Footsteps in the Dark - 1941

“Footsteps in the Dark” (1941) displays Errol Flynn’s ease and confidence in a comic role, and provides another showcase for his unique and unabashed charm. He carries the film, and is in practically every scene, which is good and bad. He is far and away never boring and delightful to watch; however, he’s got a great cast of character actors in supporting roles that don’t get to do too much.

Mr. Flynn plays a society blue-blood, an investment broker who lives with his lovely wife, Brenda Marshall, and his patrician mother-in-law, Lucile Watson. His relationship with both is good, and it’s particularly funny to watch him flatter his mother-in-law with comments that her new hairdo makes her look like a girl, practically every time he sees her. He does not seem insincere, just like a man who has the gift of making people happy, especially when their being happy makes things run smoother for him.

Except for the police inspector Alan Hale, and his sidekick detective, William Frawley. Unknown to his family, Flynn leads a double life. He writes murder mysteries on the side, and his latest is called “Footsteps in the Dark”, where we get the title of the film. In his book, he lambastes the very society set his mother-in-law so proudly represents, and so to keep peace in his home, he writes under a pseudonym.

He hangs out with the police to get story ideas and to help them solve their cases, because he is, of course, smarter than everybody. Especially William Frawley, who is the stupidest police detective in the universe.

Mr. Flynn’s closest relationship appears to be with Allen Jenkins, his chauffeur who also lives a double life as Flynn’s secretary. I love the scenes when Flynn leaves his brokerage office for lunch and heads out with Jenkins to a cozy suburban house he keeps for his writing space.

They peel off their suit coats, and Flynn dictates his story into a Dictaphone (have a look here at our previous post on movie Dictaphones and tape recorders), while Mr. Jenkins types out the manuscript. We see Jenkins with transcription earphones, but I can’t tell if there is also a foot pedal. I’d love to know more about the mechanical devices and method of transcription in the 1940s if anybody has any information.

I’ll leave the plot alone so as not to ruin the story, but Flynn encounters shapely but not overly talented burlesque queen Blondie White, played with trampy gusto by Lee Patrick (for whom he poses as a naïve, “aww-shucks, Ma’am” Texas oilman. Catch his funny attempt at an accent.)

Grant Mitchell plays the family attorney, about whom Flynn makes up outrageous stories of being romantically involved with the burlesque queen in order to cover up his own activities.

Roscoe Karns is a smarmy private detective Brenda Marshall hires to track her husband.

Ralph Bellamy, always reliable and believable in any situation, is a dentist, and there is one particular scene with he and Flynn, with Flynn in the dentist’s chair, that flits alternately between both comedy and tension. It’s almost hard to concentrate on the nuances of the scene, at least for us today, because at one point Bellamy joins his patient in a cigarette break, and companionably plunks an ashtray down on the instrument tray for them to use. Yuck.

We want to see more of these great character actors, but the movie is Flynn’s, and so we see them only through his brief interaction with each one of them in turn through the course of the movie. They really are wasted.

Another good scene: Brenda Marshall, having discovered Flynn’s preoccupation with Blondie White, goes to the burlesque theater herself to see what’s so special about her. We later find Miss Marshall play-acting a strip tease in front of her bedroom mirror to practice for her husband, when she is interrupted by the butler. It’s one of the few scenes without Flynn; the rest of the movie rests on his capable shoulders. However, because he is so capable and so charming, we know he’ll win the day and there is no real suspense, except for a scene at the very end.

The studio could have taken this further and made sequels, but this lightweight, breezy whodunit stands on its own.