Washington Melodrama has a bit of everything in it, murder, infidelity, politics, the war, and a Busby Berkeley style musical number in a nightclub with a swimming pool. All that in a film from the B picture unit with MGM's B contract players.
At one time Frank Morgan played more serious type roles as he does here primarily. But after he scored such a success in The Affairs Of Cellini getting an Oscar nomination playing the oafish, addle-pated Duke of Florence and following that up with the French territorial Governor in Naughty Marietta, the movie-going public saw him rarely do anything else. Here he's the lead as a millionaire industrialist who is in the nation's capital lobbying for a bill to bring relief to the starving in war torn Europe.
Taken to a nightclub by a rakish US Senator friend Thurston Hall, he gets an arranged meeting with dancer Anne Gwynne and they begin an innocent flirtation that has the potential to get serious with Morgan's wife and daughter away. Then Gwynne gets herself murdered and Morgan is involved.
His daughter Ann Rutherford stands by him, but her boyfriend Kent Taylor is a newspaper columnist and his instincts takeover. Between the two of them sometimes working at cross purposes it's a job to clear Morgan and find the real culprit. We know who it is, but they don't. And looming in the background is Morgan's pet project the relief bill which is in danger of being torpedoed in the scandal.
Lee Bowman plays Taylor's sidekick reporter, Douglass Dumbrille for once is not a villain playing the District Attorney. And as a song and dance couple at the nightclub are Dan Dailey and Virginia Grey. This film shows all of Dailey's talents as dancer and actor.
Most of all this film belongs to Morgan showing him capable of doing more than being an oaf. I'm sure he was grateful for the chance.
At one time Frank Morgan played more serious type roles as he does here primarily. But after he scored such a success in The Affairs Of Cellini getting an Oscar nomination playing the oafish, addle-pated Duke of Florence and following that up with the French territorial Governor in Naughty Marietta, the movie-going public saw him rarely do anything else. Here he's the lead as a millionaire industrialist who is in the nation's capital lobbying for a bill to bring relief to the starving in war torn Europe.
Taken to a nightclub by a rakish US Senator friend Thurston Hall, he gets an arranged meeting with dancer Anne Gwynne and they begin an innocent flirtation that has the potential to get serious with Morgan's wife and daughter away. Then Gwynne gets herself murdered and Morgan is involved.
His daughter Ann Rutherford stands by him, but her boyfriend Kent Taylor is a newspaper columnist and his instincts takeover. Between the two of them sometimes working at cross purposes it's a job to clear Morgan and find the real culprit. We know who it is, but they don't. And looming in the background is Morgan's pet project the relief bill which is in danger of being torpedoed in the scandal.
Lee Bowman plays Taylor's sidekick reporter, Douglass Dumbrille for once is not a villain playing the District Attorney. And as a song and dance couple at the nightclub are Dan Dailey and Virginia Grey. This film shows all of Dailey's talents as dancer and actor.
Most of all this film belongs to Morgan showing him capable of doing more than being an oaf. I'm sure he was grateful for the chance.