The Lone Wolf in Paris

Francis Lederer is the Lone Wolf, retired jewel thief and a bit bored by it. He's staying at a hotel in paris, where various foreign nobles report that their suites have been robbed -- raising the manager's suspicions of Lederer -- of nothing. Lederer discovers that Princess Frances Drake of Made-Uppia is present, trying to recover the crown jewels necessary for her brother's coronation; their mother, Ruth Robinson, borrowed money on them, but now the lenders, led by Grand Duke Walter Kingsford, refuses to let her redeem them; he plans to run the country when the jewels in the crown turn out to be paste. So Lederer offers to help the Princess out.

Lederer plays the role with aplomb, considerably more than all the dukes and royals combined. His tricks are simple and invariably succeed, until the bad guys point guns at him. It's a nice little adventure movie that gets it over in 66 minutes, and then you can get on with something else.

In "The Lone Wolf in Paris", Michael Lanyard is played by Francis Lederer. He was fine in the role, though quite a bit different from Warren Williams' version of the character....not better, not worse...just different.

The story, naturally, begins in Paris. He comes to know a princess in the most unusual way....she's inside a trunk that is delivered to his room! She soon pulls out a gun and is about to make her escape with some jewels when Lanyard overpowers her....and quickly looks over the jewels and pronounces them to be fakes! No harm done, the woman leaves. Later, when Lanyard goes to dinner, he meets the princess and ingratiates himself to her. He wants to know what's happening....and she confides in him that three scoundrels from her country have three crown jewels. It seems the queen used them as collateral for a loan....and when she tried to pay them back, they refused her money. It seems that they want to embarrass the royalty and somehow make themselves leader of this fictional nation. Naturally, Lanyard agrees to steal the jewels and return them to the princess because, apparently, he loves the idea of rule by a small, highly inbred hereditary ruler.

So is this any good? Yes....very good for a B-mystery. The pacing is nice, Lederer is nice as the suave reformed criminal and the story ends wonderfully...at least for the royal family.

There's nothing really wrong with this movie. There just isn't much of interest. It's a stereotypical story of three nobles who are holding the queen of an obscure small country hostage with the hope of replacing her and her son and taking over the throne. (To do what? We're led to believe that there's nothing much to the country.) The queen's daughter meets a reformed jewel thief, the Lone Wolf of the title, and enlists his aid in getting back some royal jewels that the three evil nobles intend to use to force the queen to abdicate. (She sold the jewels to them to help the starving peasants in her bankrupt country, but needs them now that her son is about to be crowned, and they, baddies that they are, won't sell them back. Nasty nasty.) The Lone Wolf agrees to come out of retirement, so to speak, because he's attracted to the princess.

Things work out as you would expect.

As I said, there's nothing wrong with this. It's just all pretty much movies by the numbers, and not interesting.

This time, it's Francis Lederer who takes on the role of Michael Lanyard in "The Lone Wolf in Paris" from 1938, directed by Albert S. Rogell. Eric Blore is his assistant, named Jenkins instead of Jamison.

The minute Lanyard and Jenkins enter their hotel, they are accused of theft! Lanyard has to show letters from Europe's top police forces to convince them he's out of the jewel robbery business.

When he gets to his suite, he finds a woman hiding in his open trunk as the house detectives search. They have robbery on the brain.

The woman's story unfolds. She is a princess. Hir mother used the crown jewels of her country as loan collateral. When she went to repay the loan, the people who gave her the loan decided they would rather rule the country. The theft will be discovered at her brother's coronation, which will then not take place.

Lanyard then begins his quest to get the jewels back, which have been replaced with paste.

Lederer is so handsome and dashing, and of course his Wolf has a much more European sophistication. Plus he's very romantic. He doesn't have Warren William's humor, but he's still good.

I didn't see the best print, but I recommend it. Lederer is a favorite of mine, a delightful actor. A week before he died at age 100, he was still teaching at his acting school.

Melvin Douglas starred in Columbia's 1935 remake of the 1926 silent "The Lone Wolf Returns," while Francis Lederer takes on the role in this isolated followup from 1938. The series proper begins with the next entry, "The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt" (1939), which starred Warren William in the first of his nine films that continued through 1943 (the character featured in six silent features and three early talkies before the Douglas remake). Obviously the inspiration for the Saint and the Falcon, The Lone Wolf was a reformed jewel thief with an eye for the ladies, and in "Paris," they don't get much prettier than Frances Drake ("Mad Love", "The Invisible Ray"), cast as a princess in distress. The dependable Walter Kingsford and a young Albert Dekker (billed as Albert Van Dekker) are among the villains but they don't come off as being a very dangerous bunch hence the middling grade, though Lederer is perfectly acceptable if one can excuse the accent (which made him an intriguing choice for the title role in "The Return of Dracula" in 1958.) In this film and the previous entry with Douglas, The Lone Wolf's valet is named Jenkins but beginning with Warren William's debut film the character was dubbed Jamison and thereafter played in all but one film by Eric Blore. The Wolf's given name is Michael Lanyard but Lederer's first name is spelled Michel. This is one of the five entries from 1935 to 1949 that has yet to be shown on Turner Classic Movies so that may explain why there have been no prior comments. Hardly an essential entry but worth a look for the curious.