Nancy Steele Is Missing!

1937's "Nancy Steele is Missing!" features its title as a screaming newspaper headline, the infant daughter of munitions manufacturer Michael Steele (Walter Connolly), in the days leading up to America joining in the First World War. The kidnapper is Dannie O'Neill (Victor McLaglen), a Steele employee so dedicated to pacifism that he resorts to this drastic step just to keep his nation out of battle. Leaving the baby with friends who believe him to be away working aboard ship, O'Neill foolishly attacks two cops sent to arrest him for assault, turning a two year prison term into 20 by taking the blame for a failed jailbreak orchestrated by taunting Cockney convict Harry Wilkins (John Carradine). O'Neill has a cellmate, the bespectacled killer Professor Sturm (Peter Lorre), foolishly caught because he attended his victim's funeral, 'curious to see what they could do about that hole in his head!' Once O'Neill is released, he intends to continue his long delayed blackmail scheme, unaware of the lurking presence of the dangerous Sturm, who has also bided his time, like a cobra waiting to strike. It's an oddly sympathetic portrait of a kidnapper, not generally allowed by the Hays Code, intended for Wallace Beery (who balked at working for director Otto Preminger, replaced by George Marshall), but a much better fit for Victor McLaglen, whose pacifist never convinces, forever looking for a fight, and usually finding it. Still new to Hollywood, and just before beginning his Mr. Moto series at Fox, the quiet and amusing Peter Lorre makes off with the whole picture, his diminutive appearance belied by his overpowering stature in the prison, the other inmates keeping their distance out of respect...or fear. The clean shaven John Carradine, sporting a truly dreadful Cockney accent, only gets a couple of scenes to taunt Dannie, calling him 'a dirty spy' as he goads him into starting the jail break, in at the 18 minute mark, out at 33, still smirking at O'Neill's misfortune. Lorre and Carradine would do seven more pictures together- "Thank You, Mr. Moto," "I'll Give a Million," "Mr. Moto's Last Warning," "Around the World in Eighty Days," "The Story of Mankind," "Hell Ship Mutiny," and "The Patsy" (Lorre's last film).

Watching George Marshall's "Nancy Steele Is Missing", I wondered if it was partly based on the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby (apparently one of the biggest news stories of the early '30s). Victor McLaglen puts on an intense performance as a man who kidnaps his boss's daughter in the hopes of keeping the US out of World War I. Sent to jail for an unrelated crime, he gets out years later and meets the girl, who knows nothing of what happened. But there's still more to come.

I interpreted the movie to mean that you can never fully predict how a scheme will go, especially when it involves something questionable. The dim lighting emphasizes the intensity; it's the sort of movie that makes you feel as if you're walking on eggshells. I wouldn't call it a masterpiece, but the performances and direction make up for any shortcomings.

Designed to showcase McLaghlen in another dumb-brute-Irishman role similar to the one he played in "The Informer," this little crime story is as clever and snappy as "The Informer" is pretentious, and McLaghlen's very good in it. Even better is Peter Lorre as a devilish little jailbird who tries to get the better of the big guy.

Despite its fairly routine, convoluted and at times difficult to follow plot, Nancy Steele Is Missing! is a grand example of studio moviemaking at its best. The script is no great shakes, but the cast,--Victor McLaglen, Peter Lorre, Walter Connolly--is, and the art direction and shadowy photography are first rate, at times more suggestive pictorially of gothic horror than a realistic crime story. That the movie recounts the story of the kidnapping of a child also gives it, for me anyway, a horrifying aspect, albeit a real life rather than supernatural one.

Victor McLaglen's wife has died, and he broods over it and the scars he has accumulated. He settles on munitions manufacturer Walter Connolly and kidnaps his infant daughter, then hands him to his sister and brother-in-law, and prepares to leave. Before he can, he's picked up on another charge and spends twenty years in prison, with Peter Lorre as his puling cell mate. Released, he goes to find his sister long dead, his brother-in-law dying, and the kidnapped girl, June Lang, delighted with her father. Connolly, whom he runs into, is sympathetic, and offers him a job as a gardener on his Long Island estate. As his fondness for Miss Lang grows, he finds that Lorre has stolen his papers proving her identity and offered another woman as Connolly's daughter.

It seems a role tailor-made for the star of The Informer, even though the part was offered to Wallace Beery with Otto Preminger as director. Attitudes ensued, and. George Marshall wound up directing and.... well, something's wrong. Perhaps it's McLaglen's constant attitude of sullenness, perhaps it's Barney McGill's crime-drama cinematography. The story is still interesting, but what emerges on the screen is interesting, rather than compelling.