In an ordinary town, a crime is about to happen. A man sits in a house across the street (thus the name), watching. The postman goes into the house - and then another postman comes along. Too late: the first one was an assassin. The editor of the paper (Wayne Morris) is called into the publisher's office (Alan Hale) because his criticism of the police's methods in the case. One his way out, he stops in to see the lonely hearts editor (Janis Paige), whom he wants to marry and whom he demoted from the city desk. He continues to pound the police in headlines. Finally the underworld object of the editorials, Bruce Bennett, bring his lawyer to the office. Hale orders him to stop, but he refuses to because he has a contract. So . . . he does the same thing to Morris that Morris did to Paige - demotes him to being "Dolly Trent," the lonely hearts editor. He becomes the butt of the office wiseacres. Hale offers him his job back, but he won't take it unless he has a free editorial hand.
One of Dolly's readers comes to the office to get help with her boyfriend (James Holden). He went to Bennett's bar, and woke up in a rooming house clear across town. He had not been robbed. It was the same night as the murder. He goes to the rooming house but gets kicked out by the manager, who immediately calls the man (James Mitchell) who took the doped man to the rooming house. However, a little girl outside the rooming house remembers a woman coming there. Paige finds Morris' notes and goes to the rooming house. Mitchell watches her talking to the girl, then follows her and tries to run her down. After Morris gets her patched up, they go to see Holden, but Mitchell got there just before them and is listening to the conversation. Paige sees his shadow and they leave. Morris goes to see Barbara Bates, Mitchell's girlfriend, and Mitchell comes in and roughs him up. Morris and Paige go to see the police and file a complaint against Holden because Paige slipped her purse into his suitcase while they were in his apartment.
They go to the Bennett's restaurant, where Holden was doped. (We get to hear some pretty good barbershop singing there.) The photo girl takes their picture, and Morris has an idea. He goes around the corner to the developing lab. The technician remembers the picture because a man paid him $50 to destroy the negative. However, Morris gets a copy of another picture taken at the same time. It shows Mitchell passing money to Eddie Foster, a well-known hit man. Morris brings Bennett into the office to grill him about the photo, and let's Mitchell listen over the intercom - then let's Bennett see him. Mitchell then has the option of talking and living, or walking out and being rubbed out by Bennett. He decides to talk, and Bennett is convicted. Then Morris pops the question - or she has to go back to being Dolly Trent. She agrees, and they live happily ever after.
Bennett won the silver medal in the 1928 Olympics in the shot put.
Morris and Paige
Bennett
2 comments:
This was one of the cutest movies we have watched in a long
Time
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