Although "The Night of January 16th" was based on a play by Ayn Rand, it's pretty much typical of the murder mystery B-movies of the era...with most of the usual cliches. The head of a big company has been apparently embezzling, as the books are short more than $20,000,000! One evening, he's apparently being attacked and his faithful secretary returns to work to help him. But she's too late...and he's apparently tossed out of his skyrise penthouse...and, oddly, the police assume she's responsible. First, she has no motive. Second, they expected this lady to overpower her boss, drag him to the ledge and then toss him over in only three minutes time?! The only person (other than her) to doubt this narrative is an odd character played by Robert Preston and they both play amateur detectives to solve the case and keep her out of prison. To do this, they make an escape from the courtroom (huh???) and travel to Cuba to wrap things up...ridiculous, of course, but no more so than the typical film in the genre!! Decent acting...otherwise not much to distinguish this one.

I was interested to learn that the source for this film was a Broadway play of the same name. The Night Of January 16th was a play authored by Ayn Rand. To my viewing eye it certainly looked like all that objectivist philosophy was boiled out of the script and we are left with a reasonably entertaining B picture from Paramount.The plot centers around business executive Nils Asther who is being called to account for 20 million dollars missing from his company books. Among those doing the accounting is Robert Preston who is the heir to the company founder and attends the board meeting in his sailor suit.Before Asther can account, Ellen Drew his private secretary gets into a jackpot accused of his murder. It's thought by the police that Drew helped out his apartment window. There's still the missing money.Preston and Drew make our law enforcement machinery look like fools as they escape and avoid recapture. Hats off to Cecil Kellaway for his part as a soused playboy whom they use in their escape. Kellaway is a marvelous drunk.It's a quick trip to Havana where the two figure out where the embezzled money is located. There's quite a surprise in that also.Preston and Drew are quite breezy in their leads. A little bit of Preston's most famous role Professor Harold Hill from The Music Man is found in his performance here. That's all to the good.I'm sure the Broadway play was radically different than this.

This should be listed as an 'escapist mystery' as it is escapist entertainment as it was known right up to WWII, A completely unbelievable mystery with comedic overtones which seeks to be a crowd pleaser. It suffers from too many improbable situations and convenient coincidences and, in 2015, would not go over with modern moviegoers.That said, the mystery angle is a good one, and with an unexpected twist at the end of the picture. Ellen Drew is framed for the murder of her boss (Nils Asther). Robert Preston, just out of the Navy and an heir to stock in the Company in question, takes up her cause and tries to prove her innocence. You squirm and roll your eyes and credulity is stretched to the breaking point as timely interventions and preposterous non-sequiturs nearly spoil the picture - until the surprise ending.Do you like mystery mixed with comedy? That was a staple in Hollywood during this time period, and I never thought they blended well together, especially when the comedy relief is as lame as in this movie. I would make an exception for Cecil Kellaway, who plays a drunk who befriends the pair.A harmless murder mystery which could have been better, especially with the attractive cast and the intriguing plot. It's a good sleep aid - but then you would miss the ending.

Viewed this film online and it is a fairly entertaining and intriguing mystery with Ellen Drew and Robert Preston. Here is the storyline: Board members of the New York Faulkner Corporation demand that their president inform them why $20 million is missing from the company fund. President Bjorn Faulkner refuses to answer and that night meets with a mysterious associate who uses the pseudonym "Anton Haraba." A struggle breaks out between the two men, and Faulkner is apparently murdered when his body falls from the balcony of his penthouse apartment. Kit Lane, Faulkner's private secretary, is arrested for his murder because she is found in the penthouse where she rushed after the dead man's hand hit the intercom to her apartment. Board member Steve Van Ruyle, who recently inherited his position from his uncle, is distressed to learn that his $3 million may have disappeared. He convinces the frantic Faulkner board members that Kit must have been in on an embezzlement plan with Faulkner. With the consent of the board, Steve bails Kit out of jail in order to find out her involvement and soon gets his hands on Faulkner's private diary, in which Haraba's name is noted, followed by a series of numbers and dates. Kit is indicted for Faulkner's murder and the circumstantial evidence at the trial weighs heavily against her. Now sympathetic to Kit, Steve convinces her defense attorney to adjourn the trial to Faulkner's apartment, where he expects him to prove that Kit neither had the time nor the ability to emerge from Faulkner's private elevator and hurl him from the balcony on the night of his death. However, when an attorney proves that Steve bribed the elevator repairman to slow the elevator for the demonstration, Steve escapes with Kit and finds refuge in the apartment of Oscar, a drunken stranger. Kit studies Faulkner's statuette of Atlas supporting a globe, which Steve had pocketed, and notes that several cities marked with jewels represent the cities in which Faulkner had investments. She realizes that she can spell out the name "Haraba" with the first letters of each city and that the investments listed in the diary come out to $20 million. With the further realization that Faulkner intended to go to each city on the date indicated and withdraw the money, Steve convinces the board members to buy them a ticket to Havana, the last city in the book. In Havana, Steve and Kit impersonate a married couple and after an exhaustive search at various hotels, learn that Haraba is checked into their own hotel. They page Haraba, knowing that whoever he is, he must be the killer, and while Steve instructs the hotel bartender on how to mix his favorite unique drink, Kit goes to her room to change. She is shocked to find Faulkner there and realizes that he killed Haraba and dressed him in his clothes so that the mutilated corpse would be identified as he. Faulkner takes Kit to his room and at the same time, Steve is arrested by the Cuban police. They take him to get Kit, and when he finds her gone, he is tipped off by a waiter going to Faulkner's room with his favorite drink concoction, about which only Kit could know. He rushes to Faulkner's room in time to save Kit from death, and New York police inspector Donegan, working with the Cuban police, arrives to arrest Faulkner. Kit and Steve are freed and rather than continuing to impersonate a married couple, they marry.