Alibi
About Alibi
Joan Manning, a police sergeant's daughter, secretly marries gang leader Chick Williams, who tells her he has gone straight. During a robbery a policeman is killed. Chick had taken Joan to the theater, left at intermission to do the job, and came back so she would swear he never left. The squad plants an undercover agent in the gang and uses rough interrogations to break that alibi.
Cast & crew
More about Alibi
Roland West produced and directed. He and C. Gardner Sullivan adapted the 1927 Broadway play Nightstick, by Elaine Sterne Carrington, J. C. Nugent, Elliott Nugent, and John Wray. Ray June photographed it. Hal C. Kern edited. United Artists released it on 20 April 1929. Chester Morris plays Chick. Eleanor Griffith plays Joan. Purnell Pratt plays Sergeant Pete Manning. Also known as The Perfect Alibi and Nightstick.
Themes
Making
West took a stage crook play and built the alibi as a sound-film problem: the audience has to hear Joan swear Chick was beside her, then see the cut to the street where he was not.
Look
Ray June shot it. West uses high and low angles in the police rooms and the theater so the alibi and the crime sit in different spaces.
Music
An early talkie. West mixes music, street noise, and the questioning.
Preservation
The film survives. It entered the public domain on 1 January 2025. A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, for Best Actor (Chester Morris), and for Best Art Direction (William Cameron Menzies). It won none of them.
- Mae Busch, Regis Toomey, and Harry Stubbs are in the cast.
- West tried out early sound, music cues, and steep camera angles.
- The copyright was not renewed in a way that kept it out of the public domain. It entered the public domain on 1 January 2025.
- A theatrical ad ran in The Film Daily in 1929.
Scenes
- Chick walks Joan into the theater, slips out at intermission, and is back in the seat when she looks for him.
- The police put an agent into the gang to test the story she tells.
Influenced by
- Nightstick (1927 Broadway play)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Alibi (1929).webm)
