The Inner Circle (1946)

Undescribable Perfection

Thanks for the memories!

Best movie ever!

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

A radio gossip columnist is murdered and Johnny Strange of Action Incorporated (yes, indeed...) eventually solves the crime after being helped and hindered by a new secretary, a police lieutenant , a gangster, a gardener,a housekeeper and a night club singer. Made on a small budget on a few sets it starts out lively but becomes increasingly sillier until the unconvincing climax. It aspires to be Raymond Chandleresque but falls short.Johnny Strange is played routinely by Warren Douglas. Adele Mara as the secretary and William Frawley as the cop are much better. Ricardo Cortez is the gangster and puts in a polished performance but unfortunately isn't in it much. The ubiquitous Edward Gargan plays 'Parking Ticket Cop.' And why the film is called 'The Inner Circle' certainly escaped me.

Republic Pictures gave the movie-going public The Inner Circle back in 1946. It's a lightweight mystery about a gossip columnist who was shot to death and private detective Warren Douglas is near framed and unframed for the deed. Truth be told not too many people liked the columnist who had a sideline in blackmail.Doing the framing on Douglas is Adele Mara who gets hired as Douglas's secretary, frames him and the alibis Douglas all in a day. She's beautiful and quite an operator and has a sister in Martha Montgomery who was a victim of the columnist's blackmail.The columnist operated out of Ricardo Cortez's nightclub where he has the sultry Virginia Christine as his regular singer. There are also a pair of household help the victim had, maid Dorothy Adams who was also Gene Tierney's maid in Laura and gardener Will Wright. Both of them are looking to pocket what they can from an employer neither was crazy about.Trying to figure it all out is homicide detective William Frawley and from the beginning the guilty party was rather obvious. What took everyone so long?Not the best murder mystery out there.

...On Michael Keaton in the 80's noir spoof Johnny Dangerously???? The inner circle even had a bit of tongue-in-cheek itself, though in much more of a 1940's innocence.William Frawley's in top form andAdele Mara really shines in a part that seems tailor made for herThe cinematography is surprisingly top-notch, though you wouldn't notice if you turned it off after the first 15 minutes. It gets a bit more impressive as it goes along.Though not finest quality direction, it does move well with some snappy dialogue and interesting staging.Don't expect academy award performances, but it's still worth a watch, just for a few chuckles and to see it's influence on much later noir spoofs.

Before he can finish placing his help-wanted ad over the phone, the perfect candidate shows up at the office of Johnny Strange and fills the position of secretary without even giving Johnny a chance to say yes. She immediately takes the call from a new client, a mysterious woman with a Spanish accent. When Johnny meets her, the client is dressed all in black and wearing a heavy veil that conceals her face. She takes him to a house with a corpse lying in it, and asks him to take care of it. Before Johnny can call the police she knocks him unconscious with a bookend. He wakes up to see Det. Lt. Webb, who tells him the dead man is a notorious gossip columnist with a popular radio program. A nightclub manager, a singer, a housekeeper, a hard-of-hearing groundskeeper and two beautiful blondes are among the whos who may have done it."The Inner Circle" moves fast and gives away its surprises in the right places, helping us to ignore the strained humor and a silly twist on the usual gathering-the-suspects-into-a-room ending. Adele Mara and Warren Douglas are okay as the leads, but they're outshone by the supporting cast, especially William Frawley as the tough but even-tempered lieutenant and Will Wright as the old sneak who is probably pretending to be more deaf than he is.