Stage Struck

Young women come to New York with a suitcase and a dream, determined to make it on the heartbreak street called Broadway. Many of them, as this cautionary noir points out, fall victim to career predators. Stage Struck zeroes in on the murder of one such hopeful and of two overlapping investigations to catch the killer: one by persistent police detectives; the other by the victim's intrepid sister who poses as a footlight hopeful, signs on with the same talent agency her sibling used and infiltrates the dead girl’s bright but illusory world. Conrad Nagle, a silent-era leading man who starred opposite Greta Garbo in The Mysterious Lady, and Ralph Byrd, who played firm-jawed Dick Tracy in films and in a TV series, portray the detectives. Audrey Long, who brings a welcome, but perhaps unexpected, sophisticated air to her portrayal of the victim’s sister, was the longtime wife of Leslie Charteris, creator of the suave crime solver The Saint.