Josephine Dunn (1906-1983)

A New Yorker by birth, Josephine Dunn had been in the “Follies” before becoming one of Paramount's “Junior Stars” (Charles “Buddy” Rogers, Richard Arlen and Thelma Todd joined her in that honor). Her breakthrough screen role, however, was for Warner Bros., where she played Al Jolson's faithless wife and, worse yet, David Lee's faithless mother in The Singing Fool (1928), a so-called part-talkie (Josephine's part was silent, though). Leaving poor David Lee, the “Sonny Boy” of the film's best remembered song, to pursue a selfish career in show business would haunt her screen career forever, and although she was voted a 1929 Wampas Baby Star by Hollywood publicists, by the time she appeared in Murder at Dawn (1932), the little production that is the focus of this essay, there was precious little screen career left. Dunn was luckier in her personal life; or, rather, fourth time at the altar would prove the charm. In 1935, she married Carroll Case, the son of Frank Case, the owner of New York's famous theatrical haunt the Algonquin Hotel, a by all accounts happy union. Dunn was widowed by Case in 1978 and died at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital on February 3, 1983.

Murder at Dawn (Big 4 Film Corp., 1932) PD*
Hidden away in a secluded mansion by unscrupulous backers, Professor Farrington (Frank Ball) puts the finishing touches on his VXO Dynamo, a gadget that will provide electricity by drawing power from the sun. (A highly political correct invention in the present but mainly a threat to stock market prices in 1932.) The good professor's daughter, Doris (Josephine Dunn), takes this very moment to announce her arrival along with her fiance Danny (Jack Mulhall) and friends Gertie and Freddy (Marjorie Beebe and Eddie Boland). Then panels begin to slide, bodies are being dumped and mysterious personages (Martha Mattox and Mischa Auer) keep lurking about. It is now up to Danny et al. to not only stay alive but prevent someone to steal the professor's invention.

I consider the late 1920s, early 1930s love affair with “haunted house” thrillers a forerunner of the slasher films of more recent days. Like the teenagers at Camp Crystal Lake and all the other camps, dormitories, suburban homes, or wherever horror movie kids about to get massacred tend to gather, the good folks ending up at secluded mansions by no fault of their own in classic Hollywood are blithely ignorant of what is in store for them. Of course, in retrospect they should have been considering the types that usually answer the door. Take Martha Mattox of Murder at Dawn, for example, one look at this sourpuss and you should run for your life. But no, our heroes and heroines instead forge ahead.

(Photo right: Josephine Dunn by Clarence Bull)

1932 saw two typical examples of the "Haunted House" genre, one, The Old Dark House, as wonderfully wicked today as it was eighty years ago, the other, well, Murder at Dawn. The latter, of course, doesn't have James Whale to direct with his tongue firmly in his cheek but journeyman Richard Thorpe, who appears to have taken everything at face value. It certainly doesn't come with a script based on a J.P. Priestley original and with additional dialogue (“Have a potato!”) by R.C. Sherriff. And instead of Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton and Gloria Stuart at the top of their game, we must suffer the thespian talents, or lack thereof, of Jack Mulhall, Eddie Boland (and, oh dear me, is he awful!) and, yes, Josephine Dunn. Actually, Josephine doesn't embarrass herself, she just doesn't have anything interesting to do or say. The result of all this, and the well-known Kenneth Strickfaden electrical gadgetry notwithstanding, is that Murder at Dawn plays like a stretched-out cliffhanger chapter that never seems to end.

Murder at Dawn was produced in Hollywood by New York-based Big 4 Film Corp., a purveyor of cheap westerns formed by Wisconsin entrepreneur John R. Freuler. Big 4's biggest scoop, if you can call it that, was winning the distribution deal for Overland Bound (1929), the first all-talking B-western. Freuler got the film after its creator, and star, Leo Maloney, had died from either too much stress or too much partying with possible distributors in New York. Big 4 lasted until mid-1932, when Freuler reorganized the company to become Freuler Film Associates/Monarch Pictures.