“Kitty Carlisle and Carl Brisson are co-starring in ‘Earl Carroll Vanities,' and plan to get married after the opening night performance. Brisson's old flame, Gertrude Michael, makes him postpone the marriage by threatening to expose the fact that the wardrobe woman is actually Brisson's mother who is wanted for a 30-year-old murder. Lights and sandbags start falling from the catwalks, barely missing Carlisle, and stage manager Jack Oakie calls gruff police sergeant Victor McLaglen in to investigate. Murder at the Vanities was a combination murder mystery and spectacular musical which pushed the limits of bawdiness and nudity farther than they would go in any American film until the 1960s. In the opening number, ‘Where Do They Go,' a fantastic spectacle unfolds: a series of tableaux depicts ‘Where do they come from,' each utilizing some sly blue joke, and to show ‘Where do they go?' the stage is transformed into a giant dressing table decorated with nudes. The lids of the powder boxes open and the mirrors reflect more nudes reposing inside. The film's most famous number, ‘Sweet Marijuana,' features Gertrude Michael moaning a lament about a lost lover and the marijuana that will ‘bring him back to me although it's just a fantasy,' in front of a line of chorus boys in sombreros.”