The greatest movie ever made..!

Good start, but then it gets ruined

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Blistering performances.

Strictly lightweight entertainment, the sort that would soon end up on TV. Breezy detective Mike Strange (Douglas) is set up to take the fall for the murder of a gossip columnist. Was it his new secretary Gerry (Mara) who set him up. She's one fast-talking cutie who seemingly can work her way out of anything. Plus, she's rather mysterious with a hazy past. Mike better figure things out or Detective Webb (Frawley) will have him in the slammer in a flash. In this edition, being a 1940's private eye is not much fun.This is Mara's movie. She plays the lively secretary in sparkling style. Too bad she never had an A-picture career. She was good enough. Douglas is handsome and a passable performer, but little more. Director Ford's visual style shows some atmosphere, but noir is unfortunately a year or two away. Good to see such familiar faces as Will Wright (the gardener) and Dorothy Adams (forever a maid) picking up paydays, along with Fred Mertz, oops!, I mean Bill Frawley in a familiar cop role. And catch a sexy young Virginia Christine as Rhoda. I guess that was before all the Folgers coffee gave her a TV make-over. Anyhow, it's the cast that carries the brief run-time, while the whodunit part meanders in not very involving fashion. All in all, the movie amounts to a standard 40's programmer and little more.

The current reviews for "The Inner Circle" on this board are about evenly divided, so I'll put my two cents in on the side of the positives. I thought the picture was better than it had a right to be given the usual cheapo treatment given these B programmers of the era. The hook for me occurred right in the opening scene introducing Johnny Strange of Action Incorporated in unusual fashion utilizing his business ad in the local phone directory. But it got better, when beautiful blonde Geraldine Smith (Adele Mara) answers a want-ad in progress from Johnny Strange himself (Warren Douglas), hanging up the phone and hiring herself on the spot. What Miss Smith was soon to learn was that "A secretary to Johnny Strange is no picnic...".For a film coming in at under an hour, this one sure has a lot of characters, understandable given the nature of the story. You had to spread the murder suspects around to keep the viewer guessing, and it isn't until half way into the picture that we learn that the murder victim, a gossip personality on radio, had a blackmail sideline going for him to supplement his income. A hundred grand to keep a senator's daughter out of the headlines seems like a pricey sum to me for 1946, but hey, any politician worth his weight could probably have come up with it. The other likely suspects include a torch singer (Virginia Christine), a housekeeper (Dorothy Adams), the gardener (Will Wright), and secretary extraordinaire, Miss Smith herself.In order to solve the case, Johnny Strange pulls a page out of the Charlie Chan play book, and brings all the suspects together for a live radio broadcast to smoke out the killer. Even with Johnny's explanation of how he was able to put it all together, it doesn't ring quite true, but beyond that, the flick winds up a nifty little time filler with an entertaining cast of characters. You've got your snappy banter between the principals, and with a little more work it might have elevated to the level of classic screwball comedy. Still and all, it's a pleasant diversion, and worth the effort. Oh yeah, can't forget William Frawley as the luckless detective, exhibiting some of the traits that would make him the Ricardo's favorite neighbor a few more years down the road.

This is a fast paced actioner, with a novel way to finish and nothing really too complicated. Adele Mara had a very healthy career and she was a very lovely adornment to the many movies she appeared in, even if they were only programmers.Johnny Strange (Warren Douglas)of Action Incorporated, is a private investigator, who is thinking of hiring a private secretary, when a mysterious Miss Smith (Adele Mara) breezes in and takes over in a very efficient but nice way. He accepts a job from another mysterious lady and finds he is set up for the murder of Anthony Fitch, a well known radio personality, who has many enemies. The mysterious lady and Miss Smith are the same - she is trying to protect her sister, who is wanted for the murder. William Frawley, long before his "I Love Lucy" days, plays Detective Webb, who is called in to investigate. Miss Smith, who just happens to be around, concocts a story that is not true but gets Johnny off.Johnny goes back to the scene of the crime to find out the truth and finds a record in the rubbish bin. Also the old caretaker has seen everything and pays Miss Smith a visit - he is returning her disguise he saw her put in the incinerator and wants a payment. When Johnny plays the record, he recognises the singer as Rhoda (Virgina Christine) a girl he used to know when she was a singer south of the border. Ricardo Cortez makes an always welcome appearance as Duke York, the owner of the Penguin Club and also an old friend of Johnnys.Miss Smith's sister, Anne (Martha Montgomery) enters the scene and tells how she was involved with Fitch - he was blackmailing her. She had been involved with a gangster and was now married to a politician. How the murderer is found out is achieved as a radio broadcast with everyone in the film playing their parts in front of microphones. It is an interesting ending to a very recommended film.

--Are you troubled...frightened...suspicious...or merely curious?--Your problem is my problem. --Contact Johnny Strange, Private Investigator And when the camera pans away from a gloved female finger on this Yellow Pages ad, we see on the floor a dead body. This is going to be a case that involves Johnny Strange (Warren Douglas), of Action, Inc. It's also going to be a case with three beautiful blondes, gruff police lieutenant Webb (William Frawley), smooth, lethal hood Duke York (Ricardo Cortez) and, of course, the corpse. He was Anthony Fitch, a famous radio personality whose specialty was scandal. For Johnny, it all started when one of those blondes, Gerry Smith (Adele Mara) walks into his office just as he was phoning in an ad for a secretary..."blonde, beautiful, between 22 and 28, and with the skin you love to touch and a heart you can't." Gerry disconnects him, claims the job for herself, and shortly is fielding a call for Johnny to meet a woman with a problem at 7 p.m. The woman turns out to be wearing a heavy veil and sporting a Spanish accent. She takes him to the home of Fitch, where Fitch's body is cooling. It's not long before Johnny is knocked on the head and set up for murder. Even when he's cleared, and trailed by Webb as well as by Gerry, he narrowly escapes a one-way dive off a cliff at the hands of Duke York. Then there is the suspicious reaction to several questions by a nightclub singer who is one of the other blondes. It's not long (for a second time; the movie only runs 57 minutes) before we learn Fitch also dabbled in blackmail and that he was just about to blow the lid off some high society secrets. Johnny figures out why his secretary has been so helpful and who the murderer is. But, of course, he can't prove it. So he gathers all the suspects, plus Webb, to recreate some key scenes in a live radio broadcast coming from the dead man's home. You guessed it...the killer panics in front of a nation-wide radio audience. Johnny gets some free publicity for Action, Inc. And it looks like Gerry is going to sign up for a permanent job. The Inner Circle is strictly a bottom-of-the-bill programmer, but it does no harm. It combines light-hearted murder with romance, which almost always is a pleasant way to waste a little time. The gathering of the suspects for a radio broadcast where they recreate their roles is so odd and awkwardly written that it has a great deal of weird charm. I wouldn't go out of my way to buy this movie. If the price were more than $5.00 I wouldn't buy it at all. Still, one of the pleasures is Will Wright, a grand character actor, who plays the gardener on the dead man's estate. Wright was a lanky, elderly man who could be counted on to play friendly, slow-speaking old coots. He was at his best, however, as corrupt, aging, defensive whiners. When he showed us mankind's unreliable lower nature, he could give any movie he was in a kind of grubby quality. He's one of my favorites