Secrets of Scotland Yard

Room 40--deactivated 1919 republic studios.

During WWI, an organization in the British government named 'Room 40' was responsible for cracking the German codes and it was very effective. However, in 1919, after the war, the organization was disbanded. "Secrets of Scotland Yard" goes on the premise that Room 40 was STILL functioning into WWII.

After the Germans realized how effective Room 40 was during WWI, forward thinking Germans decided they had to infiltrate this organization...even if it took many years to do. By the time the film begins in about 1939, the Germans FINALLY have a spy within Room 40. The Brits realize this when one of their top cryptologists is murdered while working on the latest German cypher! It just so happens that the dead man has an identical twin...and the head of Room 40 enlists his help to try to expose the spy.

While the film was made by Republic and has a couple of relative unknowns in the leads, the film is unusual because of its excellent supporting cast, including: C. Aubry Smith, Henry Stephenson, John Abbott and Lionel Atwill. This is surprising, as most of Republic's films were made on the cheap. I assume that because this was a wartime propaganda picture, this would explain the added expense of the supporting cast.

While the film's plot is pretty farfetched, it IS entertaining and must have been a decent propaganda piece. Well worth seeing despite it being a rather cheap B-movie.

1944's "Secrets of Scotland Yard" is a forgotten Republic programmer featuring an unusually strong cast for a poverty row studio, and scripted by Denison Clift, best known as both writer and director of Lugosi's "Mystery of the Marie Celeste," shot in England in 1935. The Germans admit that their defeat in WW1 resulted from the clerks working in Scotland Yard's Room 40, successfully decoding German messages, and General Carl Eberling (Louis V. Arco) responds by installing a counterspy to aid the enemy. 20 years later, C. Aubrey Smith plays Sir Christopher Pelt, new head of Room 40, who heads up the investigation when top decoder John Usher (Edgar Barrier) is found murdered in Room 40 by an unknown assailant. Pelt recruits John's twin brother Robert (also Barrier) to secretly replace John in an effort to ferret out the killer amongst the other clerks (Lionel Atwill, John Abbott, Forrester Harvey, Frederick Worlock, and Matthew Boulton, all veterans of Universal's SHERLOCK HOLMES series). The reliable Martin Kosleck makes an all-too-brief appearance as a Nazi villain, Mary Gordon (Mrs. Hudson in the HOLMES films) plays the Usher housekeeper, William Edmunds (Mr. Martini in "It's a Wonderful Life") shows up as a sinister bookstore proprietor. Both C. Aubrey Smith and Stephanie Bachelor would be back the following year in a similar title, "Scotland Yard Investigator," from the same director, George Blair. This was one of the last films for the bespectacled Lionel Atwill, who is seen to great advantage throughout; his career never recovered from the sex scandal at Christmas 1940, the kind of private party that would go completely unnoticed today. Refusing to bow to attempted blackmail, he 'lied like a gentleman' under oath to protect others, paying the price as Hollywood mostly turned its back on him, except for Universal, Republic, RKO, and PRC, their low budget productions given greater stature by his unfailing professionalism. His last film was the Universal serial "Lost City of the Jungle," which only finished after his bronchial cancer forced him to withdraw, dying at age 61 in April 1946.

When the Germans lost the First World War, it was blamed on Room 40 of the Old Admiralty Building, their code and cypher room. Then began a sinister plan to plant a spy in that room, which has come to fruition with the outbreak of the Second World War. The crew has worked hard, and Edgar Barrier has cracked the current German code. But when the crew comes in they find him dead and the blackboard he had the solution on erased. With the realization there is a spy there, the officer in charge, the always welcome C. Aubrey Smith plants Barrier's brother, also played by Barrier, to take his brother's place. Only Smith and Barrier's son/nephew, Bobby Cooper know of the substitution. But others soon become suspicious, and Smith's murder leaves his assistant, Lionel Atwill in charge. Can they break the new code, or will more deaths follow?

George Blair's second movie in the director's chair -- with R. G. Springstein his AD -- is a pretty good mystery. With a tinge of old-fashioned spy melodrama True enough, Great Britain's code-cracking had already sshifted to Bletchley Park, but that wasn't general knowlege. It's one of the taut little thrillers that Republic turned out when they weren't shootin westerns. With Stephanie Bachelor, Henry Stephenson, John Abbott, Walter Kingsford, and Martin Kosleck.