No Place for a Lady

This was meant to be the first film in a new crime detection series to replace the run of Ellery Queen movies by Columbia. But my guess is that they may have scuppered this idea by suggesting that Jess Arno, the lead character, was about to join the army in this story. Arno has turned private detective when we meet him as he springs Dolly Adair from a San Franciscan jail. Arno's girlfriend is supposed to prepare a beachside house at Sandhaven for Dolly so that the rehabilitated jailbird can be secreted away from reporters. June, the girlfriend in question, is livid that Arno is prepared to protect the "blonde menace" at his secret seaside hideaway. She sets up a practical joke with a 'murdered' wax blonde dummy at the house and deliberately forgets to have the electricity switched on. But a real murdered body turns up on the premises and then it disappears. So it's a good setup for this witty wartime mystery starring William Gargan as Arno and Margaret Lindsay as June. It also has the versatile Jerome Cowan as the chief suspect whose rich lady friend has gone missing. He is a singer at an upmarket dining place where Cowan underlines his versatility by singing a song with the appropriate tile of 'A Cottage By The Sea.' This is a good entertaining 66 minutes of comic-sinister shenanigans accompanied by the type of mysterioso music I always enjoy in these old movies.