Murder in the Fleet

Plot synopsis:
Captain John Winslow (Arthur Byron) is notified by the Secretary of the Navy that his cruiser will be receiving a new firing control gear manufactured by World Electric company, which is supposed to revolutionize naval warfare. The gear vanishes and is quickly located by intelligence officers where it is being transported across the Mexican border.
When the gear is returned to the ship the secrecy surrounding the events catches the notice of reporter Walter Drake (J. Anthony Hughes). Lieutenant Tom Randolph (Robert Taylor) and Captain Winslow welcome visitors Al Duval (Raymond Hatton), who works for World Electric Company, and Victor Hanson (Jean Hersholt) from the Navy Department, aboard while the gear is installed. Meanwhile, Sailor Spud Burke (Nat Pendleton) gets caught between his sweetheart Toots Timmons (Una Merkel) and an old flame Betty Lansing (Jean Parker).
When the new gear is being lifted into place a cable breaks and it is dropped, later this is found to be an act of sabotage. To add to the confusion, Al Duval is murdered during a gun salute. The investigation begins and suspicions are running high when a second murder takes place, this time it is the chief electrician.
The Captain devises a plot to trap the murderer and the trail soon leads to the powder magazine, where Victor Hanson threatens to blow up the ship. Hanson claims that World Electric Company had stolen the idea and he wants revenge. Ultimately Hanson is captured and the gear is installed.

Tags: revenge, murder, romantic

Review:
Entertaining mystery set aboard navy cruiser.
Someone aboard the USS Carolina is attempting to sabotage an important, secret gunnery system's field test...
by murdering those installing it.
Plenty of suspects abound as there are many visitors aboard the ship while it is in port.
Overall an entertaining mystery set aboard a US naval cruiser.
Robert Taylor stars as Lt. Randolph, in command of the gunnery test, with Jean Parker as his rich, spoiled love interest.
Nat Pendleton plays Randolph's CPO, who, with the aid of Una Merkel and Ted Healy (of stooges fame), provides the comic relief.
Look for an uncredited Ward Bond as a sailor-murder victim and Keye Luke as aid to the visiting Manchukan Consul..
Robert Taylor after a few loan outs and small parts got his career launched in this entertaining film about some murders done on a naval vessel.
Someone will stop at nothing to see that the Navy does not carry out some tests of a new naval gun.Frank W.
Wead who was the subject of John Ford's Wings of Eagles wrote this story and while there's no threat to Agatha Christie posed by Wead, still it is a most entertaining story.There are enough red herrings in this story to be a catch for a whole fishing trip.
One of the better suspects was Mischa Auer, made up as an Oriental, to play the part of a visiting Asian dignitary.
No names mentioned, but he looks very suspiciously like one of the Japanese diplomats photographed at places like the London Naval Disarmament Conference.
I think Spig Wead was trying to tell us something there.We've also got a reporter who can't file his story, an industrialist trying to bribe Taylor, his girlfriend who wants Taylor to leave the Navy, and a few more.
When you reach the end it won't be who you might have thought.Murder in the Fleet was a B picture, running only 70 minutes.
Very soon Taylor would be an A list star.
With those looks, how could he miss?.
Support for Naval Budgets & Fair Entertainment.
Between the 1921 Washington Naval Conference (which effectively limited the international arms race for over a decade) and the start of the crank up before World War II, the U.S. Navy co-operated with Hollywood studios on a regular basis providing locations and facilities for dozens of major and minor films showing off the country's ships (both sea and air) and service men to keep them in the minds of the general population as the admirals fought for ever constricting budgets with an isolationist minded Congress.
Also well worth checking out are THE FLYING FLEET and HERE COMES THE NAVY (in which feuding Jimmy Cagney and Pat O'Brien serve everywhere from the Arizona to the airship Macon - both to meet famous ends in later years).MURDER IN THE FLEET may be among the least of these info-tainment efforts, but from the golden age of the classic murder mystery, it offers an enjoyable, more or less workable plot, an "about to be 'A List'" cast and some fascinating shots of actual elements of the U.S. fleet (the entire film is set on the USS Carolina aside from a few studio interiors and includes a number of exteriors of the ship under way including the actual crew).Of special interest may be Key Luke's fleeting appearance as an aide to an ambassador/suspect from a (renamed to avoid "offence," but made-up to leave no doubt) fictionalized Japanese Empire.
Someone might do a fun afternoon's mini-film festival of "Key Luke Afloat" with this, the 1936 ANYTHING GOES (Luke played one of a pair of gambling "Chinamen" on a civilian Atlantic crossing with Ethel Merman and Bing Crosby - a role somewhat reduced from the Broadway original) and (a year later) in his most famous role as Charlie Chan's "Number One Son" in CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OLYMPICS where Luke travels to Europe (these were the Berlin Olympics where Jesse Owens won Gold to Hitler's great displeasure and film clips of that race are included in the movie) by ship with the U.S. Olympic Team (he's competing as a relay swimmer)while his "Pop" rushes over on The Hindenberg.The biggest "special effect" in MURDER IN THE FLEET is probably the flooding of a powder magazine with the film's hero in it - tame stuff by modern standards, but pretty exciting as played nonetheless.
The film's McGuffin, the scientific equipment being installed on the Carolina, is pretty much science fiction (though finally, 70 years later, becoming less so), and as shown in action in the film it looks a bit silly, but it was good enough for its day, and in the spirit of the style of the film it doesn't distract.Minor, but fun.
Worth a look..
This is not a movie.
This poorly made film should never have been made.
It is not a Navy film (although Taylor's Navy film, 'Stand by for Action', was boring), and it is not a murder-mystery.
I don't know what it is, but I do know that it is not a movie.
It fails to provide any interesting characters or a compelling storyline.
Taylor's performance is good, but good performances don't necessarily make a good film.
You need more than a good performance.
You need a good script, and this poorly written script lets the film down.
All I can say is that this must have been made to add to Taylor's credit list rather than making a worthwhile film.
Don't bother watching it if you're a Taylor fan as it comes nowhere near the quality of his later films..
Too Much Navy, Not Enough Mystery.
If you enjoy such WWII promotional movies as "Your Navy At Work Today" (hypothetical title), you will enjoy this movie.
Otherwise, you probably won't.There are only two things that raise it even slightly out of the muck: Nat Pendleton and the girl he is chasing, Una Merkel.Nat Pendleton, of whom I am a fan and have enjoyed as the dumb cop in many other films, is funny here, but not given much to work with, even though his part is bigger than usual.
Mostly he grumpily gives orders to the enlisted men.
His "repartee" with Ted Healy is without exception annoying.
In fact, the main idea of "comedy" in this movie seems to be sailors yelling at one another, something that happens again and again.Una Merkel, who was wonderful in The Bank Dick (1940), is the other highlight, although she is quite different here from the sweet innocent she played in that film.
Her rough, low-life character is not particularly likable (although it is very enjoyable to watch), and she has too little on-screen time to come anywhere near saving the film.Robert Taylor, at the peak of his youthful handsomeness, doesn't do much except stand around looking macho and break up the sailors who are yelling at each other.
His girlfriend, played by Jean Parker, is repulsive throughout.
I couldn't imagine what he saw in her.
Money, I guess.Arthur Byron is also good as the captain, but it is barely more than a cameo role.
He does manage to give the spoiled Jean Parker a good lecture, though.Taylor doesn't solve the case.
He literally stumbles on the perp, who, to my sorrow, turned out to be one of the only other likable characters in the film.A few great wisecracks from John Hyams as a fed-up husband.
He has the only line in the whole movie that made me laugh out loud.All in all, not worth the time it takes to watch it..
Murders on a cruiser.
Murders on a cruiser.
This movie makes me wonder anew how it was that Robert Taylor became such a star.
It has to be his looks as his screen persona is, to me, always bland.
That said, I'm glad I saw this movie.
I found the best part to be the verbal sparring between Nat Pendleton and Ted Healy.
Although I recognized many in the cast (especially fun seeing Keye Luke and Ward Bond), I missed reading the opening credits and quite frankly did not recognize Ted Healy and even had I seen his name, I would not have recalled the Three Stooges connection.
I remember thinking during the movie "Gee, this guy is really good." So my favorite part of the movie is the one another reviewer found most annoying.
Una Merkel as Toots was good but too overtly grasping and Jean Parker was inadequate to the task.
I liked Parker in the Kitty O'Day movies but not in this one.
The mystery itself is uninspired and basically uninteresting – the culprit was unexpected but logical..
Rather routine despite the cast....
I would like to first point out that it is a darn shame that Ted Healy is in this film but his 'Stooges' are not.
In the early 1930s, this act WAS signed by MGM but after a falling out because Healy was reportedly an obnoxious drunk as well as his taking the lion's share of the money, these Stooges left and signed with Columbia--thus becoming the Three Stooges.
They can be seen in a few MGM films together (such as "Dancing Lady") but alas they are not in this film--only Healy and it's a shame as I would have LOVED to see Moe, Curly and Larry in the middle of this murder mystery on the open seas!
As far as this picture goes, despite being made by a premier studio, MGM, as well as some big-name actors, it sure bears the look and feel of a B-movie--and I think it is, as Robert Taylor is still young and this is one of his earliest roles.
The plot is only fair and the film lacks the polish you would see in Taylor films made only a year or two later.The plot involves some murders aboard a Naval ship, the USS Carolina.
Who is doing it and why is the mystery that must be unraveled.
However, as another reviewer pointed out, solving the mystery seems secondary to hi-jinx as well as routine tasks on the ship.
If this is the sort of Navy we had in the 1930s, it's a wonder the US won WWII!
Ironically, the person who is the maniacal killer happens to be played by the same person for whom the Academy later named its humanitarian award that is given annually for service to the community and/or motion pictures!!
By the way, listen carefully to Jean Parker as she delivers her lines to Taylor early in the film--she's, at times, simply awful.
She flubs lines and gives poor deliveries repeatedly and I can't see why they didn't re-shoot this.
To top this off, they made her character too annoying and selfish to be realistic..
The screaming in this movie killed my ear drum..
A navy boat becomes a co-ed lodge for the suspects in a rather uninteresting movie that occurs after an argument between naval lieutenant Robert Taylor and civilian equipment inspector Raymond Hatton.
Following the stabbing of a crew member, everybody is forced to remain aboard, including Taylor's socialite fiancee (Jean Parker) and the overly chatty Una Merkel, girlfriend of typical dumb sailor Nat Pendleton.
Comedy relief between Merkel, Pendleton and Ted Healy just gets more annoying with each scene they have, and leading man Taylor is pretty underwhelming.
There are far too many supporting actors including Jean Hersholt, Walter Byron and Mischa Auer, creating far too many suspects and red herrings.
A few good fight sequences gives this a higher rating from me, but I felt that this ship ran out of steam early on, making this often dull and uninteresting.
By the time the murderer and motive were rebealre, I just found I didn't really care anymore..
Spig Wead is not my favorite writer!.
Producer: Lucien Hubbard.
Copyright 21 May 1935 by Metro Goldwyn Mayer Corp.
New York opening at Loew's State: 2 June 1935.
Australian release: 24 December 1935.
7 reels.
70 minutes.SYNOPSIS: A killer is loose on a U.S. Navy cruiser.COMMENT: Producer Lucien Hubbard has managed to give this one a feeling of opulence by cleverly using stock shots and process screens, as well as by employing such a large number of cameo players and extras to mill about, one often has the feeling they are spilling over the edges of the frame.
There's also a grand climax, in which Taylor battles the mysterious killer who is revealed to be just about the last person you might expect.
Young Taylor, Arthur Byron, Jean Hersholt and Mischa Auer contribute fine performances.
On the other hand,Ted Healy, Nat Pendleton and Una Merkel are an absolute pain.
Not entirely their fault.
It's the lousy script that intersperses the drama with a lot of ridiculous verbal and visual horseplay.
Even director Edward Sedgwick who was known as an expert handler of comedy can do absolutely nothing to relieve the tedium of the many boring Healy-Pendleton-Merkel encounters.
The "comedy" also acts to destroy much of the atmosphere on the cruiser, which otherwise seemed such a promising setting for a mystery thriller.
A bit of "romance" doesn't help either.
Especially when Jean Parker is given such atrocious "Spig" Wead lines as her fade-out realization that Navy men are men who relate in a special way to each other and their ship.