THE THIRTEENTH GUEST (1932) Ginger Rogers, Lyle Talbot & J. Farrell MacDonald | Drama, Mystery | B&W

The Thirteenth Guest is a 1932 American pre-Code mystery comedy thriller film, released on August 9, 1932.

SYNOPSIS
Thirteen years ago, somebody murdered the wealthy host of a dinner party. Now, the guests from that event reunite at the creepy house where the crime took place to figure out who inherited the victim's estate.

Marie Morgan (Ginger Rogers) has been lured to an old abandoned house by a false note from a friend, and is in jeopardy although she doesn't yet realize it. As she sits at the table inside, she thinks back to the banquet held there 13 years earlier, when she was a little girl. Only 12 of 13 guests had attended, and the manor's owner, the Morgan family patriarch, who was then dying, has since passed on. The chance to claim the bulk of the estate fortune has resulted in an ongoing campaign of murder by someone targeting the original 12 guests, whose dead bodies are being left at the table in the same seats they had occupied originally.

CAST & CREW
Ginger Rogers as Lela/Marie Morgan
Lyle Talbot as Phil Winston
J. Farrell MacDonald as Police Capt. Ryan
Paul Hurst as Detective Grump
Erville Alderson as Uncle John Adams
Ethel Wales as Aunt Jane Thornton
James Eagles as Harold 'Bud' Morgan
Crauford Kent as Dr. Sherwood
Eddie Phillips as Thor Jensen
Frances Rich as Marjorie Thornton
Phillips Smalley as Uncle Dick Thornton

Directed by Albert Ray
Written by Arthur Hoerl (screenplay), Frances Hyland (screenplay), Armitage Trail (additional dialogue)
Produced by M.H. Hoffman
Cinematography Tom Galligan, Harry Neumann
Edited by Leete Renick Brown
Production company Monogram Pictures Corporation
Distributed by Monogram Pictures Corporation
Release date August 9, 1932
Running time 69 minutes
Country United States
Language English

NOTES
The film is also known as Lady Beware in the United Kingdom. It is based on the 1929 novel The Thirteenth Guest written by crime fiction author Armitage Trail, best known for the novel Scarface on which the 1932 movie of the same name was based. The novel was filmed again in 1943 as Mystery of the 13th Guest.

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