“Just hang her up in the closet with the rest of the corpses.”
Detective Kitty O’Day (1944) started out defying our expectations, which were, to wit, a sexist police procedural, complete with cardboard characters. Instead, this story opens with secretary Kitty O’Day listening in on a phone call between her boss, middle-aged and tired financier Oliver Wentworth, and his wife, youthful and attractive Mrs. Wentworth, as he tells her he must skip their theatre date because of a sudden trip to Boston. Kitty is slyly assertive with everyone as her beau and Wentworth accountant, Johnny Jones, shows up with an immensely valuable packet of securities for Wentworth and a date proposal for Kitty.
Kitty must cancel as Wentworth requests Kitty come to his home to take some dictation, leading to some quite nice patter between Kitty and Jones. Sadly, this is the high point of the story. Between the cardboard cops who eventually are investigating the death of Wentworth, found hanging in his bedroom by our suddenly fainting violet Kitty, and later some more deaths, Kitty’s unbelievable choices in investigating Wentworth’s death, and the sudden appearance of the sexism late in the story, it just becomes a disappointing mess, a farce of a dated sort, not entertaining for modern audiences.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Gen-Zers would like the farce. Gen-Z readers, let me know via mail or comments if you like these farces.
But I didn’t like it, despite the promising opening. Too bad, the storytellers let themselves – and me – down.
