Darkness around footsteps

I've been adding a lot of movies to my YouTube TV cloud DVR, with the unsurprising result that a reasonable number of them get another airing on TCM that allows me to do a post on them in conjunction with the upcoming airing. This time, the movie in question is Footsteps in the Dark, which shows up on TCM tomorrow (October 9) at 6:15 PM.

Errol Flynn plays Francis Warren who, at the start of the movie, is being helped by his chauffeur Wilfred (Allen Jenkins) to climb up into his bedroom late one night, so that he won't disturb his wife Rita (Brenda Marshall). The following morning, Francis is at breakfast with his wife and her mother Agatha (Lucile Watson). The two women are aghast over the popular new book, Footsteps in the Dark, and want to sue author F.X. Pettijohn and his publisher, because the book takes prominent society women and, using thinly-veiled identities, skewers these women.

Francis goes downtown for his job as an investment banker, and at lunchtime is driven by Wilfred to a house on the Warner Bros. backlot that he's been renting. Here, it's revealed that Francis is in fact Mr. Pettijohn, who likes to ride with the police on murder investigations, which would explain why he gets home late at night. Of course, Francis hasn't told his wife any of this, which I'd think would be a much bigger problem in their marriage. Meanwhile, police inspector Mason (Alan Hale) knows Pettijohn but not Francis, and thinks Pettijohn doesn't really know how to solve murders.

Back at the office, Francis is met by a Mr. Fessue, who wants him to invest some money from the sale of jewels. But the financial arrangements are going to have to wait until after the close of business when Francis can go meet Fessue at his apartment since Fessue is going sailing for the afternoon. Francis goes there, and Fessue never shows up. When he hears of a boat adrift in the harbor with a man dead of an alcohol-induced heart attack, Francis puts two and two together.

Except that Francis has good reason to believe that it's actually murder, even though the coroner has determined that no, it's just alcoholism. In doing his investigation, Francis learns that Fessue has been seeing a burlesque queen, Blondie White (Lee Patrick). He gets the distinct impression that she's involved in the murder except that she has an airtight alibi, which is that she was at the dentist's office seeing Dr. Davis (Ralph Bellamy) for a dental issue.

Francis keeps investigating, spending time with Blondie, until one of Rita's gossipy friends goes slumming and sees Francis (claiming to be a Texas oil millionaire) with Blondie. Francis now has to try to solve the case without Rita thinking that he's having an illicit relationship with a burlesque dancer. Worse is that things get even more complicated when Blondie turns up dead too. Eventually the case is solved and all the good people wind up living happily ever after, but you know that was always going to happen since there's that pesky Production Code that has to be satisfied.

Footsteps in the Dark is another of those comedic murder mysteries that Hollywood made a lot of in the years before the US got dragged into World War II. Flynn had already done a couple of comedies, and once again, he shows himself to be adept at handling comedy. The supporting cast is also quite good here, although Brenda Marshall as the nominal leading lady doesn't really have a whole lot to do. The mystery itself isn't that much of a mystery, although in a movie like this the actual mystery isn't always quite the point.

Footsteps in the Dark is another fine example of the sort of movie that the Hollywood studio system could churn out back in the day. While it's never going to be remembered as an all-time great, it's definitely a worthy little movie that will entertain viewers even 85 years on.