Alex Dennison, Robert Preston, A top Broadway playwright returns to the theater where his fiancée Monica Wells, Lynn Redgrave, acted in her first and last performance on Broadway just a year ago in the comedy play that Alex wrote for her "Chamber Music". Reflecting back to what became a tragic night Monica, a movie star, was acting in a play on Broadway for the first time in her career and was very apprehensive and nervous about how her performance on stage would be taken by the public as well as the Broadway critics.
When the play ended to the standing ovation of the theater audience the critical reviews coming in on "Chamber Music" were anything but overwhelming and at a party with everyone involved in the play later that night Monica seemed hurt and depressed. Alex trying to make Monica feel good tells her that no matter what the critics say, which weren't all that bad, about the play that she's not to let it get to her, that bad reviews are a part of life on Broadway, and that she'll always be tops with him. With the party over and everyone gone Monica alone with Alex asks him something the seemed to be a bit strange, if he loved her which of course Alex told her that he did. Later that night Alex gets a phone call from Monica that gets cut off in mid-sentence. Rushing to her apartment he finds that she jumped or fell from her bedroom window an was killed. Hurt and almost in shock Alex just couldn't believe that his Monica would have killed herself which led him to personally investigate her dead and what he found out he put into a play that he wrote with the murder suspects all playing major roles in it.
Using the theater as a backdrop to find out who killed Monica Wells and having the police Leut. MaElroy, William Russ who was in charge of the investigation of Monica's death helping him Alex gathered all the suspects together, who had no idea of what Alex had planned for them, to play their parts in the play which in the end revealed the one who killed Monica.
The movie "Rehearsal for Murder" is so well written with a script that builds to such a unexpected final that you'll immediately want to see the film over again. "Rehearsal for Murder" is so good that it makes movies with surprise endings like "The Usual Subjects" and "Se7en" look like high school plays in comparison. It's amazing watching the movie that every word every action and even every movement fit right into the story like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
Who killed Monica? was it her co-star in the play David Mathews, Patrick Macnee, who's advances she turned down? Was it the director of the play LLoyd Andrews, Lawrence Pressman, who was in love with her and thought that Monica was also in love with him and felt betrayed by her when she became engaged to Alex? Was it the producer of the play Walter Lamb, William Daniels, who was to lose $600,000.00 of his own money if the play flopped and could only get his money back if Monica who he heavily insured died during it's run on Broadway? Was it Monica's understudy Karen Daniels, Madolyn Smith-Osborne, who would do anything to get top-billing in the play? or her lover and fellow actor Leo Gibbs, Jeff Goldblum, who would do anything to help her get it?
Powerhouse whodunit that for some reason has been forgotten all these years but after seeing "Rehearsal for Murder" you'll wonder, just like I did, why?
