The Mysterious Mr. Valentine

Linda Sterling's car has a blow-out in front of a chemicals company. She goes in to use the phone, only to have the partner's wife rush in with a photographer to snap incriminating photos. She runs out, steals a car to drive home, gets into another accident and soon finds herself confronted by William Henry, who says 'you can use me, and I can use you..... as a client' and hands her a business card. He's a private investigator. When she gets a blackmail letter from 'Mr. Valentine', she realizes Henry was right.

It's one of those movies that seems to depend a lot on Henry stumbling around until he falls over the clues, but int the hands of B director Phil Ford -- son of Francis, nephew of John -- it's suffused with a light, breezy sense of humor that kept me amused throughout. Miss Sterling is lovely dressed in modern clothes, and Thomas Jackson is there, playing a police detective, as he had been since the 1920s.