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It all starts with a picnic Bill Brown (Kent Taylor) has with Gracie
Allen to make his girlfriend Ann (Ellen Drew) jealous, a date that turns
out to be a bit of a disaster because a) Gracie is driving Bill crazy with
her constant brainless chattering, and b) Gracie's dress is burnt by a
cigarette tossed from a passign car, a cigarette she keeps to always
remember the moment. However, Bill later takes Gracie to a nightclub,
where she promptly makes him prime suspect in a murder case. Once she
realizes what she has done, Gracie vows to take up investigations to get
him out again - but of course, she messes everything up for everyone. Fortunately,
someone had the idea to hire famed private eye Philo Vance (Warren
William) - "Fido" to Gracie - to investigate as well, and he
comes up with a few more useable clues, despite Gracie's meddling, clues
that lead to nightclub owner Mirche (Jerome Cowan), his lawyer Lawrence
(H.B. Warner) and of course nightclub singer Dixie (Judith Barrett), who
turns out to be a key witness ... until she turns up murdered, too. Ultimately,
Vance finds out that the first victim was killed by a poisoned cigarette,
the very cigarette that has burnt Gracie's dress, and now Vance thinks he
has got everything to nail the case shut and goes to confront Mirche, whom
he has long suspected to be the killer. But for some reason, the poisoned
cigarette (which Gracie has kept, remember?) has found its way into
Vance's cigarettecase along with perfectly harmless (?) cigarettes, and
Vance walks into a trap, too. And in the end, it's actually Gracie who
comes to the rescue, and both Mirche and his lawyer Lawrence, the actual
mastermind of the organisation, are arrested ... Two facts
about this film up front: a) Yes, this is actually based on a novel by
Philo Vance-creator S.S. Van Dine, a novel that actually features Gracie
Allen, and b) this is one of the few films Gracie did without her longtime
comedy partner George Burns, even though he made an appearance in the
novel. The film itself is pretty much a showcase for Gracie Allen with
Warren William basically playing the straight man to her mad antics - and
in that respect he is no George Burns, it has to be admitted, though I
wonder whether anyone could have really taken over from Burns after he and
Gracie had found their chemistry. As a mystery, The Gracie Allen Case
is a bit too far-fetched and routine at the same time to really work, and
there are certainly better Gracie Allen-flicks out there as well, but in
all, the film still features enough hilarious spots to actualy provide
good entertainment (you can never go totally wrong with Gracie, now can
you?) - and that's good enough in my book.
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