Today I Hang

Walter Woolf King and associates quarrel over the sale of some fancy-schmantzy jewelry. When the guy at the head of the syndicate turns up dead, King is framed by his lying associates, and widow Mona Barrie is missing. He's sentenced to be hanged, but Miss Barrie shows up and starts an elaborate ruse which involves breaking King out of prison.

It's a cheapjack PRC mystery that's so complicated that it winds up ignoring a couple of major plot threads, and the editing is pretty poor; although I thought it was a butchered print, it times in at exactly the original timing. Miss Barrie's performance suggests Eve Arden, and other actors caught in the thrall of PRC's poverty include William Farnum, Sam Bernard, and an uncredited Jimmy Aubrey. This means the acting is good, particularly King's, and the movie, despite its flubs, kept my attention throughout.

King started out in vaudeville, made it to Broadway in 1919, and was a useful and respected baritone in those days. Early talkies found him in operettas, but except for a villainous role in Laurel & Hardy's FRA DIABOLO, the box-office returns weren't there. He showed some talent in a few films in Fox's darkest hours, and his career continued to slide...hence his appearance here. TV offered him more opportunity, he worked pretty regularly through 1978 and died in 1984, aged 84.