The Phantom Broadcast (1933)

• Director
  • Phil Rosen
• Writer
  • Tristram Tupper(screenplay)
• Stars
  • Ralph Forbes
  • Vivienne Osborne
  • Arnold Gray

  This brisk Monogram melodrama includes all the requisite entertainment elements: Talented cast, solid story, a plenitude of suspense, and a few bonus song numbers. Arnold Gray plays Grant Murdock, a popular radio crooner who, truth be told, can't sing a note. For appearance's sake, the handsome Murdock is propped up before the microphone while his voice is supplied by homely hunchback Norman Wilder (Ralph Forbes). When Murdock is murdered, suspicion immediately falls upon Wilder -- who in fact had intended to bump off the phony, except that someone beat him to it. Knowing that no one will believe his story, Wilder scurries off into the night, with police hot on his heels. The actual culprit very nearly gets off scot-free but is ultimately undone by a sudden attack of conscience -- too late, alas, to save Murdock from his inexorable fate.