Murder at midnight 1931 - Standard 30's murder mystery

Publicity picture of Alice White circa 1931

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IMDB rating: 5,7

Director: Frank R. Strayer
Main Cast: Aileen Pringle, Alice White, Hale Hamilton, Robert Elliott

"A sophisticated, expensively-dressed group of people gather in a spooky old mansion to watch the first performance of a play. The highlight of the production is a realistic on-stage murder, wherein the victim is shot point-blank, right through the heart, as the clock strikes 12. The audience applauds enthusiastically as the 'victim' falls dead, but the applause subsides and gives way to screams of terror when it turns out that the murder is for real! With everyone in the mansion under suspicion - including, naturally, the butler - the cops are baffled, and even more so when the primary suspect ends up as victim number two. 'This isn't a murder case, it's an epidemic!' moans one of the detectives. Intricately plotted, and with a genuinely surprising solution, Murder at Midnight is far and away superior to your average low-budget mystery. Poor 'blonde dumbbell' Alice White was often given short shrift by bluenosed reviewers who found her coarse, but she is really quite amusing in this above-average whodunit from Tiffany Productions, which came with surprisingly sturdy production values and a good screenplay by W. Scott Darling and director Frank R. Strayer. So good, in fact, that Darling used it again in 1939 as Mr. Wong in Chinatown and for the 1947 Charlie Chan mystery The Chinese Ring. Neither of the remakes, however, employed White, whose starring career fizzled in the early '30s." - www.allmovie.com

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Show girl in Hollywood 1930 - Blanche Sweet steals the show

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021371/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,1

Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Main Cast: Alice White, Jack Mulhall, Blanche Sweet, Ford Sterling

"This wonderful Warner Bros. epic was one of the earliest talkie musicals with a Hollywood background - and the last of its kind until 1933's Sitting Pretty. Alice White stars as pert chorine Dixie Dugan, a character she'd played in 1928's Show Girl (and one which would spin off into a long-running comic strip). This time, Dixie is brought to Hollywood to appear in a music titled The Rainbow Girl. Thanks to the urgings of her egotistical director (John Miljan), the normally down-to-earth heroine begins acting like a haughty screen queen. Her temperamental behavior causes a shut-down of the production, ruining the comeback attempt of fading star Donna Harris (played by Blanche Sweet, who at 36 looks far younger than her 'over-the-hill' character, who's supposed to be 32!) When Donna nearly commits suicide, Dixie realizes what a jerk she's been, and the show - er, the movie - goes on. A surprisingly accurate scene from Show Girl in Hollywood, showing a musical number 'in production' on the sound stage has since been excerpted in several TV documentaries on the early sound era. The film originally ended with a Technicolor sequence depicting the premiere of the fictional The Rainbow Girl, with several Warner Bros. employees (Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, Loretta Young and Walter Pidgeon) in attendance.
A distinguished early talkie with acceptable tunes by Buddy Green and Sammy Stept, include: 'I've Got My Eye on You' (sung by Alice White); 'There's a Tear for Every Smile in Hollywood' (sung by Blanche Sweet); 'I've Got My Eye on You' (reprise) and 'Hang on to the Rainbow' (Alice White).
Blanche Sweet (1895-1986), a long time veteran actress of the silent screen dating back to 1909, is quite effective as a drifting movie queen who becomes Dixie Dugan's guide through the studio system. Her vocalizing to a sentimental tune revealing the happiness and hardship of Hollywood comes very much as a surprise as does her character, limited somewhat in the photo-play yet crucial to the story. Film buffs would also delight in witnessing the behind the scenes activity of movie making, then called 'Vitaphoning'." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/show-girl-in-hollywood-v110018

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