24 Hours (1931).mp4

Based on Louis Bromfield's book. The lives of four people are changed during the course of a single day.



Brief Synopsis (from TCM.com)



At a party at eleven o'clock on a snowy night in New York, millionaire James Morton Towner and his wife Fanny discuss their failing marriage, which is due, in part, to his drinking. Jim leaves early, and just before he reaches Jake's speakeasy, he sees a man shot and carried into the bar. Meanwhile, Fanny is escorted home by David Melbourn, with whom she has been having an affair. Fanny breaks off her relationship with David, although she believes that she can no longer stay with her husband. From the speakeasy, Jim goes to a nightclub, where he sits at a private table with Rosie Dugan, a beautiful singer. Rosie appreciates Jim because he always behaves like a gentleman, even when he is drunk, unlike her ex-convict husband, Tony "Sicily" Bruzzi. That night at the club, Tony asks Rosie to take him back. Aware that he is responsible for the murder that took place in front of Jake's, she takes Tony's gun and has the bouncer throw him out. Jim goes home with Rosie and falls asleep on her chaise lounge, while she prepares for sleep in her bedroom. When she hears footsteps arriving at the apartment, she locks the door to Jim's room and hides the key in her cold cream. Tony enters, enraged, intending to kill Jim, but Rosie refuses to give him the key to the room. In an ensuing struggle, Tony strangles Rosie to death and then runs away. In the morning, Jim wakes up from a deep drunken slumber, and when Rosie does not respond to his knocks, breaks down the door to her bedroom, where he finds her dead. Jim regrets his drunkenness, realizing that he otherwise may have heard her screams, and leaves the apartment. Later, Tony is murdered by gangster Dave the Slapper for killing one of Dave's gang members. Jim is arrested for Rosie's murder after police find his cufflinks in her apartment. Fanny reads of his arrest in the paper and goes to him at the police station, where she promises to stay by him, even though she suspects he may have committed the crime while he was drunk. Although Jim is released when police find Tony's fingerprints on a liquor bottle from Rosie's apartment, he decides to go away and allow Fanny to find happiness with someone else. He is surprised when Fanny joins him on the cruise ship and asks him to return to her. She says that if Rosie Dugan loved him drunk, she will also, although she knows their relationship will be uphill all the way. At eleven that night, they toast to his last drink.