The Inner Circle (1946)

A radio gossip columnist is murdered and Johnny Strange of Action Incorporated (yes, indeed...) eventually solves the crime after being helped and hindered by a new secretary, a police lieutenant , a gangster, a gardener,a housekeeper and a night club singer. Made on a small budget on a few sets it starts out lively but becomes increasingly sillier until the unconvincing climax. It aspires to be Raymond Chandleresque but falls short.Johnny Strange is played routinely by Warren Douglas. Adele Mara as the secretary and William Frawley as the cop are much better. Ricardo Cortez is the gangster and puts in a polished performance but unfortunately isn't in it much. The ubiquitous Edward Gargan plays 'Parking Ticket Cop.' And why the film is called 'The Inner Circle' certainly escaped me.

If movie plots are like train wrecks, this one is up there with the crash in "The Greatest Show on Earth". Every element of this film noir rings a bell of falsehood. In some films, you might be tempted to walk out of the theater or simply press stop on your VCR or DVD player. In the case of "The Inner Circle", you'll stick with it just to see how far down the road of absurdity it will go.The plot deals with a private investigator (Warren Douglas) in need of an assistant who gets one that instant when all of a sudden a mysterious blonde (Adele Mara) walks in and announces that he's just hired her. Then, she takes a mysterious phone call from a "client" whom Douglas agrees to meet which results him stumbling onto a dead body and the veiled brunette client proceeds to conk him over the head. You won't be surprised to find out who she really is, and then the ridiculousness continues at a break-neck speed with a line-up of other suspects and Mara getting Douglas off for a murder he didn't commit on a self-defense charge.Cantankerous William Frawley plays a police investigator who trails both Mara and Douglas and always shows up at the most inconveniently obvious times. There's a grizzled old handyman (Will Wright) and housekeeper (Dorothy Adams) who worked for the victim (a radio columnist), as well as a nightclub singer (Virginia Christine, best known for the Folgers commercials years later) and the nightclub owner (veteran actor Ricardo Cortez). To top off the less than one hour of absurd story-telling, Douglas has Mara named as the killer and re-enacts the crime on a live radio show with everybody present with scripts in hand for the final denouncement.In spite of all the downright atrocious plot twists and developments, you might find yourself engrossed with ironic laughter at it all. Like the clown that slips on a banana peel and slides across the stage floor before landing with a thud, this movie slides through its six reels, landing on the floor, and leaving a rotten egg behind.

The current reviews for "The Inner Circle" on this board are about evenly divided, so I'll put my two cents in on the side of the positives. I thought the picture was better than it had a right to be given the usual cheapo treatment given these B programmers of the era. The hook for me occurred right in the opening scene introducing Johnny Strange of Action Incorporated in unusual fashion utilizing his business ad in the local phone directory. But it got better, when beautiful blonde Geraldine Smith (Adele Mara) answers a want-ad in progress from Johnny Strange himself (Warren Douglas), hanging up the phone and hiring herself on the spot. What Miss Smith was soon to learn was that "A secretary to Johnny Strange is no picnic...".For a film coming in at under an hour, this one sure has a lot of characters, understandable given the nature of the story. You had to spread the murder suspects around to keep the viewer guessing, and it isn't until half way into the picture that we learn that the murder victim, a gossip personality on radio, had a blackmail sideline going for him to supplement his income. A hundred grand to keep a senator's daughter out of the headlines seems like a pricey sum to me for 1946, but hey, any politician worth his weight could probably have come up with it. The other likely suspects include a torch singer (Virginia Christine), a housekeeper (Dorothy Adams), the gardener (Will Wright), and secretary extraordinaire, Miss Smith herself.In order to solve the case, Johnny Strange pulls a page out of the Charlie Chan play book, and brings all the suspects together for a live radio broadcast to smoke out the killer. Even with Johnny's explanation of how he was able to put it all together, it doesn't ring quite true, but beyond that, the flick winds up a nifty little time filler with an entertaining cast of characters. You've got your snappy banter between the principals, and with a little more work it might have elevated to the level of classic screwball comedy. Still and all, it's a pleasant diversion, and worth the effort. Oh yeah, can't forget William Frawley as the luckless detective, exhibiting some of the traits that would make him the Ricardo's favorite neighbor a few more years down the road.

The film begins with Johnny Strange looking to place an ad for Action Incorporated. He's a fast-talking private eye sort of fellow and I really liked the first ten minutes or so when he met up with a new (and quite bewildering) secretary. He soon gets a case involving a very mysterious woman—a woman who wants him to dump a body. But, when he refuses, she klunks him on the head and calls the police to report the murder—then disappears. The inspector (William Frawley) eventually is ready to arrest Strange when his odd secretary manages to save his skin. But who is this mysterious lady and how can Strange get to the bottom of this? Tune in to this B-movie….if you are interested.This low-budget B-mystery isn't great, but it is enjoyable. As for the plot, it's mostly familiar stuff but the part of the secretary was wonderful and breathed life into this otherwise ordinary plot. In addition, old movie nuts (like me) will enjoy seeing Ricardo Cortez in one of his last movie roles. Despite being a suave leading man in the 1930s, his movie prospects dried up in the 1940s and he went into business—and amassed quite a fortune outside of Hollywood.