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To liven things up, she decides to summon from Philadelphia the family's favorite relative, tall, handsome Uncle Charlie (Joseph Gotten). But Uncle Charlie, for reasons of his own, is already on the way. He arrives with a large, comfortable halo of presents, money and avuncular good humor. The rest of the family lionizes Uncle. The girl begins to feel a sense of menace.
Slowly the menace, seen through the girl's eyes, grows palpable, until the dull, homely old house itself seems terrifying. The girl becomes convinced, by circumstantial events, that her beloved uncle is a murderer, and that he wants to murder her. By skillful transfer of emotion, Director Hitchcock loads the most commonplace things with ominous overtones. A broken porch step, a cranky garage door, the cheerful family bickering at the dinner table, a traffic cop's scolding as the girl runs across a street to the library—these become major elements in building up a crescendo of terror.
Unlike Suspicion, Shadow hits few false notes, maintains suspense to the end. But good as Director Hitchcock and Actor Gotten are, the show is really Miss Wright's.
Star Spangled Rhythm (Paramount) rounds up the stars on the Paramount lot. The show cost $1,500,000, including $500,000 for its high-priced performers' salaries, and it has the biggest all-star cast ever assembled in one picture since the last "biggest all-star cast ever assembled in one picture." This is less remarkable than the producers' feat in finding enough gags to keep them all happy. The picture has few dull moments, adds up to a nothing more and nothing less than a de luxe vaudeville show.
The plot was no problem: Paramount simply turned its players loose in the studio and let them lampoon the executives. A few executives (among them: Producer Cecil B. De Mille, Writer-Director Preston Sturges) sneaked in as actors playing themselves.
High spots: Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour and Veronica Lake sing, in appropriate costume, a little number called A Sweater, A Sarong and a Peek-a-Boo-Bang; Rochester (in a zoot suit) and Dancer Katherine Dunham give out with a strutting Sharp As a Tack; Vera Zorina does a veil dance; Betty Hutton, during a wild, bruising ride in a jeep, sings a ditty known as I'm Doin' It for Defense; a shapely crew of aircraft workers sing and dance a number called On the Swing Shift. Bob Hope, closeted with an angry man in a shower bath, is good too.