By Richard Harland Smith
A Night of Adventure
Brief Synopsis
A lawyer tries to clear his wife's lover of murder charges.
Cast & Crew
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Gordon Douglas
Director
Tom Conway
Mark Latham
Audrey Long
Erica Latham
Edward Brophy
Steve
Louis Borell
Tony Clair
Addison Richards
Branson
Film Details
Also Known As
One Exciting Night
Genre
Suspense/Mystery
Adaptation
Release Date
Jan
1944
Premiere Information
Los Angeles release: 25 Aug 1944
Production Company
RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.
Distribution Company
RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.
Country
United States
Screenplay Information
Based on the play A Hat, a Coat, a Glove by Wilhelm Speyer (New York, 31 Jan 1934).
Technical Specs
Duration
1h 5m
Sound
Mono (RCA Sound System)
Color
Black and White
Theatrical Aspect Ratio
1.37 : 1
Film Length
5,847ft
Synopsis
New York attorney Mark Latham is more devoted to his law practice than to his wife Erica. When Mark arrives two hours late for a dinner date on Erica's birthday, and then leaves her in the care of his chauffeur and private investigator, Steve, while he tracks down Benny Sarto, a witness he needs for a case, Erica decides to leave her husband. After trying to convince Erica to change her mind, Mark flies off to Washington, D. C. to help the government build a case against Gil Regan's crooked political machine. To neutralize Mark, Regan orders Benny to kill the attorney. When Mark returns home, Steve tells his employer that Erica has moved into her own apartment. Mark then visits Erica to plead his case, and while he is there, she receives a phone call from her date, Tony. After Mark returns home rejected and depressed, Steve suggests they go to a nightclub to forget their troubles. There they see Erica with Tony, and Steve discovers that Tony's last name is Clair and that he is an artist. Soon after, Tony and Erica leave the club and go to his studio. As Tony is about to propose to Erica, Julie Arden storms into the studio, jealous and drunk, and accuses Erica of stealing Tony from her. To avoid a scene, Tony takes Erica home, leaving Julie alone in the studio. In a rage, Julie raids the liquor cabinet and finds Tony's gun there. Meanwhile, Mark leaves the nightclub, finds Tony's address in the phone book and proceeds to the studio. He is followed by Benny, who is intent on carrying out Regan's orders. At Tony's apartment, Julie answers the door, gun in hand, and proclaims to Mark that she plans to shoot Tony. When Mark struggles with her for control of the gun, the weapon fires and Julie falls to the floor, dead. Benny listens from the hallway, and when Mark runs out the door and leaves his gloves behind, Benny picks them up and places them next to the weapon. Connie Mathews, a girl delivering Tony's laundry, passes Mark on the dimly lit stairway and mistakes him for Tony. She then proceeds to Tony's room and finds Julie's dead body. When Tony is arrested for Julie's murder, Erica begs Mark to defend him, and he agrees on the condition that she not implicate herself in the case and that she never see Tony again. At the trial, district attorney Branson, Mark's enemy, calls a haberdasher to the stand to testify that the fit of the gloves can identify them as Tony's. To counter the man's testimony, Mark pulls on the gloves and demonstrates that they fit him, too. Next, Ruby La Rue, a dancer whose dressing room faces Tony's studio, testifies that she heard Tony's voice threaten Julie on the evening of the murder. When Mark asks Tony to repeat the threat, however, Ruby recants her testimony, claiming the voice she heard was more educated, like that of Mark. As the trial proceeds, Benny sits in the courtroom, waiting to accuse Mark of murder. When Connie is called to the stand to swear that she passed Tony in the hallway, Mark discredits her by donning Tony's hat and coat to prove that Connie could have easily made a mistake in the dimly lit hallway. The image of Mark in a hat and coat jars Connie's memory, and she identifies Mark as the man she saw in the hallway. At that moment, Benny passes a note to Branson, who then moves to drop all charges against Tony and calls Benny to the stand. When Benny accuses Mark of murdering Julie and testifies that he stood in the hallway as the two argued, Mark charges Benny with perjury and tricks him into providing a set of fingerprints that will match the unidentified prints found in Tony's studio. Faced with the charge of perjury, Benny admits that he invented the story, and the judge drops all charges against Tony. On the drive home, Erica deduces that her husband was the mystery man, and Mark says that he plans to intimidate Benny into testifying against Regan. Appreciating what a clever man she has married, Erica kisses Mark.
Director
Gordon Douglas
Director
Cast
Tom Conway
Mark Latham
Audrey Long
Erica Latham
Edward Brophy
Steve
Louis Borell
Tony Clair
Addison Richards
Branson
Jean Brooks
Julie Arden
Nancy Gates
Connie Mathews
Russell Hopton
Benny Sarto
Claire Carleton
Ruby La Rue
Emory Parnell
Judge
Edmund Glover
Andrews
Tom Burton
Associate
John Shaw
Associate
Elaine Anderson
Secretary
Elaine Riley
Secretary
Bryant Washburn
Baines
Mary Halsey
Hat check girl
Mary Maclaren
Maid
Georgann Smith
Dancer
William Davidson
Gil Regan
Charles Regan
Cheney
Frank Mayo
Police inspector
Alan Ward
Man on street
Sherry Hall
Court clerk
Bert Moorhouse
Reporter
Michael Road
Young reporter
Wheaton Chambers
Medical examiner
Larry Wheat
Juror
Chester Carlisle
Juror
Sammy Blum
Juror
Byron Foulger
Battersby
Georgia Cooper
Tom Bryson
Crew
C. Bakaleinikoff
Music Director
Ralph Berger
Art Director
Mel Berns
Makeup Artist
James Casey
Assistant Director
Albert S. D'agostino
Art Director
Leigh Harline
Music Director
Roy Meadows
Recording
Les Millbrook
Editing
Frank Redman
Director of Photography
Renie
Gowns
Sid Rogell
Supervisor
Herman Schlom
Producer
Darrell Silvera
Set Decoration
William Stevens
Set Decoration
James G. Stewart
Re-Recording
Crane Wilbur
Screenwriter
Film Details
Also Known As
One Exciting Night
Genre
Suspense/Mystery
Adaptation
Release Date
Jan
1944
Premiere Information
Los Angeles release: 25 Aug 1944
Production Company
RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.
Distribution Company
RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.
Country
United States
Screenplay Information
Based on the play A Hat, a Coat, a Glove by Wilhelm Speyer (New York, 31 Jan 1934).
Technical Specs
Duration
1h 5m
Sound
Mono (RCA Sound System)
Color
Black and White
Theatrical Aspect Ratio
1.37 : 1
Film Length
5,847ft
Articles
A Night of Adventure -
This RKO Radio Pictures programmer was a vehicle for Tom Conway, who came to the studio from MGM to replace his brother, George Sanders, as the lead in the mystery film series featuring "The Falcon." Based on a German stage play by Wilhelm Speyer, adapted by William A. Drake on the heels of his success with the Broadway-to-Hollywood crossover Grand Hotel (1932), A Night of Adventure (1944) casts Conway as attorney Mark Latham, a high-end Manhattan mouthpiece whose estranged wife (Audrey Long, in her film debut) persuades him to defend her lover against a murder charge even as the mob puts out a contract on his own life. RKO had adapted the Speyer/Drake play, a flop that ran for just 13 performances at New York's Selwyn Theater, a decade earlier as A Hat, A Coat, A Glove (1934), starring Ricardo Cortez and Barbara Robbins. (RKO's Mexican partner Ramex would put a Spanish language spin on the story as Todo un caballero in 1947 while in 1957 the NBC anthology series Matinee Theatre adapted the drama for the small screen.) Director Gordon Douglas had got his start as a gag writer for Hal Roach before helming a number of "Our Gang" shorts and handling the second unit for March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934) starring Laurel and Hardy; Gordon's subsequent work as a reliable director-for-hire includes the sci-fi classic Them! (1954), The Detective (1968) with Frank Sinatra, and They Call Me Mr. Tibbs! (1970), the first sequel to Norman Jewison's Academy Award-winning In the Heat of the Night (1967).
By Richard Harland Smith
By Richard Harland Smith
A Night of Adventure -
This RKO Radio Pictures programmer was a vehicle for Tom Conway, who came to the studio from MGM to replace his brother, George Sanders, as the lead in the mystery film series featuring "The Falcon." Based on a German stage play by Wilhelm Speyer, adapted by William A. Drake on the heels of his success with the Broadway-to-Hollywood crossover Grand Hotel (1932), A Night of Adventure (1944) casts Conway as attorney Mark Latham, a high-end Manhattan mouthpiece whose estranged wife (Audrey Long, in her film debut) persuades him to defend her lover against a murder charge even as the mob puts out a contract on his own life. RKO had adapted the Speyer/Drake play, a flop that ran for just 13 performances at New York's Selwyn Theater, a decade earlier as A Hat, A Coat, A Glove (1934), starring Ricardo Cortez and Barbara Robbins. (RKO's Mexican partner Ramex would put a Spanish language spin on the story as Todo un caballero in 1947 while in 1957 the NBC anthology series Matinee Theatre adapted the drama for the small screen.) Director Gordon Douglas had got his start as a gag writer for Hal Roach before helming a number of "Our Gang" shorts and handling the second unit for March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934) starring Laurel and Hardy; Gordon's subsequent work as a reliable director-for-hire includes the sci-fi classic Them! (1954), The Detective (1968) with Frank Sinatra, and They Call Me Mr. Tibbs! (1970), the first sequel to Norman Jewison's Academy Award-winning In the Heat of the Night (1967).
By Richard Harland Smith
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
The working title of this film was One Exciting Night. Although a Hollywood Reporter production chart places Tessa Brind and Don Douglas in the cast, their appearance in the released film has not been confirmed. This picture marked the screen debut of Audrey Long. The 1934 RKO film Hat, Coat, and Glove, directed by Worthington Miner and starring Ricardo Cortez and Barbara Robbins, was also based on Wilhelm Speyer's play (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1931-40; F3.1793). Todo un caballero, a Spanish-language adaptation of the same play, was produced by Ramex, S.A., RKO's Mexican subsidiary, in 1947 .
