The Mad Miss Manton (Leigh Jason, 1938)

A very minor film in the madcap/screwball whodunnit romantic comedy mode, but a very pleasant way of spending eighty minutes. Watching Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, and the RKO machine at the height of their powers (Nicholas Musuraca - he of Out of the Past fame, among many others - turns in some reliably fine cinematography) can't help but be a pleasure. And though the screenplay is definitely hit and miss, it certainly did hit fairly regularly for me. (Stanwyck - the titular Miss Manton - and her team of socialite cronies are exploring, in the dead of night, the house in which a murder took place. Stanwyck tells one of her friends to explore upstairs, who responds: "If the upstairs has to be searched, we'll search it togther". At which point another one of the girls exclaims in horror: "Why, that's communism!")