AllMovie

Framed represented the return of Evelyn Brent to her old home studio of FBO, which by 1930 had been rechristened RKO Radio. Brent plays Rose Manning, a sexy nightclub hostess who hopes to avenge the murder of her father. Holding the local police chief responsible (the chief is played by William Holden -- but not that William Holden), Rose sets about to seduce and compromise the chief's patrolman son Jimmy McArthur (Regis Toomey), only to fall in love with the boy. To save Jimmy from being put "on the spot," Rose double-crosses her crooked cohort, bootlegger Chuck Gaines (Ralf Harolde). Both contemporary critics and later film historians noted that Framed borrowed freely from such earlier "slice of life" crime mellers as Broadway (which also starred Evelyn Brent) and The Racket.