Last Call at Chez Mort

By Lee Mueller

Return to the Golden age of the 1940s and the famous Jazz club "Chez Mort". On this particular night, the club was the scene of a strange accident. Or was it an accident? As newspapers of the day reported: "Ingenue 'Sweet Sue' Blutowsky was mysteriously and fatally cut short during her debut singing performance. Inspector Constantine was quick on the scene to investigate the strange circumstances surrounding the shocking events."

In attendance on that fateful night was the infamous hoodlum Big Suit Stu and his Russian bodyguard or maybe he was German. Anyway...

Was Big Suit the culprit? Or was it the ditzy French Emcee Jean Paul Truffaut? Maybe it was the happy-go-lucky Stage Hand or someone else.
Journey back in time and join the good inspector on that dark and rainy evening.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee Mueller
• Release date: Mar 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9780463208403

Lee Mueller

Lee Anians-Mueller was born in St. Louis, Missouri. For thirty years he has been involved in the performing arts, from acting to directing, and most notably as a playwright.Starting on stage as an actor in High School, through college, and onto Community theatre. Lee even made it to the silver screen as a sewer dweller in Escape From New YorkLee spent many years in the trenches of the St. Louis Comedy club circuit in comedy sketch/improv groups: The Way Off-Broadway Players The Bottom Line, and Wit's End; - as a performer and writer. It wasn't long before the world of acting in plays and writing comedy sketches merged and he began writing plays for fun.His first one-act play, In Between Days; was selected to be produced during a national writers conference at local Missouri College. His second one-act, The Favor was chosen as a finalist in a short play competition by Pamoja Players in St. Louis.For the past 15 years, Lee has specialized in comedy murder mystery plays that have been produced all over the world. In 2007 his play Murder Me Alway spent a month on the stage of the Laugh Factory in New York - so technically Lee likes to say one of his scripts played Off-Broadway.His play Death Of A Doornail won Best Original Comedy" at the 27th Annual Arty Awards in Fairfield California.His 12-minute short play The Thing That Happened was featured at SKits in Dramanon Hyderabad, India, and won Best Original Play.

Book preview

Contents

Title Page

Characters

Legal

Act 1

Scene

Act 2

Scene

Productions Notes

Notes

Guide

Contents

Start of Content

LAST CALL AT CHEZ MORT

by

Lee Mueller

© Copyright 2012

Characters

JEAN-PAUL TRUFFAUT- (Juhn Paul True-foe) Host and Nightclub manager. A Frenchman with a thick accent. Is sometimes slow to understand what is happening around him. (can be played by female)

MACK - Streetwise Stage Manager. Typical 1940's hard boiled no nonsense guy.

LADY LELU- (lay-lou) Glamorous Night club singer. Has a bit of a hard shell under her beauty.

BIG SUIT STU - Sharped Dressed Gangster. Bark much worse than bite.

BODYGUARD- Stu's bodyguard. Speaks with Russian / German Accent. Not necessarily menacing in stature. A man (or woman) of few words and some of them English.

SWEET SUE- Ditsy Girlfriend of Big Suit Stu. Dreams of being as glamorous and popular as Lady LeLu. Unfortunately has no talent.

CHIEF INSPECTOR CONSTANTINE - Police inspector who has been around the block a few times. Slightly un-kept and shabby. Sometimes has an issue keeping his facts and names straight. He has worked so many cases they all are starting to run together.  

SMITTY: News reporter.  

Caution: Professionals and amateurs are hereby advised that LAST CALL AT CHEZ MORT is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America and of all countries covered by International

Copyright union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth) and of all countries covered by the Pan-American Copyright Convention and the Universal Copyright, and of all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. All inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to Playedwell, LLC – play-dead.com.

Last Call At Chez Mort was originally produced and staged March 2011 by Affton Centerstage at Crestwood Art Space.

Act 1

Setting is a night club. Original production set contained a small platform to serve as the bandstand (upstage) with an old fashion microphone. Stage left of the bandstand was a piano. Stage right of bandstand is a small table with a water pitcher and glasses. Downstage, are two cafe-style tables with chairs. On the walls behind the bandstand were old 1930’s & 40’s Jazz posters and various European club posters e.g. Folies Begere and La Chat Noir.

Time is the 40’s. Pre-show Music should reflect this with Jazz of the era and Big band.

As the Play starts CONSTANTINE in a wrinkled overcoat enters followed by SMITTY. SMITTY wears a hat with a PRESS card stuck in the hatband. They look around for a moment.

CONSTANTINE: Ah yes! Club Chez Mort. What