Ginger Rogers & Lyle Talbot in "A Shriek In The Night" (1933)
26In New York City, in the middle of the night, a shriek sounds as a body falls from the Harker Apartments to the pavement below. Police Inspector Russell (Purnell Pratt) and his bumbling assistant Wilfred (Arthur Hoyt) interrogate the secretary and maid (Louise Beavers) of the dead man, Mr. Harker.
The secretary is really reporter Pat Morgan (Ginger Rogers), who three weeks earlier, was planted at the apartment to investigate a possible connection between Harker and racketeer Josephus "Joe" Joe Martini (Maurice Black), who also lives in the apartment house.
Among Harker's letters, Pat finds a card with a serpent's insignia and the words, "You Will Hear It." Rival reporter Ted Rand (Lyle Talbot), whose marriage proposals Pat has rejected, sneaks into the apartment, and when Pat calls in her story, he picks up another phone and impersonates a rewrite man from her paper. Ted gets the story for his own paper, and because of this, Pat is fired the next day. Also, the next day, Bee Covey, who lived beneath Harker, is found dead in her apartment, where another serpent card is found.
The police believe that the dead woman's husband killed both her and Harker after learning that they were having an affair, but when Covey is found dead in the East River, that theory is discredited. To get back at Ted, Pat gives him a phony story that the janitor, Peterson (Harvey Clark) killed Harker. Ted, however, calls this story in to Pat's paper so that she will get her job back, and when she learns what he has done, they frantically call the paper back.
Harker's maid shows Pat a letter she found hidden, which threatens those responsible for framing Denny Fagan, who died in the electric chair. Pat then pays the janitor ten dollars to let her into Martini's apartment for a few minutes. Martini sees her leave, after which she calls Ted to tell him about the Denny Fagan connection. When they hear someone else on the line, Ted comes over to spend the night.
As Ted apprehends Martini intruding, they hear another shriek and find that a police investigator who had been searching through Martini's papers, was killed by someone who thought he was Martini. After Martini is arrested for six other gang killings, Pat receives a serpent card in the mail. She then goes with Peterson to the cellar to pick out her trunk, and he knocks her out and puts her into the incinerator. He is about to light it when Russell and others get him to unlock Martini's apartment. Wilfred notices Peterson's nervousness and follows him to the cellar. They struggle and Pat escapes, and when Russell and the others arrive, they are astonished to find that Wilfred has subdued Peterson.
Later, Ted visits Pat, who is recuperating, and relates the story. Peterson was the brother of Denny Fagan, an innocent cab driver who was framed for murder by Harker and Martini. After he killed Harker, Peterson killed Mrs. Covey to throw suspicion on her husband, to whom he sent a note implying that his wife was having an affair with Harker, but Covey, believing the note, committed suicide. Peterson killed all his victims with gas, and this explains the card sent to the victim, with the serpent insignia and the message "You Will Hear It," which referred to the hissing sound of the deadly gas in the pipes. When Pat's editor calls to ask her back, Ted objects to his future wife working and, after borrowing three dollars for a marriage license from the maid, embraces Pat.
A 1933 Black & White American pre-Code mystery crime film with elements of romance directed by Albert Ray, produced by M.H. Hoffman, written by Frances Hyland and Kurt Kempler, cinematography by Tom Galligan and Harry Neumann, starring Ginger Rogers, Lyle Talbot, and Harvey Clark.
Ginger Rogers and Lyle Talbot were at the beginning of their film careers, having previously appeared in "The Thirteenth Guest" (1932), another M.H. Hoffman production, and "42nd Street" (1933), one of Warner Bros. Pictures most profitable films of that year.
Writer Kurt Kempler was a former New York police reporter, and the film was based on an actual occurrence. This was his fifth and last screen credit.
This is the best-known film of independent studio Allied Pictures Corp., a company controlled by producer M.H. (Maurice Henry) Hoffman, and one of Hollywood's 'Poverty Row' enterprises, releasing low-budget B pictures from 1931 until its folding in early 1934.
Hoffman was the former general manager of Universal Pictures, later president of Tiffany Pictures (1927). In 1931 he started Allied Pictures, a prolific "B" studio that produced, among others, a series of westerns starring Hoot Gibson. Co-founder/General Manager Truart Film Corp., 1922. Founder of "B" production company Liberty Pictures, which was consolidated with several other "B" studios to form Republic Pictures in 1935.
This decent little murder-mystery's pairing of Ginger Rogers and Lyle Talbot set the ideas in motion for "THE THIN MAN" series at MGM a year later.