Fashion Model (1945)

Fashion Model is not a particularly good movie, but it gets a few novelty points by making its protagonist, Jimmy O’ Brien, a clumsy stock boy, rather than a hard nosed detective.  Jimmy and his fashion model girlfriend, Peggy, work at Madame Celeste’s fashion store, and both of them are suspects in a murder investigation.  It all begins when Jimmy finds the corpse of model, Yvonne, in a dumbwaiter; stumbling upon corpses proves to be a talent for Jimmy, as this happens three times in the movie.  The police are notified and Jimmy is immediately the top suspect.  It doesn’t help that Peggy resented Yvonne for trying to steal Jimmy away from her.  To make matters worse, a security guard overheard Jimmy say that he was going to strangle Yvonne just so he and Peggy could be rid of her. Of course, the security guard failed to recognize the sarcasm in Jimmy’s voice – he only said to it to quiet down Peggy, who was berating him for talking to Yvonne.  Jimmy’s luck gets worse as the movie progresses; thankfully, Peggy is able to solve the mystery, sort of.  The correct phrasing would be that she accidentally stumbles upon the killer, and, luckily the police, at Jimmy’s insistence, manage to arrive just in the nick of time to save her.  The killer’s motivation is a rare broach that, accidentally, has made its way into a jewel box belonging to the store.  

It would have been interesting to see what Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, or any other master filmmaker could have done with material, but in the hands of William "One Shot" Beaudine, it becomes a rather inane comedy mystery, with the emphasis on the former.  There is no attempt by Beaudine to develop any sort of suspense, instead everything is played for laughs. The audience never really fears for Jimmy and Peggy, because any sort of tension is diffused by bad jokes and silly sight gags. It is also amazing how chipper Peggy and Jimmy remain throughout the movie, despite the corpses they keep stumbling into.  Hell, even the denouement is played for laughs; the killer, after being put in handcuffs, quips that prison life can’t be any worse than living with his domineering wife.  

Peggy and Jimmy are not exactly the brightest bulbs in the pack, but fortunately, for them, the detectives (O’ Hara and Grogan) on the case are even dumber than they are.  Granted, the thick-skulled detective isn’t anything new to the comedy-mystery genre, but these guys are extraordinarily dumb. How stupid are they? Well, let’s just say that Jimmy and Peggy are able to elude them by posing as store mannequins.  This is actually the centerpiece of the entire movie; Fashion Model is 61 minutes long and, at least, ten of those minutes are devoted to Peggy and Jimmy acting like the mannequins. The scene ends with an absent minded window dresser putting them up in a display window. This, naturally, draws a crowd of onlookers, which in turn makes O’Hara and Grogan wonder what all the commotion is about. Finally, a light bulb goes off in O’Hara’s head, and he realizes that these mannequins are actually the murder suspects that he is after. He is able to nab Jimmy, but Peggy manages to get away.

This isn’t the first time that O’Hara and Grogan are fooled by a fairly transparent disguise; earlier in the movie, Jimmy, is locked up in jail, and Peggy is able to break him out by donning the disguise of an elderly woman. She walks into the police station and, in a creaky voice, claims that she is Jimmy’s grandmother. When Grogan goes to check on Jimmy, she sets fire to a newspaper and then lets out a huge scream.  This distraction last long enough that Peggy is able to get Jimmy out of jail, while Grogan stands there looking completely dumb founded. 

Fashion Model should be an embarrassingly bad movie, but it is greatly blessed by its likable leads, Robert Lowery and Marjorie Weaver; they both give it their all, despite the silly material they have to work with. Weaver and Lowery have great chemistry, and it’s easy to imagine a franchise being centered on these two characters. Does Jimmy keep his day job as a stocker? Does Peggy retire from modeling? Do they become private detectives? Do they get married? These questions would remain unanswered as Fashion Model  would prove to be Marjorie Weaver's last starring movie role; she has five acting credits after this film, three of which are television appearances.  Robert Lowery is, probably, best known for playing Bruce Wayne/Batman in the 1949 serial Batman and Robin, but he would go on to having a fairly successful television career. Director William Beaudine had a fairly prolific career that spanned over six decades and includes over 300 movie credits. Granted, none of them are any good, but still that is quite an achievement. Edward D. Wood, Jr. is a far more celebrated "bad" movie maker and he didn't even come close to matching Beaudine's output.

Fashion Model was released by Monogram; a studio that made low budget movies from the 1930s – 50s. Fashion Model is, arguably, one of the their better movie, which should give you an idea just how bad Monogram's output was.  A movie like Fashion Model could never be made today, largely for the fact that modern audiences could never accept a complete numbskull like Jimmy as the protagonist. If Fashion Model were remade, Jimmy would, obviously, be transformed into a brooding bad ass and Peggy would be a super sexy lingerie model (played by Kate Upton) with ninja like abilities. The violence would be more gratuitous and the comedy would be non existent, which isn’t necessarily bad thing. Still, there’s an innocent charm about Fashion Model; sure, it ultimately fails at what it tries to accomplish, but I would rather watch a light hearted mystery than a dreary action movie.

 

Credits
Cast:  Marjorie Weaver (Peggy), Robert Lowery (Jimmy), Tim Ryan (Inspector O’Hara), Lorna Gray (Yvonne), Dorothy Christy (Madame Celeste), Sally Yarnell (Marie), Edward Keane (Jacques Duval), Dewey Robinson (Detective Grogan),  Jack Norton (Herbert), Harry Depp (Harvey Van Allen), Nell Craig (Jessica Van Allen), John Valentine (Davis), Cedric  Stevens (Jeffries).

Director: William Beaudine
Screenplay: Tim Ryan, Victor Hammond.
Running Time: 61 min.