Un homme à la page

This is a trail movie, the Hitchcock MacGuffin being a $100 marked bill. Where did it come from? Turns out it passed through many hands. Each party on the trail is the center of increasingly interesting scenes until, for meanness, Gene Lockhart bangs the base drum. Talk about noir, the film grows darker and darker, both ways. For me this film is an eye opener as it proceeds from procedural adventure to the interesting seaminess of a flirtation with the allure of serious film noir.

Michael Cassidy (Melvyn Douglas) runs the old respected newspaper, The Guardian, like a family affair. The new owner Matthew Cooper orders it to shutdown in favor of his own tabloid, The Evening Record. Cassidy turns down his pick of a job at the Record. With a clue to a famous kidnapping, he makes a final stab at saving his beloved paper with the hot new story in a final edition. He sneaks pass the police to retrieve kidnap victim Ellen Frazier (Louise Platt) who is under police protection.

The plot is a straight line of one stop to another as Cassidy tracks down the journey of that $100 bill. It's not the most imaginative plot structure. It is good enough to leverage a good performance and a nice crime thriller. The movie is able to maintain its kinetic motion all the way through. It's not really a mystery to solve. It does need some action to punch it up. It's a little flat but it's pretty good.

A Rich and Nifty Little B-Movie that Takes an Investigative Journalist on a Quest to Find Kidnappers and Stop His Newspaper from Folding. Melvyn Douglas is the Protagonist, but it is the Many Set-Pieces of People and Places that Make This Special.

Always Engaging and there are Outstanding Side-Bars and a Surprisingly Dark Atmosphere and Snappy Dialog Along the Way that was Not Typical of MGM. The Scene at an African American Wake and the Climatic and Dark Display in the Gangster's Car are Exceptional, as are Brief Encounters with a Bird Loving Casino Owner and a Henpecked Groom to be.

Overall, a Very Good Sleeper that is Virtually Unknown and is Deserving of a Rediscovery.

Watch this film if only to see black actress Theresa Harris in a dramatic role. I am so used to see her playing maids in films of the 30's that it was a refreshing change of pace and a revelation. She can act! Her home was one of many to which star Melvyn Douglas was led in his effort to track down the owner of a $100 bill that was part of a ransom payment after a kidnapping. Actor Leslie Fenton's first directorial effort is also a well-paced 69-minute crime and mystery drama, packing lots of sleuthing by Douglas, endangering himself and the only witness (Louise Platt) to the kidnapping. I was glued to the story and was biting my nails during the exciting ending. Well worth watching.

Melvin Douglas stars in the 1939 B movie, Tell No Tales.

Douglas plays Michael Cassidy, who is the editor of a newspaper whom he's told is about to close its doors. In the meantime, a rag has been sensationalizing a kidnapping; a witness (Louise Platt) is being kept a virtual prisoner at the school where she teaches. While Mike is having a drink in his usual bar, the bartender checks a list and realizes that he has one of the bills the kidnappers received. This gives Mike the idea of tracking down and catching the kidnapper himself and giving his newspaper a great final issue.

I often wonder how Melvin Douglas must have felt, breezing his way through one film after another, possibly knowing that he was one of the finest actors of the century. It was a talent he wouldn't be able to show until he was an old man, but when he did, one saw how wasted he had been all those years. He's wonderful here in a spirited performance.

It was nice to see Mantan Moreland and Theresa Harris in this film, as they were two black actors deserving of more recognition. Moreland is probably best remembered as Birmingham, Charlie Chan's chauffeur. He had a friendly face and an enormous comic talent. Theresa Harris for some reason had better roles in precode films than she did later on. I suppose in a way this is a film about wasted talent - Moreland and Harris, a beautiful and sexy woman, were victims of their time and Douglas was in a groove from which he did not escape until much later.

Good movie with some very good performances.