Product Details

• Actors: William Powell, Ginger Rogers, Paul Kelly, Gene Lockhart, Ralph Morgan
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: RKO Home Video
• VHS Release Date: December 28, 1993
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301328442
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #259,119 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

This can be considered out of print, and hard to find now.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Little Gem, August 17, 2005

By 

Bobby Underwood "starlighthotel" (Manly NSW, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Star of Midnight [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This fun little detective mystery based on a serial story of the 1930's by Arthur Somers Roche has William Powell and Ginger Rogers in fine form and RKO's great sets of the period for 90 minutes of delightful distraction. It is little known and sometimes gets a bad rap when it is talked about, since it came on the heels of the origional Thin Man. But it is, in fact, very entertaining and Powell and Rogers are a hoot together. The mystery is good, if a bit slow at times, and it is easy to see where another series could have been launched if the circumstances had been right.

William Powell is uptown lawyer Clay Dalzell, who everyone calls Dal, and Ginger Rogers is his long-time assistant and wanna be spouse Donna Mantin. She's known him since childhood, but she's no kid anymore and the two have a very fun repore as they get involved in a mystery while she tries to get Dal to marry her. Dal playfully refers to Donna as a shameless hussy and fact distorter, and tells her at one point how terrible it must be for her mother to have a daughter like her!

Dal is known to dabble in solving crimes more than practicing law so it's no surprise when his pal Tim Winthrop (Leslie Fenton) wants him to help find his lost love, Alice. What is a surprise is his disappearance from Dal's uptown Manhatten apartment after someone kills the reporter with information about a famous stage actress Tim had recognized as Alice. Dal is shot also, but wounded only slightly in the uh....hip.

It's a lot of fun as Donna mixes drinks and exchanges jabs with Dal while she worms her way into the mystery. Also adding to the fun is Gene Lockhart as Dal's butler, Swayne, working for Dal but taking his real direction from Miss Mantin. A gangster named Kinland (Paul Kelly) and an old flame's husband (Ralph Morgan) all figure in as suspects but Dal must first figure out what it's all about.

Like some of the later Thin Man entries, the story is a fun distraction for mystery buffs, but the real reason to watch is the interplay between Powell and Ginger. J. Farrell MacDonald has the best supporting part as the take-it-easy Inspector Doremus, never in a rush but sharp as a tack, staying step for step with Dal all the way. Powell spends a lot of time in his bathrobe and always has a drink in his hand, sticking Donna with a bar tab for 8 sidecars at one point! Donna is as crafty as he is though, and manages to get her money back and then some.

A trick with a phonograph to trap the killer near the end doesn't have a lot of zip but is very enjoyable, which is what the movies are all about. There is a great ending with Dal and Donna that certainly had series written all over it. One can only assume MGM did not want Powell competing with their own Thin Man franchise at another studio. Powell and Loy are wonderful together but Ginger got great reviews in the New York papers and even the London Times when this was first released in 1935.

Only those who can't stand seeing a Bogart picture with someone other than Bacall, or a Powell picture with someone other than Loy, dislike this film. Stephen Roberts, who had directed Rogers the year before in "Romance in Manhatten" helmed this one also. This one's a little gem that fans of William Powell and Ginger Rogers don't want to miss.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Star of Midnight (1935) ... William Powell & Ginger Rogers ... RKO Radio Pictures Film Noir", March 25, 2007

By 

J. Lovins "Mr. Jim" (Missouri-USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Star of Midnight [VHS] (VHS Tape)

RKO Radio Pictures present "STAR OF MIDNIGHT" (1935) (90 mins/B&W) (Dolby digitally remastered) --- Starring William Powell, Ginger Rogers, Paul Kelly & Gene Lockhart - - - Directed by Stephen Roberts and released on April 19, 1935, story line and film, Clay Dalzell is a suave attorney fonder of solving crimes than trying cases. His elegant girlfriend, Donna hopes that Clay will settle down and marry her. A friend, Tim Winthrop approaches Clay with a mystery that the amateur sleuth can't resist. Tim's girlfriend Alice disappeared a year ago. During the performance of a Broadway play, Tim spots Alice onstage, but she disappears again. Clay takes the case and sets up a meeting with a gossip columnist who seems to have the answers, but the reporter is murdered and Clay is suspected of the crime --- Yes its RKO doing their version of The Thin Man with Ginger Rogers replacing Myrna Loy. Check out RKO's "The Ex-Mrs Bradford" (1936) (also available from Amazon.Com) for another RKO "version" of The Thin Man (with Jean Arthur instead of Myrna Loy)

Under Stephen R. Roberts (Director ), Pandro S. Berman (Producer), Howard J. Green (Screenwriter), Edward Kaufman (Screenwriter), Arthur Somers Roche (Book Author), Anthony Veiller (Screenwriter), Roy Hunt (Cinematographer), Max Steiner (Musical Direction/Supervision / Composer (Music Score), Arthur Roberts (Editor), Charles Kirk (Art Director), Van Nest Polglase (Art Director), Bernard Newman (Costume Designer), Mel Burns (Makeup) ---- the cast includes William Powell (Clay Dalzell), Ginger Rogers (Donna Mantin), Paul Kelly (Jim Kinland), Gene Lockhart (Horatio Swayne), Ralph Morgan (Roger Classen), Leslie Fenton (Tim Winthrop), John Farrell MacDonald (Inspector Doremus), Russell Hopton (Tommy Tennant), Vivien Oakland (Gerry Classon), Frank Reicher (Abe Ohlman), Robert E. O'Connor (Sgt. Cleary), Francis McDonald (Kinland Gangster), Paul Hurst (Corbett), Sid Saylor (Deliveryman), Hooper Atchley (Hotel Manager), Spencer Charters (Doorman), John Ince (Doctor), George Chandler (Witness), Charles McMurphy (Officer Lewis) - - - - Film noir has sources not only in cinema but other artistic mediums as well...the low-key lighting schemes commonly linked with the classic mode are in the tradition of chiaroscuro and tenebrism, techniques using high contrasts of light and dark developed by 15th- and 16th-century painters associated with Mannerism and the Baroque...film noir's aesthetics are deeply influenced by German Expressionism, a cinematic movement of the 1910s and 1920s closely related to contemporaneous developments in theater, photography, painting, scultpture, and architecture...opportunities offered by the booming Hollywood film industry and, later, the threat of growing Nazi power led to the emigration of many important film artists working in Germany who had either been directly involved in the Expressionist movement or studied with its practitioners...Directors such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Michael Curtiz brought dramatic lighting techniques and a psychologically expressive approach to mise-en-scène with them to Hollywood, where they would make some of the most famous of classic noirs. Lang's 1931 masterwork, the German M, is among the first major crime films of the sound era to join a characteristically noirish visual style with a noir-type plot, one in which the protagonist is a criminal (as are his most successful pursuers). M was also the occasion for the first star performance by Peter Lorre, who would go on to act in several formative American noirs of the classic era ... featuring top performances from the '40s and '50s with outstanding drama and screenplays, along with a wonderful cast and supporting actors to bring it all together ... another winner from the vaults of almost forgotten film noir gems

SPECIAL FEATURES BIOS:

1. William Horatio Powell

Date of Birth: 29 July 1892 - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Date of Death: 5 March 1984 - Palm Springs, California

2. Ginger Rogers (aka: Virginia Katherine McMath)

Date of Birth: 16 July 1911 - Independence, Missouri

Date of Death: 25 April 1995 - Rancho Mirage, California

3. Paul Michael Kelly

Date of Birth: 9 August 1899 - Brooklyn, New York

Date of Death: 6 November 1956 - Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California

4. Stephen Roberts (Director)

Date of Birth: 23 November 1895 - Summersville, West Virginia

Date of Death: 17 July 1936 - Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California

Hats off and thanks to Les Adams (collector/guideslines for character identification), Chuck Anderson (Webmaster: The Old Corral/B-Westerns.Com), Boyd Magers (Western Clippings), Bobby J. Copeland (author of "Trail Talk"), Rhonda Lemons (Empire Publishing Inc), Bob Nareau (author of "The Real Bob Steele") and Trevor Scott (Down Under Com) as they have rekindled my interest once again for Film Noir, B-Westerns and Serials --- looking forward to more high quality releases from the vintage serial era of the '20s, '30s & '40s and B-Westerns ... order your copy now from Amazon where there are plenty of copies available on VHS, stay tuned once again for top notch action mixed with deadly adventure --- if you enjoyed this title, why not check out VCI Entertainment where they are experts in releasing B-Westerns and Serials --- all my heroes have been cowboys!

Total Time: 90 min on VHS ~ Turner Home Video ~ (12/28/1993)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars William Powell/Ginger Rogers whodunnit, May 9, 2011

By 

Barbara Boone "westiesowner" (Oregon) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Star of Midnight [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is a wonderful movie. With that having been said I add that the value is not nearly on the level of the amount this seller has put on it. THAT IS RIDICULOUS!!! Talk about greed. This movie can be bought elsewhere on dvd for around $4.00.