City of Missing Girls (1941)

H.B Warner a police captain and young Assistant District Attorney John Archer are working on what back in those days would be a white slavery racket. Young women theatrical hopefuls sign up for some kind of training school and then disappear.But when a body of a young woman shows up known to have gone to this 'school' it becomes a solid case of homicide and law enforcement redoubles its efforts.Astrid Allwyn a Lois Lane type reporter is covering the story, but she has a discomforting surprise awaiting here which I will not reveal. It could compromise a budding romance with Archer.This had some possibilities, but in the end it's a shoddily made independent feature.

What a load of rubbish. Girls are not missing from this non-thriller, but everything else is. No real action until two thirds and more of the way through, and then only if you use a liberal definition of action. Leading lady Astrid Allwyn is no ingénue but you kind of wish she was, even women reporters were never meant to be this brazen. There is no real plot to this either, there is no scenery, it could have been made in one building, and probably was. Did people really shell out good money to watch celluloid trash like this even in the 1940s? Another reviewer has suggested it has hidden depths, that the missing girls were involved in a white slavery racket or some such. It does give that impression towards the end, but if ever subtlety was not needed, it was not needed here.

This is the story of a crime boss who has a front for either white slavery or prostitution. The words are never spoken. This would have been pretty hot stuff for the time. It involves an assistant district attorney, a female reporter, and a cop who just can't retire. All in all, the chemistry is pretty good. The reporter isn't as tiresome as they usually are. She seems to have some soul and some merit. The bad guy is also pretty well conceived and presents a formidable presence. It is pretty formulaic but keeps our attention throughout. The blackmail thing is believable for the most part and the elements of the crime story are nicely balanced. The one thing that troubles me is the aftermath, dealing with the reporter's father. I won't give anything away, so see what you think of the ending scene.

****SPOILERS**** A number of young women have disappeared or have been found murdered in and around town. The one connection being that they all have in common with each other is that they attended or are attending the Crescent School for the Fine Arts. The local police department as well as the up and coming assistant DA James Horton,John Archer,as well as John's good friend and mentor police Captain McVeigh,H.B. Warner, have been trying with interest to find out who's behind these missing and dead young women. D.A Horton starts to put the heat on the schools owner Joseph Thompson, Boyd Irwin,who's a front-man for the cities top mobster King Peterson, Philip Van Zandt. Thompson has no idea of what the school that he's running is all about, Peterson's prostitution and call-girl racket. Peterson tries to pay off assistant DA Horton with $10,000.00 to stop his investigation but the incorruptible Horton tells Peterson to take a walk with Capt. McVeigh listening in on the office inter-con. Peterson later comes up with the idea to frame and blackmail Horton in order to get him off his back. Later Tompson panics when it turns up in the newspaper that a student Pauline Randolph in the Crescent School was connected with with one of the murdered girls Thaila Arnold. Thompson wants out of the whole dirty business but Peterson won't let him in fear that Thompson would go to and tell the police in order to save his hide. Pauleine is later also found murdered and the police now have enough evidence to make a case against the Crescent School and it's owner and administrators, the Peterson mob. Peterson then sets up assistant DA Horton by having one of his girls Kate Nelson,Patrkia Knox, to call him over to her hotel room with information on the Randolph murder.Having Horton secretly photographed with her in a somewhat intimate pose Kate later gets into a fight with Peterson who kills her. Horton having himself photographed with Kate in her hotel room and later Kate being found murdered in that same room is now in no position to handle the case. He may very well be indited for murdering Kate! Two things then unexpectedly happen that saves the day for Horton and the forces of law and order. The photographer who took the photo gets scared when he finds Kate's body and is later kidnapped by the Peterson mob only to be rescued by the police and then spills the beans on him, Peterson. Later Thompson's daughter Nora, Astrid Allwyn,who's a newspaper reporter goes undercover in the Crescent School as a student. Nora is recognized by Peterson and in a fit of disgust and outrage goes to call the police on him. the police and assistant DA break into his office and catch him red handed. Peterson is later convicted of murder and sentenced to the electric chair and at last the mystery of the missing and murdered girls is finally solved."City of Missing Girls" is a mostly typical crime drama with the exception of touching on a very taboo subject back in those days, the 1940's, in Hollywood: prostitution. It's interesting to see how the film makers avoided to even mention that word even though the movie plot was all about it, prostitution and call-girls, as if that subject and those very words were off-limits by the moral majority of that day which they were.