Key Witness

John Beal stars in "Key Witness" from 1947. He plays a somewhat henpecked draughtsman, Milton Higby, who is not ambitious enough for his wife. His real aspiration is to be a novelty inventor.

While his wife is out of town, he has incredible beginner's luck at the race track and wins a fortune.

Unfortunately, he has to go on the run when a woman he meets is murdered. He becomes a hobo.

When he and his friend Smiley find a dead body on the railroad tracks, Higby switches identities with him.

This leads to some good things- he is accepted as the long lost son of the hobo's father and is able to pursue his inventions. Then they're recognized as Milton Higby's.

I met the lead in this film, John Beal, some years ago. A very nice man. When I see he's in a film, I watch it. His Broadway career began in 1931 and ended in 1993, his film career was from 1935-1993.

This B movie is actually pretty good and holds interest, in part I think because the Beal character is so sympathetic. Very satisfying film.

John Beal is a hardworking office worker. He's supervised by petty tyrant Harry Hayden, and things are no better at home, where his wife, Barbara Read, berates him for not getting ahead. Then one day, while Miss Read is out of town, Beal's pl drags him to the horse races, where Beal hits the daily double on a couple of long shots. He tells Hayden off, and is spending some of the money on a good time when the girl he is with has her ex-husband come in and shoot her dead. Terrified by the thought of being found guilty of murder, Beal becomes a hobo for several years. Then one day he winds up in the hospital, where he is mistaken for a rich industrialist's son, who the man has not seen since he was two.

Although this might have made a nice two-reel movie, or perhaps an episode of the Alfred Hitchcock show, it goes on way too long, with Beal being an inert lump who absorbs good and bad luck like a bean bag. At a shorter length, it might have some sardonic wit. But at 67 minutes, you have time to despise every character in it.

Fortunately for Beal, he was another of those actors who didn't need the silver screen. He lived for another fifty years and prospered, on stage and big and little screens, dying in 1997 at the age of 87.

Mechanical genius.......or just an eccentric oddball, who might attempt to cross a turkey with a banjo in the hope of producing a bird capable of plucking itself? Sullen supervisor (Harry Hayden) clearly thinks the latter of docile draughtsman, John Beal's fanciful ideas, having no time for his talking clock or innovative interactive light switch. Beal's stock falls even further, when he damages a gift bought for the company boss. Without complaint, the compliant Beal shells out for a replacement.

Domestic life paints a similar picture. Despite a loving wife (Barbara Read), his noble ambitions have fallen foul of the 'too young, too old, wrong time, wrong place' mindset. He's little more than Mr. Mop.....with his talking clock! During his wife's absence, he is initially hesitant about a day at the races (the track meeting, not the movie!), as he has promised to clean up at home. In the event, he cleans up at the track, but celebrations are short lived when he becomes the chief suspect (despite tenuous evidence) in the murder of a female acquaintance. Once again Beal turns out to be the dripping tap, rather than the water cannon, choosing to run away and exist as a hobo. Stealing the documents and adopting the identity of a dead drifter becomes a life changing experience of mammoth proportions, but will his wacky, quirky gadgets be the making or the breaking of him?

Devoid of both a big budget and a big name, 'Key Witness' succeeds by virtue of a big heart. Well acted and consistently satisfying, unconventionally bouncy, buoyant and frothy, but tempered by a pervading dark, forbidding undercurrent and an unnerving twist. An enlightened curiosity, a rare bird......a novelty noir.

Key Witness is a B movie with B actors, but gets A directing. And the screenplay is so outrageously unlikely that it was highly entertaining for me. It would make a wonderful midnight movie. I would go as Smiley.

The mechanical objects depicted in the film are clever and an integral part of the film. The movie is a bit reminiscent of the hobo classic, Sullivan's Travels, that wonderful 1941 film starring Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake. Quite frankly, I thought that film was better than the Oscar winner that year, How Green Was My Valley.

This film breezes by in just over an hour, and you kind of wish it would have lasted longer. Lots of fun.

A short flick lasting 66' with a largely unknown cast, this shoestring production actually had me riveted throughout thanks to an imaginative script, sharp dialogue, an unassuming leading male character (no frills from John Beal, apart from the apparently useless gadgets he keeps inventing), his disappointed and downputting wife in a surprisingly cynical role by Barbara Read and Charles Trowbridge in a short but effective part as the father of the dead character Beal gets to impersonate.

Better cinematography than this type of C production tended to have.

I thoroughly enjoyed it!