Murder at the Vanities
Saucy pre-Code entertainment frequently served up risqué dialogue, with edgy content like promiscuity and drug use. Mitchell Leisen’s 1934 murder mystery goes straight for a supposed family-industry no-no: Broadway-revue near-nudity featuring Earl Carroll’s ‘Most Beautiful Girls In The World.’ Victor McLaglen is an inept detective and Jack Oakie a wise-cracking impresario. Gertrude Michael and Kitty Carlisle carry the musical numbers, the most famous being an ode to the still-legal Sweet Marijuana. Showgirls like Lucille Ball possess the daring to don the skimpy costumes, even if they hadn’t yet learned what Marijuana was. Duke Ellington and his orchestra sit in for Ebony Rhapsody, a mixed-race musical number with room for ‘guest dancers from Harlem.’
Murder at the Vanities
Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1934 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 89 min. / Street Date October 11, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Carl Brisson, Victor McLaglen, Jack Oakie, Kitty Carlisle, Dorothy Stickney, Gertrude Michael, Jessie Ralph, Charles B. Middleton, Gail Patrick, Donald Meek, Toby Wing, Duke Ellington, Lucille Ball, Lynn Bari, Virginia Davis, Alan Ladd, Dennis O’Keefe, Ann Sheridan, Teru Shimada.
Cinematography: Leo Tover
Costume design: Travis Banton
Art Directors: Hans Drier, Ernst Fegté
Film Editor: William Shea
Screenplay by Carey Wilson, Joseph Gollomb dialogue by Sam Hellman from a play by Earl Carroll, Rufus King
Produced by E. Lloyd Sheldon
Directed by Mitchell Leisen
scene in a studio film of 1934 . . . now that’s unusual.
Murder at the Vanities is one of the last of the official pre-Code movies, having been released in May of 1934. The ‘Vanities’ refers to Earl Carroll’s Vanities, an upscale Broadway revue featuring heaping stage-fuls of glamorous showgirls. “Through These Portals Pass the Most Beautiful Girls In The World” was Carroll’s catchphrase. The movie was adapted from Carroll’s stage show, with its book re-written for the screen.
As the killer is easily guessed, the appeal is in the comedy asides and the staging of a half-dozen song and dance numbers. If they seem tawdry or garish in comparison to Busby Berkeley’s fantastic work over at Warners, it’s most likely because real Earl Carroll numbers are being recreated in all of their tacky glory. Carroll reportedly brought 11 of his first-team showgirls to Hollywood, to serve as eye candy for the giant flesh tableaux.
And the musical numbers are certainly eye-opening. The showgirls don’t do a lot of dancing. They instead pose gracefully, and their costuming ranges from scantily clothed to peek-a-boo draped to out ‘n’ out nude (but holding their arms very carefully). What isn’t cut-away is see-through. It is said that one can spot Lucille Ball, Lynn Bari and Ann Sheridan within the girlie chorus.
Murder at the Vanities was likely one of the pre-Code films that was simply shelved when Code Enforcement came in. Other pre-Codes had nudity, or near-nudity: Paramount fashioned a very racy musical number for their comedy International House of the year before. In this show the beautiful women are the main attraction. It’s much less tacky than Paramount’s own Search for Beauty, where a big-scale athletics scam provides an excuse to stage exercise scenes, etc., with models in revealing outfits. When the Catholic censors singled out individual films to condemn, they usually chose targets with more public recognition value — Mae West’s provocative comedies, and the very adult The Story of Temple Drake.
Help me in my distress, sweet marijuana, please do.”
Feminist Studies majors: is this the apex of Female Objectification? All of the staging now seems tacky, with the ever-smiling showgirls used as human statuary. The dressing room scenes look like lingerie ads, and even the relatively modest Kitty Carlisle is given surprisingly low necklines. Toby Wing is one of the most recognizable & sexiest of the Busby Berkeley showgirls. She’s used here for a cheeky running gag — her dumb blonde Nancy squeals every time the busy Jack Okie turns down her offer to dally backstage.
The singing male lead Carl Brisson is solid, handsome, and carries an unchanging grin on his face, perfect qualities for a leading male in a stage musical. Brisson always seems to be smiling, even when he’s being fitted for handcuffs. I realize that even Gary Cooper wore lipstick in films around this time, but on Brisson it really stands out. His big number is the standard Cocktails for Two. As commentator Anthony Stride points out, this performance includes the preamble that reveals that the song is celebrating the end of Prohibition — dates can drink freely again. Cocktails for Two is of course the song forever vandalized by Spike Jones comedy version, with all the sound effects.
In the most elaborate musical number “Ebony Rhapsody” Duke Ellington’s jazz band interrupts a symphonic version of the Second Hungarian Rhapsody, the classical piece ribbed by Dolores Gray and ‘Klenzrite’ in It’s Always Fair Weather. The scene isn’t as liberating as one might think, even with a platoon of black dancers ‘from Harlem’ pitching in. Incensed that jazz is intruding where it doesn’t belong, Charles Middleton’s actor mock-slays all the black performers with a blast from his prop machine gun. It’s a weird bit of business, a mini-race war.
Charles Middleton, Jessie Ralph and nervous Dorothy Stickney take turns being likely suspects in the two murders committed backstage. We even see favorite Teru Shimada in the backstage shadows, directed to glance back and forth in a suspicious manner. Victor McLaglen accuses each potential murderer in turn, only to be forced to backpedal on his poor judgment. Donald Meek plays the coroner; he looks older here than he does in his 1940s movies.
Some critics thought Dorothy Stickney deserved more attention for her performance as an emotional maid. She delivers an impassioned speech with a strong racial element, explaining that her anger was inflamed by Duke Ellington’s savage music number, and seeing a hated white performer ‘going wild’ with the black performers on stage:
“I saw her dancing and smiling, and I thought how black and mean she was inside. And then the music got wilder. Everything was whirling on the stage. She was herself then, just a she-devil without a soul. She had no right to live!”
That’s surely one for Donald Bogle.
One musical number concludes with a gag perfect for a 70’s Italian giallo. Posing and smiling in the scenery, one of the nude showgirls suddenly feels blood drops falling on her shoulder. Sure enough, a woman has been stabbed to death on the catwalk far above.
The KL Studio Classics Blu-ray of Murder at the Vanities is in excellent condition for both picture and sound. Perhaps being locked away in the ‘banned, shelved’ vault helped it survive in top shape — it wasn’t pulled to make prints for re-issues.
Vanities first appeared on a 2009 DVD set, the Hollywood Pre-Code Collection, with five other features: The Cheat, Merrily We Go to Hell, Hot Saturday, Torch Singer, and Paramount’s smarmier peek-a-boo show Search for Beauty, with Ida Lupino, Buster Crabbe — and Toby Wing.
Anthony Slide’s commentary is an excellent listen; for classic-era cinema he’s one of the most informed author-researcher experts around. Slide tells us that the original Broadway revue, which used a different book, had in its cast Bela Lugosi and Olga Baclanova. Best of all, he points out several dialogue lines that the Production Code Office ordered dropped from the film. Paramount agreed, but knowing that the Code had no teeth, reneged on the agreement and left them in. When Enforcement arrived, ignoring the Code czars was no longer an option.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Murder at the Vanities
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Audio Commentary by Anthony Slide; trailers.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: September 29, 2022
(6808vani) 
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About Glenn Erickson
Glenn Erickson left a small town for UCLA film school, where his spooky student movie about a haunted window landed him a job on the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS effects crew. He’s a writer and a film editor experienced in features, TV commercials, Cannon movie trailers, special montages and disc docus. But he’s most proud of finding the lost ending for a famous film noir, that few people knew was missing. Glenn is grateful for Trailers From Hell’s generous offer of a guest reviewing haven for CineSavant.
Thanks for the spoilers. Now I await the usual lame excuses for spoilers. (“Hey, the movie’s almost a century old!” oe “Come on, it’s obvious who the murderer is!”) Well, as Lauren Bacall sagely put it: “All movies are new if you haven’t seen them yet.”