Moss Rose

Various internet sources state that the film "Moss Rose" was based on the Joseph Shearing novel, "The Crime of Laura Sarelle." This is simply not true as any reading of that novel will clearly show. The 1947 film "Moss Rose" was based on the 1934 Joseph Shearing Novel, "Moss Rose." And although the film plot varies greatly from the novel, the basic story is quite similar and many of the same character names were used in the film. The novel was based on the 1872 murder of a London prostitute, well before Jack the Ripper appeared on the scene.

Incidentally, Joseph Shearing was one of many pen names used by Marjorie Bowen (another pen name) who was born Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell and later married Arthur L. Long. She wrote many thrillers, romances, and novels of the supernatural, all under various pen names.

In any event, the film "Moss Rose" exudes Victorian/Edwardian atmosphere and suspense and is well worth watching. Truly, they don't make them like this any more.

It's amazing the degree of professionalism Hollywood reached in those early decades. The foggy London street scenes are superb, the mansion interiors impeccable, the costumes perfect, the women hairstyles... (are there hairdressers nowadays able to duplicate those Victorian hairstyles?). And of course the acting impeccable. Peggy Cummins off camera voice at the beginning, explaining the situation reveals a child speaking, such is her Betty Boopish voice.

Eventually she appears and throughout the whole film mesmerizes us with her blond Lolita looks and startling acting ability. Precisely with all that Hollywood professionalism it's difficult to understand why, a cockney like Cummins character, that speaks like a regular Eliza Doolittle, all of a sudden loses her typical speaking mode and starts, very naturally, to speak in a normal intercontinental English.

It took Eliza many months of extremely harsh study to get rid of her cockney intonation, but this character does it in a jiffy (without the help of a professor Higgins!!), and nobody questions that miraculous change! The movie is entertaining and very predictable; the end is rushed in, ruining everything previously done, but I imagine it was part of fitting the story within a certain length of time.

I saw "Gun Crazy" before, where I "discovered" Peggy Cummins and found her (in a totally different rol) quite a trouvaille! sort of a Veronica Lake (as petite as her) and unusual, like a Gloria Graham. Lovely with her round mouth, sting lipped childish appeal (and voice!). Nice, cozy movie to watch (we are so familiar with the formula!) when it's raining and dark outside.

A distinguished cast (including a pre-horror stardom Vincent Price as a police inspector!), a clever "voice recognition test" sequence, and some plot surprises make "Moss Rose" worth your while, although it's quite slow-moving and somewhat derivative. The mystery resolution has some daring psychological implications. **1/2 out of 4.

It's that smudge of fog called London under the reign of Victoria. When a music-hall dancer is murdered, a moss rose marks the page of a Bible next to her body. Luckily, another chorus girl (Peggy Cummins) saw a gentleman (Victor Mature) leaving the lodgings. She approaches him directly, saying she'll go to the police if he doesn't meet her demands, but he brushes her off contemptuously. When he learns she's dead serious, he tries to buy her off with a thick wad of pound notes. But it's not money she's after; all she wants is two weeks at his country estate, living the life of a `lady.'

And here Moss Rose, which has taken its time working up a head of steam, branches off onto a new siding. The estate contains not only Mature, his fiancée (Patricia Medina) and his formidable old dowager mother (Ethel Barrymore), but also a greenhouse where out-of-season moss roses bloom.

Apart from a few Eliza-Doolittle faux pas, the classes do not clash. Barrymore, in fact, extends Cummins a matey welcome; even Medina tries to put aside her understandable jealousy. The only apple of discord falls when Cummins strays innocently into Mature's boyhood rooms, which Barrymore preserves as a secret shrine.

Cummins finds the pastoral scene (`You'd expect to see a calendar pasted under it!' she exclaims) lives up to all her expectations. Thrown together, Mature has thawed markedly towards Cummins, and she towards him. But their idyll comes under siege with the arrival from London of bumbling Scotland Yard detective and amateur horticulturist Vincent Price, still investigating that pesky homicide. Soon there's another murder, another Bible, and another moss rose....

An old-dark-house costume drama akin to My Name Is Julia Ross or The Spiral Staircase, Moss Rose finds its strength in its actors rather than its direction (by Gregory Ratoff). While Mature stays four-square and Price unctuously fey, Barrymore predictably grande-dames it to the hilt. Cummins is lovely and quite good as a Cockney diamond-in-the-rough, but leaves nothing like the impression she would two years later as Annie Laurie Starr in Gun Crazy. An air of the contrived lingers after Moss Rose, more faded than pungent, but it's cozy and reassuring, too.

This is a movie adaptation of a Marjorie Reynolds book that I just recently discovered, and I'm glad I did. It's not very long, but there's enough packed into it to hold your interest. Peggy Cummins does an excellent job in the starring role of Belle Adair (a.k.a. Rose Lynton), a chorus girl in late 19thc London, who becomes amateur sleuth, as she investigates her friend Daisy's murder. The movie co-stars Victor Mature as Michael Drego, whom Belle suspects is the killer. There's also Ethel Barrymore, who plays Michael's mother, Lady Margaret Drego, and Vincent Price, as Police Inspector Climmer.

Wanting to better herself socially, Belle bargains with Michael (whom she gradually decides is innocent): she'll keep quiet about some incriminating evidence, if he'll take her to his family estate, where she can learn to be a lady. Her presence there intrigues his mother and displeases his fiancee, Audrey (Patricia Medina), but for Belle it's like a dream come true, as she enjoys being in such lovely surroundings, wearing nice clothes, learning to ride and just feeling special. (Not to mention, falling in love with Michael and having those feelings returned.) However, trouble looms ahead, as well as another murder.

I won't give the mystery away, but I will say that there's a hint in the story as to whodunit that I should have picked up on.

Anyway, check it out, it's worth it.