Dressed to Kill (1941)

 Sharing its title with a famous Brian De Palma erotic thriller from 1980, 1941's 'Dressed to Kill' is the third of movie in which Lloyd Nolan plays Micheal Shayne. Mary Beth Hughes, who played the endangered witness in the last Shayne film is back, only now she is playing a different character, a burlesque performer who is Shayne's fiance; ironically Shayne ended the last picture on the verge of engagement with Lynn Bari

Shayne goes to visit his fiance at her apartment in a building that caters to theater people (Shayne's place of reisdence seems to have been inexplicably moved from California to New York). While there he hears a shot and scream, rushes up a floor to their source and discovers a theatrically arranged murder scene. Shayne phones a newspaper before he calls the police, gets $100 for the early exclusive and an offer of a additional $400 if he solves the murder before the police. Micheal then proceeds to neglect his girl to concentrate on the case, he ends up kind of half solving it with the aid of Preston Sturges good luck charm William Demarest as a police detective, as a result however he ends up losing the girl.

I was not quite as captured by this as the previous two films and there are some rather dated black supporting characters so I'm giving this **1/2

On a side note it always throws me a bit when a character in a film uses the phrase "before the war" and means World War I.