Private Detective 62 is a 1933 film directed by Michael Curtiz.
Donald Free (William Powell) is a secret agent of sorts, working for the United States government in an era where the US didn't have any secret agents. In any case, he's arrested in France and the American government disavows any knowledge of him. He escapes custody and makes it back to America, but the feds won't rehire him and without references and with his arrest record, he can't get a job.
He has to settle for being partner to a sleazy and none-too-bright private detective named Dan Hogan. Their business plods along for a while until it comes under the patronage of a mobster and gambling boss named Tony Bandor. Suddenly business is booming for the Hogan agency, although a lot of that business is very sleazy indeed. Donald manages to avoid the slimier part of the agency, like how Hogan routinely has women drugged and dumped in hotel rooms so he can frame them for cheating on their husbands.
In the meantime, Hogan tasks Donald with following a woman named Janet Reynolds (Margaret Lindsay) who has been winning at roulette at Bandor's casino, taking him for $45,000. Naturally, Donald falls in love with Janet, but she breaks it off with him when she finds out he's a detective. She then decides to cash out her winnings with Tony Bandor, but Bandor doesn't want to pay, and he takes a drastic step.
Tropes:
- Addled Addict: Whitey, the twitchy, constantly sniffing cocaine addict (the movie calls it "snow") who comes into Hogan's office desperate for money and consequently does Hogan's slimier jobs. He murders Tony Bandor on Hogan's orders.
- The Alcoholic: When Donald first enters Hogan's office, Hogan is snoring at his desk and there are six bottles of alcohol lying around next to his trash can.
- Artistic License – Law: France cancels Donald's passport. That is not how it works. A foreign government can confiscate your passport to prevent you from leaving, but they can't cancel it.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Donald gets drunk in a club after Janet finds out he's a detective and breaks up with him.
- Eiffel Tower Effect: No time to waste in a 66-minute movie so the opening scene is placed in Paris by an opening shot of the Eiffel Tower.
- For the Evulz: Surely the only reason for the French to put Donald on a ship to America, sail him to within sight of the Statue of Liberty, and then tell him that he will not be dropped on land in the United States but in fact will go back to France to face more charges. It backfires on them, as Donald jumps off the ship and swims to land.
- Frame-Up:
- The super-sleazy Hogan arranges to drug married women, and take them to hotel rooms, so that their husbands can get divorces and win child custody on fake adultery grounds.
- A darker example later in the film, when Hogan tricks Janet into thinking she shot Bandor (her gun was loaded with blanks), then has his minion Whitey shoot and kill Bandor for real, so Janet can take the fall while Hogan takes the money.
- Hand of Death: Bandor is chortling about tricking Janet into thinking she shot him, when a hand extends out from the curtain with a gun, and shoots and kills him for real. It's revealed that the hand belongs to Whitey, the cocaine addict who was acting on Hogan's orders.
- Leg Focus:
- Mrs. Burns is given a Feet-First Introduction that is clearly there to show her calves sticking out from her skirt. In the next scene where Hogan is following her on the tram, the camera starts out focused on her legs before panning up to show the rest of her.
- Right after that, Hogan calls the office. Donald is there in the company of a lovely blonde that hasn't been seen before and does not appear again, but the camera still starts out focused on her legs sticking out of a skirt before panning up to the rest of her.
- Match Cut: From the clock in Hogan's office as Bandor tells him the time to be ready for their plan, to the dial on the safe in Bandor's office as he opens it.
- Meet Cute: A busy doorman gives Donald his umbrella. Immediately after Janet pulls up at the casino, mistakes Donald for the doorman and calls for the umbrella. She yells at him when he's slow to move.
- Non-Indicative Name: Bizarrely, the "62" in the title is completely random. The number 62 is never even mentioned, not in connection with detectives or anything else.
- Sexy Backless Outfit: Janet wears several of them, for high-class fanservice.
- Spinning Paper: Newspaper headlines pop up to tell the audience that Donald has been arrested and charged in France, and that he's being deported to the USA. A later headline relates that the Hogan detective agency has gotten a lot bigger under Tony Bandor's patronage.
- Time-Passes Montage: A montage shows Donald pounding the sidewalks in New York and failing to get any kind of law enforcement job, detective, store detective, nothing. It ends when he finds Dan Hogan's card in his pocket and goes there as a last resort.
- The Unreveal: It seems like Janet must be cheating at roulette, since she wins and wins and wins until Tony Bandor is in to her for $50,000 dollars in 1933 money. The fact that she carries a gun also hints that she's up to something, but if she's cheating, the movie doesn't say how.
- Video Credits: Of all the main players at the start of the film, as was Warner Brothers house style in this era.
- You Wouldn't Shoot Me: "You haven't got the nerve," says Bandor as Janet points a gun at him after he got rapey. Subverted in that it's all a trick, and Bandor is goading Janet into pulling the trigger on a gun loaded with blanks.
