Review of The Midnight Girl

This was quite an entertaining film starring Bela Lugosi as a New York widower millionaire opera producer who likes having relationships with his leading lady. (The film opens and closes with some interesting clips of the old Metropolitan Opera House auditorium) The current LL is past her prime and needs to be disposed of. His son, who has no real career though is a fine musician, has been targeted for marriage by a society family which has run out of money. The son dislikes his father's philandering as it debases his mother's memory. After a row with father and LL he leaves home cut off without a penny. He releases the girl who has her talons in him, though she still thinks he could be a gold fish. He then takes a job as conductor in a rather odd café: it has a stage, an orchestra pit and a dance floor surrounded by tables for diners. Part of the entertainment consists of a long line of chorus girls, but it was difficult to see how the small number of covers could have covered their costs. Meanwhile a Russian émigré from the Red Terror, a famous violinist, and his daughter, arrive in New York. They cannot find work, so the father is reduced to busking on the streets, where the son helps him when a crook tries to steal his takings. (The crook vows vengeance, and later shoots and wounds the son, though the resolution of this sub-plot seems to have been cut from the Internet Archive version of the film). The son falls for the daughter and gets her a singing job at the café where she is a wow! The father sees her and decides she will be his next conquest, though the son warns her off. The one good joke in the film, is when somebody asks the father why his son is working in a cheap joint like Joe Green's. The father's plans are helped when the society girl cunningly asks the daughter to sing at her soirée when her engagement to the son will be announced. The daughter now sees no reason not the visit the father. Meanwhile the LL is pensioned off to sing in Boston. The daughter and her father arrive at the father's mansion, and while her father is plied with drink, the other father sets about her seduction. Meanwhile the son visits the society girl, realises what she has done and rushes off the mansion, crashing his car in the process and being held up at a level crossing. The daughter having repulsed the father's advances, he tries to rape her, somewhat realistically. As she pulls away she grabs a pistol from a desk draw and as the son enters shoots the father and misses, instead hitting the LL who was hiding behind the arras ready to denounce her lover for his betrayal. Almost everybody now on stage, the son and the daughter declare their love, and the father realises how much he loves his former LL. In the final scene these two share a box while the daughter is a runaway success on stage.