her singing and playing the instrument. (TCM article).  

Ms. Hayworth unhappy life has been chronicled by biographer Barbara Leaming in If This is Happiness. Sexually abused by her father, threatened and prostituted by her first husband (Eddie Judson), cheated on by her second and third husbands (Orson Welles and Aly Khan), bankrupted and abused by her fourth husband (Dick Haymes, aka Mr. Evil), she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's Disease in 1980. She died in 1987; she was 68. But she left us a legacy of magnificent performances, such as Virginia Brush in The Strawberry Blonde (1941), Vera Prentice-Simpson in Pal Joey (1957), Rusty Parker in Cover Girl (1944), Doña Sol in Blood and Sand (1941), and, of course, Gilda. She was the first person to dance with both Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire; truly, she was a remarkable performer on all levels.

One little incident we found interesting was the brief appearance of Gail's Maid (Mildred Glover). She's adamant in her unwilllingness to speak to the police. We realize quickly she is by no means stupid, in fact, she has rather a way with words.  But it seems pretty clear SHE is convinced that she will accused of the murder. Does she think she will be suspected because she is a woman of color?

The original title of the film was Murder in Swingtime (which might have been a better choice - it wouldn't have let us know the name of the victim before we entered the theatre!) It's an okay movie, with some clever bits, a little too much of the dumb police officer, but in the long run, not bad for a B film. If you are an aficionado of Ms. Hayworth, you may want to give it a viewing.