New York Express

Well this was surprising little treat - a light-hearted '30s crime thriller with an appealing lead, a fun cast of supporting characters, a snappy pace, and a delightfully absurd second half that takes place on a rather fanciful mode of transport.

The film opens in New York on New Year's Eve, with penniless, out-of-work English showgirl Jennie Carr (winsome blonde Anna Lee) meeting lawyer Billy Cooper (James Pirrie) in a café, and accepting an invitation for dinner at his apartment. The evening doesn't go as planned, however, when criminal Hugo Brant (Francis L. Sullivan) turns up, forcefully ejects Jennie (chicken leg in hand), and then shoots Cooper for refusing to work for him any longer. Blissfully unaware of the murder, Jennie returns to England, where she is arrested on a trumped up charge of robbery.

When Jennie is released from prison, she reads about Cooper's murder in the paper, and discovers that a vagrant called Henry Abel has been wrongly convicted of the killing and faces the death penalty. Jennie tries to tell the authorities about the men who confronted Cooper in his apartment, but Brant (now in England) ensures that no-one believes her story. Desperate to save Abel's life, Jennie stows on board the Airline, a flying boat destined for New York.

Up to this point, the film has been fun, but nothing particularly special; however, when the Airline takes off, so does the film, Jennie's journey being hugely entertaining from start to finish, with a wonderfully eclectic selection of co-passengers adding to the enjoyment: London police inspector Jim Grant, con-artist Sam Pryor (Frank Cellier), young violin prodigy Arnold James (Desmond Tester) and his aunt veronica (Athene Seyler), and, of course, the wicked Brant, who will do anything to stop Jennie from testifying. The plane itself is also a major character: a massive double decker craft complete with dining room, bar, luxurious cabins, and - best of all - a balcony from which passengers can observe ships passing below!

Duplicitous Sam's plan to blackmail Brant involves plucky young Arnold getting in over his head, lucky Jim becomes romantically involved with Jennie, and Brant leaves the plane mid-flight courtesy of Aunt Veronica's parachute, the fiend having killed the pilot. In the film's incredible climax, heroic Jim Grant has to climb over the top of the plane's exterior as it plunges towards the ocean, a wonderfully bonkers moment that really has to be seen to be believed.

"Non-Stop New York" is a delightful film from 1937 starring Anna Lee, John Loder, and Francis L. Sullivan.

Anna Lee (Lila Quartermaine on General Hospital) is pretty Jenny Carr, a young British actress in New York City with a flop play. So soon, she'll be on her way back to London. She meets a man who sees she's hungry and offers to buy her a meal.

That man is later murdered, and a bum is arrested. He is due to be executed in a matter of days. He says that an English girl knows he didn't do it, but no one can find her. She's already home. Once she sees a headline that she's being searched for, she realizes she has to get back to the US immediately. She and her mother find a plane that goes London to NY in 18 hours, and her mother pretends to be drowning while Jenny boards the plane.

Little does Jenny know but the real killers are out to stop her.

This plane is something to behold. It's a clipper, and apparently this type of plane did exist. Wish it still did. The inside is more like a train, with sleeping compartments, dining room, and one can step out onto a terrace like thing outside the plane. It also flies rather low. Totally amazing.

Francis L. Sullivan is excellent as the slimy gang head who wears different disguises in his quest to get rid of Jenny. Apparently - could this be true - he was 35 years old when he did this. If you'd told me he was 65 I would have believed you.

John Loder, who was married at one time to Hedy Lamarr, is the handsome investigator who really doesn't believe Jenny.

This film is available on youtube. Try and see it - it's very enjoyable.

Robert Stevenson (1905-1986) was a superb British director, but his name is not widely enough recognised. He is probably most famous for JANE EYRE (1944) with Orson Welles and TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS (1940). Less well known are his excellent DISHONORED LADY (1947, see my review), and his truly magnificent OWD BOB (1938, see my review), which he made the year after this. In this year, he also made KING SOLOMON'S MINES with Anna Lee, who stars once again in this film of his. This really is a most fascinating film, because of the spectacular second half which takes place on a trans-Atlantic Clipper seaplane, the interior of which resembles that of a zeppelin, on multiple levels with individual sleeping compartments, bar and restaurant. It even has a little balcony where people stand outside to take the air and look down upon the ships which are not far below them. Francis L. Sullivan here gives one of his finest performances as the oiliest and least scrupulous of villains, truly hair-raising in his wickedness. Anna Lee is a typical 1930s English 'sweetie', but with more fibre and character than is usual for that time, and she handles the part of the courageous accidental heroine very well. She is determined to save the wrong man from being executed in America for a crime he did not commit. Anna stows away on the Clipper to get back to America to give her evidence, which Scotland Yard had refused to take seriously. This is very much a Hitchcock-style suspense thriller, and makes excellent viewing. It deserves to be more widely known, as it is certainly a British pre-War classic. If Britain had as many film buffs as there are in America, where almost any trivial B or C movie can achieve fame nowadays, films like this would be familiar and praised, rather than obscure and forgotten. But the British are lazy about their cinematic heritage, and films like this are never shown on British television, so no one even knows they exist. In this film, the child actor Desmond Tester is most amusing as an eccentric child musical prodigy who becomes entangled in the murderous intrigues going on aboard the Clipper plane. If only British films still produced wonderfully strange character actors like that! It was also amusing to see a young Peter Bull scowling with his heavy jowls as a blackmailer in this film. In real life, he was actually rather jolly, although extraordinarily bombastic and often too loud, and he was always available for a chat when he ran his astrological shop in Notting Hill Gate in the 1960s and 1970s.

In NYC, struggling actress Jennie Carr (Anna Lee) finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery, with her own life in imminent danger. After fleeing to London, and getting little help from Scotland Yard, Jennie stows away on the transatlantic mega-plane of the title.

The NON-STOP NEW YORK is a sort of luxury liner in the sky. It gets very interesting when both the killers and a Scotland Yard Inspector happen to be aboard for the flight.

Packed with intrigue, thrills, and humor, this movie deserves to be rediscovered...

From the moment starving chorus girl Anna Lee spends her last 20 cents in a grimy New York coffee joint to the crazy Mission Impossible style finale, this is wall to wall entertainment. A really fabulous fun adventure.

What makes this special is that ALL the characters are properly written characters, they've all got personalities and all those personalities are interesting and quirky. Not only is the writing outstanding (with a genuinely amusing script) but so is the acting. OK, most of them are pretty over the top but also believable as real people. The villains are especially villainous especially Mr Jaggers who is gloriously sinister.

When some 1930s pictures, especially American ones, profess to be funny they try much too hard so end up being annoyingly stupid. Character driven humour is only funny if you can believe the characters are people and that's what this achieves. The humour in this is refreshingly subtle, it's dark and witty. As the story evolves, its credibility is stretched to breaking point but as far-fetched as it becomes, Robert Stevenson directs the increasing absurdity as seriously as any drama which adds another dimension to its depth.

I've previously not been too impressed by Anna Lee but in this she's the perfect, wide-eyed thirties movie damsel-in-distress. She's very believable as one of those hundreds of adventurous English girls who ran off to tread the boards in the twenties and thirties. You can really engage with her. Even the precocious child is not annoying!

(No idea why some people have called this is a sci-fi movie?????)