noir movies

Summer of Angela Summer of Angela: Please Murder Me (with tiny spoilers but not big ones)

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 16 Comments

This summer I am watching Angela Lansbury movies for the Summer of Angela.

I switched some things up a couple of weeks ago and slid The Pirates of the Penzance and this week’s movie, Please Murder Me, in place of a couple of TV movies Angela was in. I do have an interest now in watching one of the ones I replaced, so I may do that on my own.

This week’s movie starred Angela with Raymond Burr. It was short, sweet, and to the point, and very good. My husband watched it with me and said this movie would be considered a “B-movie” back in the day, but it was a very good B-movie to me.

I have been remiss in sharing where I have found these movies to watch so I do want to share that this one is free on Tubi and YouTube. The reproduction quality isn’t the best because it is a “b movie” and is now in the public domain. This means people can put this movie up wherever they want and not get hit with a copyright claim. I’ve found a lot of cool movies that way through YouTube and Tubi.

The movie seems to show, no matter where you find it, lines down the middle and sides from the old film. I am not sure if there are cleaner copies out there or not.

The description of this movie is that Raymond Burr portrays a lawyer who finds out his client, who he just got off for murder, is actually guilty. There is a lot more to it than that, but that’s the bottom line.

According to TCM.com, the movie’s screenplay was based on a teleplay by E. A. Dupont and David Chantler on Big Town (CBS, 1954).

It was directed by Peter Godfrey.

The movie starts with Raymond walking down a street, going into an office, and then speaking into a tape recorder (reel-to-reel) telling whoever hears the recording that in 55 minutes he will be dead.

We then have a flashback that will encompass the bulk of the movie.

That flashback consists of us learning that Burr’s character, Craig Carlson, is in love with his best friend’s wife Myra Leeds (Angela). We find this out because Craig tells Joe Leeds (Dick Foran) and says that he and Myra are going to be married and Craig would like Joe to divorce her.

Joe is oddly calm about this and as he leaves Craig’s law office, says he needs some time to think.

Before long we are in the Leeds’ apartment and Joe Leeds has met his maker. He’s under a sheet and Myra is being questioned by a plain-clothes cop who clearly thinks her self-defense story is absolutely garbage.

Myra says that Joe lunged at her, furious that she told him she wanted a divorce, and that she, terrified that he was going to kill her, shot him.

Uh-huh. Are we, the viewers, buying this?

Well, yes, I was because I hadn’t read the synopsis of this film before I watched it so I thought she might actually be telling the truth but…..not really sure.

Craig has, of course, volunteered to be Myra’s defense attorney.

It isn’t too much of a spoiler to say (since all the descriptions online already say this) that after the trial Craig discovers that Myra wasn’t being very truthful.

The problem is that in the United States a defendant can’t be tried twice because of the concept of “double jeopardy.”

Now Craig has to figure out how to make Myra pay for what she did to her husband and his best friend. Craig already felt guilty about having an affair and now the guilt is insurmountable and has a hefty helping of betrayal piled on.

I have only seen Raymond Burr in the old Perry Mason episodes and Rear Window but have enjoyed his acting in both and I enjoyed his acting in this movie as well.

He mainly played villains in the beginning of his career.

Here he portrayed a bit of a darker Perry Mason or as the author at Heart of Noir stated “a three-dimensional, complex lead role” who is “both a home wrecker and a cuckold, which demands of him quite a balancing act of emotions.”

Overall, I liked this movie and I enjoyed both Raymond and Angela’s performance.

I read a piece of trivia that I will share below that involves Angela taking the job because she needed the money and she may have only done it for the money, but she seemed to put her all in it.

I really enjoyed her performance, even if it was toned down from what she would show in films such as The Manchurian Candidate. One might say this role was a good preparation Eleanor Shaw.

I loved the use of light and shadow in the film. I am a huge fan of black and white photography and films that use shadow and light to highlight what the photographer or director wants the viewer to focus on.

In this one, there was a lot of shadow around the subjects with light hitting their eyes or whole face during tense scenes when a secret was about to be revealed or a confrontation was had.

My husband and I agree on some points about the movie.

There could have been more explanation of the plot. There was some missing information throughout which led to rushed scenes.

“Instead of being only an hour and 14 minutes it could have been an hour and 45 minutes,” my husband said.

This would have given us time for a bit more background and exposition.  We both agree that these minor issues didn’t take away from the overall story, however.

I like what Heart of Noir said about the movie: “From the pre-credits opening scene of an unidentified man walking the city sidewalk past scummy-looking bars and peep shows, the film oozes with economy, bland interiors and soupy darkness combining with overhead shots and Dutch angles to disorient the viewer and create an occasional dream-like feeling.”

I also enjoyed this assessment by PopOptiq: “The picture earns its fatalistic conclusion with a gut-punch plot resolution to Craig’s tireless mission to expose Myra. If anything, the film is yet another reminder of the range both Raymond Burr and Angela Lansbury had as actors. Both became legends through very different projects on television, making this reunion, before their popularity erupted, all the more interesting a time capsule.”

Trivia or facts:

  • According to Angela Lansbury’s authorized biography, this movie was filmed in an abandoned supermarket near Yucca and Franklin Streets in Los Angeles. Lansbury and her husband Peter Shaw were at a low financial point in their marriage and they needed the money. After the film was finished, she applied for unemployment insurance. (source IMdB) (An insert by me here: her husband was Peter Shaw and she played Eleanor Shaw in a movie? Like…weird!)
  • The film was made the same year that Raymond Burr auditioned for the role of Perry Mason.
  • Lamont Johnson’s who plays . . . well, I’m not going to tell you so I don’t spoil anymore of the story …. Is in this movie and this was his last movie as an actor before he became a full-time director. He mainly directed stage and television productions.
  • The opening credits featured the cast, writers, director and producers. The crew appeared in the closing credits.  (source TCM.com)
  • Please Murder Me was the first film made by Gross-Krasne, Inc., which was run by executive producers Jack J. Gross and Philip N. Krasne. (source TCM.com)

A quote from the movie that I liked, “My whole life has meant just meant three things,  my love for Joe, my work, and my love for you. You destroyed them all. How much more is left of me?”

Have you ever seen this one? If so, what did you think?

Cat from Cat’s Wire also watched the movie this past week and wrote about it on her blog here.
For next week, I am switching The Mirror Cracked, based on an Agatha Christie book, for Death on the Nile, based on another Agatha Christie book. I’ve been reading that Death on the Nile is better than The Mirror Cracked..

Here is the full list of movies left to watch for this feature:

July 25: Death on the Nile

August 1 – The Court Jester

August 8 – The Picture of Dorian Gray

August 15 – A Life At Stake

August 22 – All Fall Down

August 29 – Something for Everyone

If you want to read about some of the other movies I watched you can find them here:

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

The Manchurian Candidate

National Velvet

The Pirates of Penzance

Gaslight

The Pirates of Penzance

Sources and additional resources:

Please Murder Me: https://heartofnoir.com/film/please-murder-me-1956/

Please Murder Me IBdB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049621/trivia/?ref_=tt_dyk_trv

TCM.com: https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/86833/please-murder-me/#overview

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Please_Murder_Me!

‘Please Murder Me’ sees underrated greats Lansbury and Burr go head-to-head: https://www.popoptiq.com/please-murder-me/

Summer of Marilyn: Niagra

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 4 Comments

This summer I am watching Marilyn Monroe movies for fun. I was supposed to watch Some Like It Hot this week but The Husband (this is a silly nickname I give my husband for the blog) wanted to watch Niagara so I said we should go for it since I’d never heard much about it.’

It was not the romantic or screwball comedies I’ve watched so far from her so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was a little nervous it was going to be super dark but it was more intrigue than darkness.

The Husband calls the movie light noir. He also pointed out that she was only in about 35 minutes of the movie but believed she completely stole the show, which I agree with now that I’ve seen it.

This movie is one of the first major acting roles Marilyn had, and she doesn’t use her signature breathy voice which answers the question I had before – that breathless speech wasn’t her normal speech. It was simply her signature voice. I liked hearing her normal voice because the other way she speaks is so fake to me and grates on my nerves. That could be because I have seen so many parodies of her over the years.

This movie came out in 1953 and from what I can see, quite a bit of it was actually filmed at Niagra Falls. It was directed by Henry Hathaway.

The other stars of the movie, who were in it even more than Marilyn, were Joseph Cotton, Jean Peters, and Max Showalter.

The movie starts with Marilyn’s husband at the falls in a place I’m pretty sure you can’t stand at anymore if you were ever allowed to in the first place. The man travels back to a cabin right next to the falls and I really wanted to know if that is a real place because the idea of a room overlooking the falls seems awesome to me. I can imagine it might also be loud, though.

I looked it up and it turns out the cabins are not real.

According to IMbd, “The Rainbow Cabins were not real cabins, they were movie sets built exclusively for the film at a cost of over $25,000. They were built in Queen Victoria Park directly across from the American Falls. The stone structure located by the Rainbow Cabins was torn down, but a similar one can be found in the same park at “Rambler’s Rest.””

The man returns to his room where Marilyn has been smoking a cigarette but then quickly pretends she is asleep which already eludes to the fact that she may not be what she seems.

We move over to a couple who are visiting Niagara Falls both for a delayed honeymoon and to meet up with the owner of the company the man works for after the man won a contest. They reserved a certain cabin but Marilyn and her husband are still in that cabin. Marilyn (Rose) convinces them to let her and her husband (George) keep the cabin because she says her husband is suffering from PTSD from the Korean War and had been in a psychiatric hospital.



The couple reluctantly agrees to move to another cabin, but they will continue to run into Marilyn (Rose in the movie) again and somehow get swept up in the crazy drama that will begin to unfold shortly after they meet her.

While sightseeing at the falls, the wife spots Marilyn making out with a man who is clearly not her husband and realizes there is a lot more to the story of George and Rose.

That becomes even more clear when Rose wanders into a party being held at the cabins, places a record on the player, and George doesn’t like it so he breaks the record.

The wife (Polly) goes to the cabin to help him take care of his hand which he cut on the record and he tells the couple that he met Rose while she was working as a barmaid. She is considerably younger than him, full of life and he thinks she hates him because of all his issues.

Pretty sure the couple (The Cutlers) didn’t want to know all that but, well, there they had it.

Things start to go off the rails pretty quickly for George and Rose and, sadly, for the couple trying to just have a nice holiday. I won’t give away too much but there is a murder plot and mistaken identity and – well, you just have to watch it to believe it. It’s pretty crazy.

I will give away that I really wanted to punch Mr. Cutler about three times in this movie. Maybe five. I, in fact, dislike Mr. Cutler so much with his goofy smile that I didn’t even bother to look up what the first name of his character was while writing this blog post. I don’t even remember the name of it.

The guy was so dismissive of his wife’s concerns the entire time that by the end of the movie I was rooting for a full-fledged divorce. One day I’ll write an alternative ending to the movie where she tells him she’d be better off without him because he acts like she’s a crazy, hormonal woman all the time.



According to Wikipedia, the idea for the film came from Walter Reisch who eventually wrote it with Richard Breen and Charles Brackett. They said most films that take place at the falls are romantic, but Reisch wanted a film with murder in it.

Monroe was suggested to play a main role by the head of Fox Studios, Darryl F. Zanuck. According to Wikipedia, Reisch liked the idea but when Zanuck suggested she play a villain, he wasn’t so sure.

“According to Reisch, “We thought that was a nice idea until there came a second telephone call that he wanted her to be the villainess, not the girl… My God! Here was the prettiest girl in the whole United States of America! But he insisted it was a great idea, so we finally did it. We didn’t know whether she would like it, but she had no objection, whatsoever—on the contrary.”

A bit of trivia:

  • Jean Peters who played Polly Cutler had originally been suggested for Marilyn’s role, but by the time the movie started to get made, Marilyn’s popularity had grown and Peters was switched to play the wife. (No big deal because the wife got more screen time anyhow).
  • According to IMbd, even though she had a starring role, Marilyn Monroe was still under contract to 20th Century-Fox as a stock actor at a fixed salary, so she actually made less money than her make-up man did.”
  • During filming of the shower scene, director Henry Hathaway had to keep yelling at Monroe to keep away from the shower curtain and away from the lights as she insisted on being naked (as she was under the bed sheets at the beginning of the film). To pass the censors of the time, the scene was darkened in post-production.
  • Canadian officials didn’t like the film because they said it gave Niagara Falls a bad name by focusing on a murder taking place at it.
  • The “Letterman Hospital” that Rose mentions at the beginning of the film, saying George was a patient there, was Letterman Army Hospital at The Presidio of San Francisco. Built in 1898, it cared for returning wounded soldiers from every major conflict, especially World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. It was closed in 1994, the Army base at The Presidio was decommissioned in 1995 and the buildings of the hospital were demolished in 2002.  2005 Lucasfilm opened its headquarters on the site and named it the Letterman Digital Arts Center. (source IMbd)

Overall, if you haven’t already guessed, I enjoyed this film. It had me biting my nails and hooked until the end. While it did exploit Marilyn’s beauty and there were those moments of men gawking at her like they’d never seen a woman before like in other movies, it was still a great storyline.

If you want to read another review of the movie (which I didn’t agree with) you can click here.

Another review is here.

If you want to read about Marilyn’s fashion in the movie you can click HERE.

Up next for my Summer of Marilyn will be Some Like it Hot which was the movie I was going to originally watch this week. I was going to watch Niagra next week, though, so I just switched the two around.

After that, I’ll be watching:


July 13: The Seven Year Itch

July 20: Monkey Business (because it’s Marilyn and Cary together)

July 27: All About Eve

August 3: The Misfits