City of Missing Girls (1941)

Climaxing a long series of mysterious disappearances of young girls, dancer Thalia Arnold is found murdered. Police-detective Captain McVeigh believes that King Peterson, a nightclub operator and owner of the Crescent School of Fine Arts, knows something about the missing girls. Peterson's silent partner is Joseph Thompson, a theatrical agent, whose daughter, Nora, a reporter, is waging a newspaper crusade against the district attorney's office for failing to trace the girls, much to the discomfiture of James Horton, a young assistant district attorney. Pauline Randolph is the next to disappear but Nora had seen her leaving her grandmother's home in a car driven by a blonde woman. Nora interviews the grandmother who tells her that Pauline had theatrical employment, along with one of her friends, Mary Phillips. When the police begin investigating the Crescent talent-school, Thompson, who knew the Arnold girl intimately, quarrels with Peterson over the school, which, Thompson claims, will land them both in jail. In a lineup of all the showgirls from Peterson's nightclubs, Mary tries to identify the mysterious blonde who picked her and Pauline up, but she is unable to do so. The blonde, Kate Neslon, telephones Horton to come to her apartment and she will give him information about the missing girls, but he and Captain McVeigh find her dead in her apartment. Nora, who thinks Peterson doesn't know she is Thompson's daughter, decides to audition for the School of Missing Girls.