Please Murder Me!

Plot synopsis:
Defense lawyer Craig Carlson (Raymond Burr) buys a pistol at a pawn shop and travels to his office, where he deposits the gun in a desk drawer with a file folder, then begins to dictate into a tape recorder. Directing his message to District Attorney Ray Willis (John Dehner), he reveals that he anticipates being murdered within an hour, and begins to tell his story in extended flashbacks.
The memories begin with him explaining to his war buddy and best friend Joe Leeds (Dick Foran) that he is having an affair with Leeds' wife Myra (Angela Lansbury), who wants a divorce. Joe asks Craig to give him a little time to think the matter over. Days later at his own office, Joe finishes writing a letter and gives it to his business partner Lou Kazarian to mail. Joe phones Myra telling her he will be home soon to discuss something. There, he confronts Myra in their bedroom, where a door is closed and a gunshot is heard. Police investigate Joe's death. Myra explains that Joe became irate and threatened her physically, forcing her to shoot him in self-defense. Craig is also on the scene, having arrived before the police and acting as Myra's lawyer.
In the ensuing trial, DA Willis allows the police to present their evidence that a physical struggle did not occur as she'd said. Willis notes that Myra was not employed when she first met Joe, a successful businessman with a good amount of life insurance. In her defense, Craig attributes Myra's inconsistencies regarding the night in question as post-traumatic hysteria. In his closing argument, Craig claims the money motive in Willis' case is not valid because Myra was in love with another man — a revelation that could inspire Joe to cause Myra premeditated harm. Craig then reveals that he himself is Myra's lover.
The jury finds Myra not guilty. She and Craig throw a party to celebrate with friends. When Lou arrives, he reveals privately to Craig that he had forgotten to mail Joe's letter, which was addressed to Craig. Joe discloses in the letter that Myra did indeed marry him for his money, but that she was actually in love with an artist, not with Craig. Joe had decided to ask her to stay married, in part to save Craig from her. Craig then remembers Myra mentioning that an "old friend", an artist named Carl Holt, had visited her in jail during the trial.
Craig goes to see Holt, who explains his long relationship with Myra, interrupted by her marriage to Joe, and states his gratitude and admiration for Craig in his defense work in Myra's trial, especially his posing as Myra's lover as a tactic. Craig later confronts Myra with Joe's letter and his talk with Holt. She admits that she does intend to go on with Holt now she is free.
Accusing her of costing him his best friend, the love of his life and his profession all at once, Craig tells Myra she will pay for her crime regardless, because he will force her to murder him. Myra is incredulous, but Craig soon puts a plan in motion, developing a friendship with Holt, even employing him to paint a portrait to delay Myra and Holt's departure to Europe to marry. All the while, Craig taunts Myra that he will reveal all the evidence to Holt and let him decide if he wants to marry a murderess. As well, Craig meets socially with DA Willis, discussing Myra's case, and lets Myra see them together.
Craig concludes his story being dictated into the tape recorder by saying he has arranged to meet Myra at the office at 12:30 am, which soon arrives. Hearing a knock at the office door, Craig leaves the recorder running and hides the microphone behind a desk photo of himself and Joe, then lets in Myra. He shows her the file he says is full of evidence he's compiled against her, and then sets down the pistol on the desk.
As he starts to make a phone call to Holt, Myra, successfully driven to desperation, takes the gun and shoots Craig, who falls to the floor. Using a handkerchief, she hangs up the phone and wipes her fingerprints from the gun, which she puts in Craig's hand. She finds the file is full of nothing but blank sheets of paper. When DA Willis arrives, she explains that Craig has shot himself. After checking that Craig is in fact dead, Willis learns that Myra had an appointment with Craig for 12:30, then tells her Craig had invited him to come at 12:40. He finds the microphone and recorder, then stops and rewinds the tape. As he begins to play Craig's recording, Myra starts crying, defeated.

Tags: murder

Review:
The movie starts with Attorney Craig Carlson dictating the circumstances of his own upcoming murder into a tape recorder.
Through a series of flashbacks we find out that he has a problem - his best friend's wife (Lansbury) comes to him for help in a divorce.
It takes a while to find out that Lansbury's performance is more subtle than you might think.The movie is economically directed - witness how the attorney picks up his gun in the opening shots.
It's a pity this little (apparently independent?) film noir has not merited a decent restoration and DVD reissue (no one apparently bothered to renew the copyright so scratchy prints were out for a while in 1995 on VHS on "Nostalgia Family Video" and it has been anthologized in a DVD box of "13 Murder Movies"), because the elements in the film are considerably above the "B" film it's usually assumed to be and later work of those involved would be undeniably important.
It isn't a great film, but given those elements, it certainly is an interesting one.The basic flashback form of the story telling is an echo almost too close for comfort of 1944's classic DOUBLE INDEMNITY - with the characters dictating the explanation bound for similar fates; in fact, in the film's chief failing, the original ad campaign for PLEASE MURDER ME!
There were no surprises.Top billed (her first role in that position?) Angela Lansbury was in the middle of a long and (mostly) distinguished movie career mainly playing "bad girls" - years before her Broadway and television career nearly eclipsed her earlier 100+ films - except perhaps for her definitive evil mother in MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE.
didn't get her major studio leads, but her supporting roles in everything from THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE to BLUE HAWAII continued to be either out of the top drawer or she made them seem they were until she decamped for Broadway and the lead in the musical MAME which forever changed HER career.Third billed Dick Foran had had the lead in a wartime revival of Rogers & Hart's A CONNECTICUT YANKEE on Broadway, but had mostly switched over from Hollywood roles in minor films to TV work by this shot at an important role in PLEASE MURDER ME!, but it was RAYMOND BURR, perennial film heavy (his greatest movie role was almost certainly the husband across the way in Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW two years before, who was also working more and more in TV who really made PLEASE MURDER ME!
memorable.It is almost certain that it was this role which got Burr his big shot as TV's PERRY MASON the next year.
He was nothing like the 1930's movie Perry Mason, the suave if slightly oily Warren William who was closer to the Perry Mason which Erle Stanley Gardner actually wrote, but watch Burr playing attorney Craig Carlson in PLEASE MURDER ME!
Rather than the stock "heavy" which had been Burr's trademark, this was a persona of warmth and trust that anchors the film and makes the slightly strained story believable.One can only hope that one of the ongoing DVD issues of PERRY MASON TV seasons will eventually pick up the public domain PLEASE MURDER ME!
as a "bonus" feature - despite Attorney Carlson's position at the final fade out, it clearly belongs as part of the Burr/Mason canon.In the mean time, I'm glad IMDb provides links to the film on the "Internet Archive" for those who can't find one of the PD releases.
It's Raymond Burr a year before Perry Mason and I expect his courtroom scenes here did a lot to win him the lead in Mason.
Besides Burr and Lansbury, John Dehner and Denver Pyle did lots of TV work on many different shows.
PLEASE MURDER ME stars Raymond Burr (just before he made it big as Perry Mason), Angela Lansbury and Dick Foran--all capable actors, though hardly starring actors of the day.
Despite this lack of star power and an apparent small budget, it's not a bad film--especially when there is a twist and the plot quickly changes about midway through the movie.The film begins as Burr is sitting in his office in the darkness--dictating to a tape recorder that he's about to be murdered.
Fair little thriller concerns an alleged battered wife (Landsbury) who's supposedly killed her wealthy husband (Foran) in self defence, acquitted of his murder thanks to her romantic liaison with the man's war-time best friend and now eminent attorney (Burr).
But Landsbury's gold digging past is about to emerge and Burr concocts an outrageous plan to expose her as a murdering black widow.Decent cast showcases Burr rehearsing the familiar court-room proceedings that would soon matriculate into "Perry Mason" fame, while John Dehner plays a capable DA and Lamont Johnson features in an acting role as Landsbury's artist 'friend' before he turned to directing.
Raymond Burr is manipulated by a woman, played by Angela Lansbury, into getting her off for shooting her husband and absconding with his money.
It's a pretty good looking movie and you can see Perry Mason emerging here, but that's about it..
I agree with most of the previous comments provided re Please Murder Me. What I want to share is that Raymond Burr played this part as a possible audition for him to play Perry Mason the following year.
I must admit that Burr and Angela Lansbury were great in this forgotten film noir.
Great channel programming and I wonder if Hallmark knows of this movie connection between the Burr and Lansbury..
Raymond Burr is super in this too as Myra's lawyer Craig Carlson, Craig is another man in-love with Myra and her attorney who helps to acquit her for murder of her husband.
The plot is preposterous, and Angela Lansbury's performance will have you in stitches (too good to be true - isn't it true she has the mouth of a truck driver in real life?).
The cherry on the sundae is queer-in-real-life Raymond Burr's character's immense, almost obsessive love for his dead male friend (WINK WINK) as well as his idiotically masochistic obsession with Justice (oh, Ye Gods!).
Robinson on the ride of his life...The saucy pulp fiction, CRIME OF PASSION (1957) in which desperate housewife Barbara Stanwyck inexplicably casts aside a torrid love affair with hard-as-a-rock Sterling Hayden for a cheap fling with Raymond Burr (yeah, can you believe it???)...or John Waters' FEMALE TROUBLE (1974) which always pairs well with any other girl-gone-bad film..
I love Raymond Burr but don't think it was this role that got him Perry Mason, I think it was the DA in A Place in the Sun. Burr's whacking that rowboat was outstanding.
Raymond Burr was a great Perry Mason but not a romantic actor.
Raymond Angela and the always good John Dehner are the reasons to watch this movie and the nostalgia effect if you watched a lot of TV in the 50's as I did.
Then the stranger goes into his dark office, sits at his desk, and records this story on a reel-to-reel tape recorder ..."In exactly 55 minutes I will be dead!"That stranger is Craig Carlson (Raymond Burr), Attorney at Law.Then the Flashback: Craig is a very close friend to Joe Leeds (Dick Foran).
They were war buddies, and after 15 years of friendship Craig must break the news to Joe that he is in love with his wife Myra (Angela Lansbury).
Myra is arrested for murder!A good chunk of the film is about the court case.
The story is told in recorded flashback a la Double Indemnity.Raymond Burr plays a lawyer who defends his lover who has been accused of murder.Burr brings looming veritas to the role.Angela Lansbury plays the lover with restrained evil.The court room sequence is very good.
Perhaps Raymond Burr is practicing for his later role as Perry Mason.John Dehner puts in a good performance as the prosecuting counsel.The climax is a stunner.Although it seems a cheap production, the camera work and lighting are effective.The background music, though not outstanding, supports the action and atmosphere..
Opening with attorney Craig Carlson buying a gun before settling down to leave a message for the police regarding a murder – his own impending murder, the film offers much in the way of plotting.
His friend takes it much better than expected but soon a moment of violence sees all the characters changed or shown in a new light, with the stakes high.I watched this film out of curiosity because not only it is now in the public domain but it also features two very famous names in the lead roles.
Burr is in the sort of stiff lawyer mode that would later work in Perry Mason but here it is too stiff and doesn't fit the material, I would have liked a bit of emotion in his delivery, particularly towards the back end of the film.
The supporting players all go the same way – very stiff and lacking in delivery.Please Murder Me offers an interesting plot but it never really delivers it.
The courtroom scenes feel like Perry Mason taken down a notch, though the movie certainly could have looked like a proof of concept for Raymond Burr's eventual casting in that role.Angela Lansbury fails to exhibit the high drama I expect from her, which was a disappointment.
I'm sure many noir addicts will want to see this just because of Burr's presence, and hey there are far worse movies to waste your time with.
The issues here are straight out of Tennessee Williams.Raymond Burr is a respected defense attorney, upright and honest, but not as shrewd as the one he would shortly start playing on the small screen.
His best buddy is Dick Foran who took a bullet for him in World War II and married Angela Lansbury in that order.Lansbury has apparently lost that zing in her marriage and shoots Foran and then gets Burr to get her off on self defense.
Still Grahame or Jones would have been believable as a woman who Burr humiliates and destroys himself for.Not bad, but not Angela Lansbury..
This excellent thriller is one, if not the only, starring role for Raymond Burr in the movies, one year before he became Perry Mason on TV.
Here he is a lawyer too, who brings out the acquittal of his client (Angela Lansbury)accused of murder, only to discover after the verdict, that she really is guilty as hell.
So, could this have been Raymond Burr's warm-up for his Perry Mason TV series?
Setting yourself up for a murder is a bit beyond the call of duty I'd say, and the same outcome (snaring Angela Lansbury for it) could have been achieved with a ten minute earlier heads up to the District Attorney (John Dehner).
If made today I think a good writer could really make the story a zinger, but you'd have to leave out the part of Attorney Carlson (Burr) admitting in court that he was Myra's (Angela Lansbury) lover.
She was a good looking woman who always seemed to play a bad girl in the early days, starting way back in 1944 as the saucy maid in the 1944 remake of "Gaslight".
***SPOILERS*** Pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr as defense attorney Craig Carlson is tortured by the fact that he's fallen in love with his best friend Joe Leeds', Dick Foran, wife Myra, Angela Lansbry.
Joe for some strange reason is not at all feeling hurt that Myra want's to leave him but is very concerned that it's his best friend Craig that she's got her hooks into.
With Craig taking on the murder case as Myra's defense attorney he blows the jury away by proving to it's satisfaction that Joe was a violent person capable of murdering his wife who had no choice but to shoot him in self-defense!
The biggest surprise,in fact his ace in the hole, in Craig's defense plan was to reveal that he was the other man who Myra was cheating on Joe with!
At first thinking it was just sour grapes on Joe's part Craig soon finds out that Myra is already planning to dump him for artist Carl Holt, Lamont Johnson, whom she was already having an affair with while he was her lawyer defending her against murder charges murder in her husband Joe death!
Troubled that he helped get a murderess off in the murder of his best friend Joe Leeds Craig could only make things right for himself by setting himself up to be murdered by Myra and having air-tight proof that she in fact murdered him!
This elaborate plan is put into action at the very start of the movie "Please Murder Me" by Craig tricking Myra in that he got the goods on her!
It's now up to Myra to see if she'll go so far as murder to keep the truth about her from getting to Carl and thus facing a possible life sentence if she does.
Craig is banking on Myra's sense of invincibility, in already getting away with murder, to go through with his plan.
Raymond Burr stars as an attorney caught up in the murder of his best friend (Dick Foran) thanks to his affection for his friend's wife (Angela Lansbury).
This was a full year before he started doing Perry Mason, so the movie might be of particular interest to his fans if it was the inspiration for his casting.There isn't all that much else here that's interesting though.
There's an interesting performance by Lamont Johnson as a painter who's also in love with the "femme fatale", but the Burr character is pretty straightforward.
It's frankly bizarre to see an actor like Burr doing these romantic scenes with Lansbury, and his halting delivery does not match his character here very well as it does in most films I've seen him in.
There's no mystery at all really, and the whole suspense is supposed to be around the title of the film and the way that Burr's character is setting up the Lansbury character to implicate herself (double jeopardy prevents her being tried again for the original murder, presumably).
About a year after actor Raymond Burr played silver-tongued Craig Carlson, Attorney-At-Law, in director Peter Godfrey's intriguing murder-mystery "Please Murder Me," he landed the role of a life-time as Erle Stanley Gardner's immortal defense attorney Perry Mason in CBS-TV's courtroom drama that lasted nine years.
Later, Burr would renew his acquaintance with the role in a series of made-for-television movies.
Anyway, Carlson and his best friend Joe Leeds (Dick Foran of "Donovan's Reef") survived the life and death combat on Iwo Jima and became close friends.
Leeds married Myra (Angela Lansbury), but he spent too much time at work and left her alone to her own devices.
Ironically, she would attain a fame equivalent to Burr's Mason during her 12-year run on the television series "Murder, She Wrote," where, she displayed her sleuthing skills each week as Jessica Fletcher.
"Please Murder Me" is a contrived but clever courtroom melodrama, and Burr's Craig Carlson finds himself caught between a rock and a hard place.
Burr is like Perry Mason in this.
I understand that "Please Murder Me" was an audition of sorts for Raymond Burr to play Perry Mason.Fred MacMurray was originally to play Mason.
The person he was with said, "That's Hamilton Burger," to which Gardner responded, "No, that's Perry Mason."Burr stepped out of his usual thug roles in this film to play Craig, an attorney madly in love with his best friend Joe's (Dick Foran) wife Myra (Angela Lansbury).
There's a shot.In the next scene, Myra is claiming self defense to the police, and Craig is on hand as her attorney.
She is found not guilty.Craig wants to get married right away and go on a Mediterranean honeymoon, but Myra asks for more time.
But Craig comes up with an idea that gives this film a good twist.As I said, Burr is very Mason-like, slim and authoritative.
A refreshing and well written movie to enjoy, with obviously cool and superior acting, not only from the couple of leads (he got 2nd billing), Foran has a supporting role, everything in a genre now perhaps less used, the cool urban suspense movie, which is the bourgeois side of the age's trend (no low lives, thugs, gangsters, and it requires both strong plot and acting), cool enough and enough dramatic, set, like another very good one, 'Jordon', in a bourgeois milieu, with the leads aware that they are giving signature roles, it uses the device of a recorded confession from a broken man, and for a time there follows a courtroom drama, enlivened by excellent performances, with Burr wholly convincing as an attorney, the plot seems very simple, with the twist being the murderess' love for the painter, so that the lawyer's vindictive jealousy comes across as petty and mean, the widow makes up for her 1st murder, by a 2nd one, but this time out of love and care, which shows that the lawyer's claim that the painter would be another, 3rd fall guy, is false, he expects her murderous burst precisely out of her love for the young painter, so that while the lawyer remains in the sphere of the vindictiveness, she ascends to proving her love, albeit by losing, presumably, her own life; the whole is less about what the director does, than about what the movie itself does to you.There are semitones of eeriness in the scenes with the three characters (the lawyer, the widow, the painter), the menace, the lawyer's game.
The D.A. is certain she's guilty, but you can't make the love-starved Burr (as close to his Perry Mason role as he would get on film during this time) believe that.
She doesn't count on Burr catching on and plotting justice, and this is what makes the movie a bit more intriguing as it moves on to its chilling conclusion.To see the two great T.V. detectives working together is certainly a curiosity, and they play off each other very well.