A Man Betrayed

Lawyer John Wayne's friend, a high school basketball star from his town, is shot down and then run over by a car. The death is declared a suicide by the local coroner. Wayne goes to the big city to investigate.

Wayne's directed to see Edward Ellis who is the local political boss and of course the Duke falls big time for Ellis's daughter Frances Dee. Never mind he's got a job to do, even if it costs him Dee.

This was John Wayne's one and only attempt at playing a crusader type, a scaled down version of Jefferson Smith. Ellis is a combination of the characters played by Edward Arnold and Claude Rains in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Dee combines both Jean Arthur and Astrid Allwyn. I'd say the results were mixed. Perhaps with a better script at a larger studio with more production values, Wayne might have done more with the part.

As it is there are some nice John Wayne style fight scenes in A Man Betrayed, a couple with Ward Bond, and a king sized brawl outside a polling place where Ellis is bringing in repeaters from his sponsored soup kitchens. Machine politics, American style. Hopefully none of those countries where we're crusading for democracy ever sees this film.

Ward Bond plays the moronic brother of Alexander Granach, owner of the red light district club where Wayne's friend was killed in. His performance while good, was a carbon copy of Lon Chaney, Jr.'s from Of Mice and Men. I expected him to ask Granach about the bunny rabbits any minute.

At this phase of Wayne's career, Republic was casting him in a variety of parts to broaden his casting potential in the wake of his success with Stagecoach. Herbert J. Yates of Republic films was making almost as much money loaning Wayne out as in his own films and he was trying to make him more marketable. He didn't succeed with A Man Betrayed, but it wasn't the Duke's fault by any means.

Going out for the day and seeing the BBC had a John Wayne movie on for the afternoon I left and set the tape running. Later I started to watch it expecting a western, I was disappointed at first and then pleasantly surprised. I have seen very few John Wayne movies that were not westerns and not always good but this I enjoyed. Good storyline and a plot which was well thought out. This is the first time I have seen Frances Dee and she was very convincing in her conflict of emotions in loyalty to her father and love for the "Duke". Edward Ellis was wooden but he was old school so I could put up with that. Ward Bond was unnerving in his role as the simple-minded killer henchman. I shall keep the tape and look for more Frances Dee movies, a good actress easy on the eye - and married for 57 years to the same man - respect!!

In New York, a small-town basketball player stumbles out of kingpin Cameron's club, Inferno, gets struck by lightening and dies. Investigation reveals he was shot but the papers are put under pressure to report it as a suicide. Lawyer Lynn Hollister arrives the next day from Spring Valley to investigate the death, firm in his belief that his friend would not have taken his own life.

From the plot summary, this film sounded like Wayne would be in a tough-talking crime thriller where he uncovers a political web of corruption. However, despite the dramatic (rather supernatural) opening, for over an hour it simply isn't that at all. It actually seems to aim for some sort of light comedy where Lynn is very much the small-town hick who greets everything with a smile and an `ahh-schucks'. This is not a bad thing but it doesn't really sit with the dramatic intensions.

After an hour, Lynn turns on those he has been feeling out for a while, but even then it keeps the gently comic tone in spits and spats. However the arrival of tough talking (even with comic interludes) is welcome and it helps the film a great deal in the final 30 minutes. The lack of tension and excitement is not so much due to the comic stuff as it is to the lack of a really tight, coherent script. The film is about the powerful Cameron who has his hands everywhere - controlling the media and the politicians just enough to put the squeeze on them. However the film doesn't deliver this well enough and I was left unconvinced by the size of the web - and therefore rather uninvolved in the whole film.

Wayne is OK at the comic stuff and the tough talking stuff but it's like he's flicking a switch in this film - tough one minute, completely different the next; it spoils his character a bit. Why his character is called Lynn is beyond me as I've never heard it for a boy before - although Wayne's no stranger to unusual names. Dee is dark and sexy in a good role, but she isn't given enough time. Ellis is OK but fails to come across as the master that the plot requires him to be. A small role for noir favourite Ward Bond adds to the interest.

Overall this is an OK film but it's mix of comedy and drama just doesn't work and it gives the film an uneven feel. It turns it around a bit in the final 25 minutes but by then it is too late to build tension. The power of Cameron never really comes through and, for the majority of the film, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a whimsical romantic comedy rather than a murder mystery film.

An American drama; A story about a country lawyer who courts the daughter of a city politician who he is investigating for corruption. This film is a crime mystery and screwball comedy but it fails to hit the mark on both subgenres because it is short on action and it brims over with dialogue. John Wayne is appealing and his scenes with Francis Dee are satisfying, but he is not so convincing as a small town attorney with small town charm. The film keeps a speedy pace but the story doesn't seem to click together because of its artifice - even the action scenes fail to produce tension because of a trace of comedy.

After a young man supposedly commits suicide after leaving a nightclub in New York, a rural lawyer named "Lynn Hollister" (John Wayne) travels from the same hometown as the victim and goes to the Big Apple to investigate. When he gets there he finds that clues leading to the truth are hard to come by and eventually they lead to a corrupt politician named "Tom Cameron" (Edward Ellis) who knows more than he admits. But rather than simply give up he decides to continue his investigation with the help of the politician's daughter "Sabra Cameron" (Frances Dee). What he doesn't know is that Sabra may not have the same intention of finding the killer as he does. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a typical John Wayne film which benefited from a good plot and a decent script. I was especially impressed with the scenes involving the nightclub called "the Inferno" which could have easily come from a movie filmed 20 or 30 years later. On the other hand, the one thing I didn't care for was the rather jumbled ending which I thought should have been more fully developed. Likewise, I would have preferred a bit more drama as well. Even so, it was a fairly decent movie for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Average.