The Thirteenth Guest [Lady Beware] ** (1932, Ginger Rogers, Lyle Talbot, J Farrell MacDonald, Paul Hurst) – Classic Movie Review 12,169

The 1932 mystery comedy thriller movie The Thirteenth Guest stars Ginger Rogers, and is based on the novel by Armitage Trail, author of Scarface.

Director Albert Ray’s 1932 Monogram Pictures studios American pre-Code mystery comedy thriller movie The Thirteenth Guest [Lady Beware] is based on the 1929 novel of the same name written by crime fiction writer Armitage Trail, author of the novel Scarface, and stars Ginger Rogers, Lyle Talbot and J Farrell MacDonald.

All the elements of traditional haunted house horror are included in this merry tale of ghostly goings-on, all of which revolve around the number 13, at an old abandoned house. All the 13 dinner guests from a party 13 years earlier, at which the host keeled over dead, are reassembled for the anniversary. Ginger Rogers plays Marie Morgan, who has been lured to the old abandoned house by a false note from a friend, and is in mortal jeopardy.

The Thirteenth Guest is a tolerable but daft comedy-chiller that raises some smiles but fails to raise any hackles with its wildly dated mystery plot. At least it keeps pacy and busy, and a very young-looking Rogers, in already her 11th feature film role, is a companionable lead in this low-budget reworking of Armitage Trail’s story.

Monogram Pictures remade it as the 1943 movie The Mystery of the 13th Guest.

Monogram Pictures released it on August 9, 1932.

The film was known as Lady Beware in the UK.

The Thirteenth Guest was Armitage Trail’s first novel, published in 1929, and follows the investigation of the murder of fictional Marie Morgan. A private detective, named in the 1932 movie as Phil Winston and in the 1943 remake as Johnny Smith, investigates at the crime scene of Morgan’s grandfather’s mansion, where he was also murdered 13 years before.

Armitage Trail [Maurice R Coons] is best known for the novel Scarface, his only other significant work, the basis of the 1932 movie Scarface. Having sold the rights to Scarface to Howard Hughes for $25,000, Trail moved to Los Angeles, and lived flamboyantly in Hollywood, wearing wide-brimmed Borsalino hats, and began to struggle with alcoholism, rapidly gaining weight. Trail never lived to see Scarface finished, as he died of heart failure at the Paramount Theatre, Los Angeles, on October 10, 1930, aged 28.

Ginger Rogers’s big breakthrough came the following year in 42nd Street (1933), playing Ann Lowell, aka Anytime Annie (‘She only said no once, and then she didn’t hear the question’).

The Thirteenth Guest (1932, Ginger Rogers).

The cast are Ginger Rogers as Lela/ Marie Morgan, Lyle Talbot as Phil Winston, J Farrell MacDonald as Police Captain Ryan, Paul Hurst as Detective Grump, Erville Alderson as Uncle John Adams, Ethel Wales as Aunt Jane Thornton, James C Eagles as Harold ‘Bud’ Morgan, Crauford Kent as Dr Sherwood, Eddie Phillips as Thor Jensen, Frances Rich as Marjorie Thornton, Phillips Smalley as Uncle Dick Thornton, Allan Cavan as Uncle Wayne Seymour, William B Davidson as Police Capt. Brown, John Ince as Uncle John Morgan, Tom London as Detective Carter, Harry Tenbrook as Cabby, Adrienne Dore as Winston’s Date, Robert Klein, Alan Bridge, Henry Hall and Tiny Sandford.

The Thirteenth Guest [Lady Beware], is directed by Albert Ray, runs 69 minutes, is made by M H Hoffman Inc, is released by Monogram Pictures (US) and Producers Distributing Corporation (UK), is written by Frances Hyland, Arthur Hoerl and Armitage Trail (additional dialogue), is shot in black and white by Harry Neumann and Tom Galligan, is produced by M H Hoffman, and designed by Gene Hornbostel.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,169

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