Brass Monkey (1948)

A popular British radio host (Carroll Levis) and an American singer (Carole Landis) are traveling from Japan to England on the same ship. When the singer's fiance Edward Underdown) asks her to hold on to his good luck piece, a brass monkey, the radio host and the singer find themselves entangled in a web of smuggling and murder. Directed by Thornton Freeland (FLYING DOWN TO RIO), this is an odd curiosity of a movie. It's a comedic thriller but padded out with musical numbers and novelty acts. Though unknown in America, Carroll Levis was a real life popular radio host in Great Britain and here, he's playing himself. That may account why the film wasn't released in the U.S. until three years later by which time leading lady Carole Landis had been dead three years (she died in 1948 at the age of 29). As to the film itself, the mystery elements are in place but any suspense is dissipated by the music and novelty acts and some questionable comedy. With Terry Thomas, Herbert Lom, Avril Angers and Ernest Thesiger.