Verschollen in New York

This is one of the fastest-moving classic films I've ever seen....and very interesting. The story tells of the many people who report missing persons In New York City, and some of the wild stories behind these disappearances. Some are humorous, but most are sad. The main one here centers around Bette Davis, who is wanted in Chicago for allegedly murdering her husband. She meets up with Pat O'Brien, a tough-talking, hard-nosed cop who has just been reluctantly signed up to the bureau.

The dialog is dated but that's what makes some of these early 1930s films interesting. Today, O'Brien would have been slapped with numerous harassment charges the way he talked to women in here and then beat one up late in the movie.

Lewis Stone is excellent as the compassionate head of the bureau. All the characters are interesting and there are some neat plot twists near the end concerning Davis, O'Brien and another man whom Davis says is framing her. I never thought Davis was that attractive but, as young actress here, she looked hot, perhaps the best she ever looked.

This movie really can only be enjoyed if the viewers turn off their brain. That's because although the movie is unique and diverting, at times the plot and writing is abysmal. The plot has holes and improbabilities galore and the character played by Pat O'Brien must be most the stupidest and most unbelievably violent cop of the 1930s. If policemen had REALLY been this dumb, I don't know how we ever could have made it through the decade! Plus, if you combine all his civil rights violations (kicking in doors without warrants, arresting people recklessly and savagely beating his bigamist wife at the end of the film), you get a truly annoying character.

However, if you turn off your brain and watch the film JUST for its entertainment value, it's pretty good stuff. Plus, while it didn't do a lot to make Bette Davis a star, it did give her top billing AND her character was a lot better written than O'Brien's.

Entertaining AND stupid--that about says it all!

Pat O'Brien, Lewis Stone, Bette Davis, Glenda Farrell, and Allen Jenkins star in "Bureau of Missing Persons," a 1933 film from Warner Brothers. I noticed that one person who posted said that this was an extremely fast-moving film. I thought it would never end.

O'Brien plays Butch Saunders, a detective who is thought to have been a little too violent in his police work, so he is assigned the Bureau. He turns out to be good at his job.

Davis plays a young woman whose husband is missing. Normally in her early films, Davis is very blond, and very glamorous. Here she's not. Her role is an interesting one, with a couple of twists. She's very good, of course, but I doubt she would have been happy in this type of role for her entire career.

There are some other plot lines going on, with Lewis Stone a kindly man who tries to help people, and Glenda Farrell gives a fun performance as Belle. It's a familiar cast in their very young days and worth seeing for that reason. I admit I found it dragged a little.

Every day the front desk of the Bureau of Missing Persons is crowded with people trying to locate loved ones who have turned up missing - some by accident and some on purpose. Not sure if this picture is accurate in its conception of a BMP, but it's a fascinating look at how it might be. It presents a series of vignettes, some funny some serious, of different cases the Bureau might handle.

The main focus is on the newest arrival at the Bureau, a cop (Pat O'Brien)assigned to the Bureau after one too many brutal arrests. He is assigned the case of a woman (Bette Davis) looking for her husband, and with an air of suspicion attached. O'Brien is a strong-armed sort who is assertive and, as is his custom, talks in a loud, penetrating staccato voice which can soon become tiresome. Davis is very pretty here. Her looks did not hold up and grew harder as she got older. There is good chemistry between the two and they rise above the muddled material presented here, dated though it is.

If you are a Golden Age fan, there are many familiar faces, among them Lewis Stone as the Bureau chief, Glenda Farrell as O'Brien's estranged (and strange) wife, Hugh Herbert as a Bureau detective and many more. This formed the basis for my rating because, as previously stated, the material here is hum-drum and somewhat confusing. I thought the picture was fun and better than several reviewers gave it credit for.

...In fact, Warner Brothers seemed very confused as to who they wanted to play the hothead with a (usually) good heart until the production code era. Then it was O'Brien's level headed guy to Cagney's hothead. But here O'Brien is still in hothead mode, as he is Butch, a detective assigned to NYC's Bureau of Missing Persons - the part of the NYPD that tracks down missing persons or sometimes their corpses - because Butch has gotten to be too rough as a regular detective. Hopefully here he will learn to use his head.

Lewis Stone takes a vacation from MGM to play Captain Webb, head of the bureau, with a Judge Hardy style of leadership. It's interesting to see his humane treatment of people who must be informed that the missing is deceased, and how he tries to restore the deliberately missing to their families with minimum embarrassment to the missing or the families. Here we get into precode territory a couple of times.

Bette Davis plays Norma Roberts, a woman who comes to the bureau looking for her missing husband. But to be married to the guy she knows ridiculously little about what he looks like and his habits when Butch questions her. What goes on here? Watch and find out.

This is a great Warner Bros. precode in the Warner Bros. tradition that has an unusual setting. With Ruth Donnelly as the bureau's secretary with mouth and attitude to spare as usual, Glenda Farrell with a cameo role as Butch's estranged wife who is always coming in to clean out his pockets (it was the Depression, a girl's got to eat, you know?), and Allen Jenkins as a bureau detective who for once plays a capable guy who is in the know.