Bureau of Missing Persons

For getting too rough on robbery cases, New York City detective Pat O'Brien (as "Butch" Saunders) is transferred to the "Bureau of Missing Persons" where he must answer to MGM stalwart Lewis Stone (as Captain Webb) who appears to be moonlighting at First National-Warner Bros. Typical of the missing is businessman Clay Clement (as Burton C. Kingman) - found honeymooning with a woman who is not his wife. Also located by Mr. O'Brien is 12-year-old prodigy Tad Alexander (as Caesar Paul)...

When her husband runs away with their cook, a woman tells Mr. Stone, "Never mind about him, I want my cook!"

After a half hour getting to know smooth-talking detective Allen Jenkins (as Joe Musik) and the cast, the main case gets started when beautiful young Bette Davis (as Norma Williams) arrives on screen, to report her groom missing. Very obviously, Ms. Davis is holding back some important details about her so-called missing husband. Business is mixed with pleasure as O'Brien, separated from so-called wife Glenda Farrell (as Belle) for a year, is attracted to Davis. Stay tuned for murder and other mayhem.

***** Bureau of Missing Persons (9/8/33) Roy Del Ruth ~ Pat O'Brien, Bette Davis, Lewis Stone, Allen Jenkins

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!

...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.

If you've already seen all the well-known studio films from the early 30's, it's fun to go back and fill in with some lesser known ones, like this typical Warner's B-movie.

Its director, Roy del Ruth, was strictly B-list at this point in his career. The supporting cast -- Allen Jenkins, Ruth Donnelly, Glenda Farrell, Hugh Herbert -- are familiar from the Busby Berkeley movies, and each brings a stereotyped character briefly to life, which is what they were paid to do. Farrell in particular is funny as a gold-digger.

Pat O'Brien is actually the lead, although Bette Davis was given top billing. He's best known for playing butch types -- reporters, cops, soldiers, manly priests. (In this one, Butch is actually his character's name!) His performance here is surprisingly subtle and varied; it makes me want to see more of his movies.

Unfortunately the story is hopelessly implausible and unconvincing. Davis does the best she can with a confusingly-written part, although I can't quite tell whether she's trying to do an accent or not. And she changes from a blonde to a brunette halfway through -- was she shooting another picture at the same time?

The whole thing looks like it was thrown together in a couple of weeks. Probably the only really demanding scene to film was a car chase near the end, shot on location (or was it stock footage?).

All in all, probably worth 72 minutes of your time if you happen to run across it on TCM. Don't expect too much though...

BUREAU OF MISSING PERSONS (First National Pictures for Warner Brothers, 1933), directed by Roy Del Ruth, is a fast-paced, pre-code production that has the distinction pre-dating those police shows on television by twenty or so years. The basic premise of what's to be shown is best described by its opening passage: "All over the world thousands of persons disappear every day. New York City alone reported over 27,00 missing last year. Why people prop from sight, where they go, and how they are found is the problem of a special and little known department of police – The Bureau of Missing Persons. Many incidents in this picture are taken from actual cases in police records." Or so they say.

Based on the story "Missing Men" by John Ayers and Carol Bird, the first half hour follows the day by day routine of what employees of the bureau go through on a daily basis. Joe (Allen Jenkins) checks the morgue to see if any one of the missing people on his list happens to be one of the deceased; Hank Slade (Hugh Herbert – in a straight non-comedic performance) has been looking for Gwendolyn Harris for the past six months, with no clue in sight. "Butch" Saunders (Pat O'Brien), a breezy detective with plenty of nerve (with catch phrase, "I bet you dollar six bids"), has been transferred to the bureau under Captain Webb (Lewis S. Stone), head of the department, where Saunders is to discipline himself by using common sense rather than his strong arm method. One of his first assignments is to locate Burton C. Kingman (Clay Clement), a married businessman having an affair with Alice Crane (Noel Francis). His next assignment is locating Caesar Paul (Tad Alexander), a famous boy violinist of 12, missing for ten days, who'd rather disappoint his parents (Marjorie Gateson and Wallis Clark) by being a regular boy with the fellas than having a concert career. Butch's biggest problems occur as Belle (Glenda Farrell), his wife with whom he's been separated for a year, coming to the scene demanding her allowance; and Norma Williams (Bette Davis), a former private secretary, whom Butch helps to locate her husband, Therme Roberts (Alan Dinehart), unaware that there's more to what Norma's been telling him to solve the case that involves a murder. Featured along with a huge assortment of Warner Brothers stock players (except for Lewis Stone on loan from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), include Ruth Donnelly (The Receptionist); Henry Kolker (Theodore Arno); George Chandler (Homer Howard); and Hobart Cavanaugh (Mr. Harris).

Although Bette Davis name heads the cast, she basically a supporting character whose character doesn't appear until 31 minutes into the start of the movie, which very much belongs to the third billed Pat O'Brien, making his Warner Brothers debut. Coming off best is the wisecracking Glenda Farrell as the gold-digging ex-wife whose three or four scenes add much to the antics at the bureau as she enters the scenes yelling for "Butchie Wutchie," yet there's one scene alone, involving Farrell, meant for laughs in 1933, might come across as a little disturbing today.

While basically serious when it comes to police methods, BUREAU OF MISSING PERSONS does have its share of unintentional laughs, especially where Lewis Stone seriously and with a straight face orders his men to hire an airplane to follow a carrying pigeon to the location of a hideout of kidnappers. Interestingly, Bette Davis, looks years older to her true age here, especially later when she changes her hair color from blonde to brown. Her character also comes and goes throughout the story, with at one point showing up at her own funeral to see how she looks in a coffin after being reported dead.

Could it be possible some of the scenes depicted are based on actual incidents? Or is it possible that the writers just simply added doses of their own originality to embellish what actually happened? For O'Brien's debut for Warners, he showed great promise to become the studio's stock player, often opposite James Cagney later on. While O'Brien worked with Davis earlier in an independent reform school melodrama of HELL'S HOUSE (Capital Films, 1932), their paths would never meet again at Warners.

Decades before Turner Classic Movies would acquire the rights to this and other nearly forgotten Warner Brothers programmers from the thirties to forties, BUREAU OF MISSING PERSONS did have its share of broadcasts prior to 1974 on WPHL, Channel 17, in Philadelphia (where I initially viewed this rare find), the now former home of the Warner Brothers classic film library. Distributed to video cassette in the 1990s, and DVD a decade later, this 75 minute programmer is never dull through its actions and performances. Remade by Warners as THE MISSING WITNESS (1937) with John Litel and Joan Dale, this original is much better, "I bet you dollar six bids." (***)