***SPOILERS*** We, the audience, get the whole story from from private eye Philip Marlow ,Dick Powell, who's eyes are bandaged up from a gun flash that blinded him in the police station. This big gorilla of a hood Moose Malloy, Mike Mazerski, who just was sprung from the pen comes to Marlow's office paying him to find his girlfriend Valma Valento who he lost touch with when he was put behind bars for a robbery that she was involved in that he took to rap for. As Marlow goes to find the elusive Valma Valento things start happening that at first seem to have nothing to do with her. Lindsay Marriott, Douglas Walton, drops into Marlow's office the next day wanting Marlow to go with him to a secluded area in some canyon on the outskirts of L.A. Marriott wants Marlow to help him to retrieve a stolen jade necklace that he paid or was going to pay those who stole it that belongs to a lady friend of his. Marlow driving to the designated spot that night with Marriott gets knocked out and Marroitt murdered by an unseen killer with the necklace nowhere to be found; was it all a set up?
The next day this young girl reporter a Miss. Allison shows up at Marlow's office looking for information about the mysterious jade necklace only to be exposed, by a very perceptive Marlow, as being non-other as Ann Grayle, Anne Shirley,the step-daughter of the women Mrs. Helen Grayle, Claire Trevor, who the necklace was stolen from. It's also found out later by Marlow that Anne was on the scene of the Marroitt murder when he ended up being clobbered and put to sleep.
Mrs. Grayle is being blackmailed by this hood who's also a quack psychiatrist named Jules Amthor, Otto Kruger, who knows about Mrs. Grayle's wild and steamy past as a bar and show girl at the Florian nightclub. The Moose for some reason, it's never explained why, hooks up with the Amthor Mob who kidnap Marlow. After shooting Marlow up with dope his kidnappers dump him in this sanitarium run by another quack doctor Dr. Sonderborg, Ralf Harolde. The drugs Dr. Sonderborg injected Marlow with was to get him to tell the Amthor Mob about the jade necklace that Marlow has no idea about where it is; but that they seem to think that he did.
Later escaping from Sonderborg place Marlow with the help of Moose, did he have a change of heart?,gets to Anne's place where she tell him this whole magilla, long story, about her step mother being a gold digger and wanting to take her father Mr. Grayle, Miles Mender, to the cleaners, by cleaning him out. Despite her greedy intentions the sick old man is both too naive and too much in love with the much younger and beautiful Helen Grayle to notice that.
Meanwhile Mr. Grayle who's being caught up with all the goings on about the jade necklace that cost the life of Lindsay Marriott wants the investigation by Marlow to stop and is willing to pay him in full for his failed efforts to find the necklace and drop the case. By now Marlow in in too deep and knows too much to do that, which leads to the final and deadly conclusion of the movie "Murder my Sweet" at the Grayle beach-house where almost everyone involved in the Jade Necklace/Valma mystery end up dead.
Hard to follow and in the end not really that interesting of a story about murder blackmail and betrayal that has the audience watching at times trying to keep awake as the lights in the theater as well as those in the movie are turned off. "Murder my Sweet" seems to have taken place in Alaska during it's six months of darkness. I've never seen a movie that takes place over a period of time, in what seemed like a few days, so dark and gloomy. Even the fact when Marlow, and later Moose, find out just who this Valma is was so anticlimactic that if you didn't really concentrate hard enough to what was happening it would have completely eluded you.
"Murder my Sweet" is nowhere as good and as interesting as it's remake some thirty years later as the movie "Farewell my Lovely" with Robert Mitchum in the same role of hard boiled private eye Philip Marlow.
The next day this young girl reporter a Miss. Allison shows up at Marlow's office looking for information about the mysterious jade necklace only to be exposed, by a very perceptive Marlow, as being non-other as Ann Grayle, Anne Shirley,the step-daughter of the women Mrs. Helen Grayle, Claire Trevor, who the necklace was stolen from. It's also found out later by Marlow that Anne was on the scene of the Marroitt murder when he ended up being clobbered and put to sleep.
Mrs. Grayle is being blackmailed by this hood who's also a quack psychiatrist named Jules Amthor, Otto Kruger, who knows about Mrs. Grayle's wild and steamy past as a bar and show girl at the Florian nightclub. The Moose for some reason, it's never explained why, hooks up with the Amthor Mob who kidnap Marlow. After shooting Marlow up with dope his kidnappers dump him in this sanitarium run by another quack doctor Dr. Sonderborg, Ralf Harolde. The drugs Dr. Sonderborg injected Marlow with was to get him to tell the Amthor Mob about the jade necklace that Marlow has no idea about where it is; but that they seem to think that he did.
Later escaping from Sonderborg place Marlow with the help of Moose, did he have a change of heart?,gets to Anne's place where she tell him this whole magilla, long story, about her step mother being a gold digger and wanting to take her father Mr. Grayle, Miles Mender, to the cleaners, by cleaning him out. Despite her greedy intentions the sick old man is both too naive and too much in love with the much younger and beautiful Helen Grayle to notice that.
Meanwhile Mr. Grayle who's being caught up with all the goings on about the jade necklace that cost the life of Lindsay Marriott wants the investigation by Marlow to stop and is willing to pay him in full for his failed efforts to find the necklace and drop the case. By now Marlow in in too deep and knows too much to do that, which leads to the final and deadly conclusion of the movie "Murder my Sweet" at the Grayle beach-house where almost everyone involved in the Jade Necklace/Valma mystery end up dead.
Hard to follow and in the end not really that interesting of a story about murder blackmail and betrayal that has the audience watching at times trying to keep awake as the lights in the theater as well as those in the movie are turned off. "Murder my Sweet" seems to have taken place in Alaska during it's six months of darkness. I've never seen a movie that takes place over a period of time, in what seemed like a few days, so dark and gloomy. Even the fact when Marlow, and later Moose, find out just who this Valma is was so anticlimactic that if you didn't really concentrate hard enough to what was happening it would have completely eluded you.
"Murder my Sweet" is nowhere as good and as interesting as it's remake some thirty years later as the movie "Farewell my Lovely" with Robert Mitchum in the same role of hard boiled private eye Philip Marlow.