Harrison's Reports (1949)

179 one of the tablets. Learning that a tablet had been stolen, Kilbride becomes convinced that the oil company will duplicate the secret and advises Cummings to return home. But Collins' scientists fail to learn the secret, and he pursues Cummings in a helicopter, accompanied by Ann and Kilbride. They finally locate him at an old farmhouse, where Collins offers him a fabulous sum for his formula. Just then a thief Cummings hr.d befriended breaks in to rescue him from Collins, whom he believed to be a detective. In the ensuing excitement, Cummings falls down a well, dissolving his remaining tablets and suffering a blow on the head that causes him to forget the formula. But he does remember his love for Ann. Robert Buckncr wrote the screen play and produced it from a story by Herbert Clyde Lewis. Charles T. Barton directed it. Suitable for the family. "Captain China" with John Payne, Gail Russell and Jeffrey Lynn (Paramount, no rel. date set; time, 97 mm.) This sea melodrama should give pretty good satisfaction wherever audiences are not too critical, even though its running time could be cut to advantage. Revolving around the efforts of a tough sea captain to clear his name, after losing his ship while on a drunken spree, the story, despite its somewhat artificial quality, has considerable suspense and excitement, some romance, and more than a fair share of robust action. One sequence in particular, where John Payne and Lon Chaney engage in a furious shipboard fight, is one of the most thrilling no-holds-barred scraps ever staged. Exciting also are the scenes that show the ship being battered during a savage typhoon. There is some comedy, but it is not effective. The direction, acting and camera work are good : — John Payne, known as Captain China, wakes up in his cabin from a drunken stupor and finds his ship sinking and abandoned by the crew. He is saved by a passing ship and taken to Manila, where he learns that he had been relieved of duty after his former First Officer, Jeffrey Lynn, and two seamen, Lon Chaney and John Qualen, had testified that he had set a wrong course while drunk, wrecking his ship on the rocks. Charging that Lynn, now a captain, had changed the course, Payne sets out to make him confess. He books passage on Lynn's tramp steamer, where he meets, among other passengers, Gail Russell, who was on her way to China to marry a man from her home town. Lynn, confronting Payne, denies changing the course. Meanwhile Payne's presence aboard disturbs Chaney and Qualen, because he knew too much about a murder they had committed. Before long Payne and Chaney engage in a bloody fist fight but are separated. Gail, learning why Payne had been broken, sympathizes with him. A sudden typhoon comes up and Lynn, unequal to the task of managing the ship, asks Payne to take command and admits framing him. Under Payne's skillful guidance the ship rides out the storm, but not before Chaney is killed as he tries to secure an unlatched engine. Gail, leaving the ship when it arrives in port, realizes her love for Payne and rushes back into his arms. It is a Pine-Thomas production, directed by Lewis R. Foster from a screen play by Gwen Bagni and Mr. Foster, based on a story by John and Gwen Bagni. The cast includes Edgar Bergen, Michael O'Shea, Robert Armstrong and others. Unobjectionable morally. "Deadly is the Female" with Peggy Cummins and John Dall (United Artists, no rel. date set; time, 87 min.) With the production of "Deadly is the Female," the King Brothers become of age as producers, for the picture is worthy of a major release. Although the story is unpleasant because it deals with crime, the acting is so realistic that one feels as if present in real-life occurrences. The scenes that show where John Dall and Peggy Cummins are being hunted hold one in tense suspense. Throughout the action one is impressed with the fact that Dall is not a criminal at heart, and that he was following a career of crime because he was under the spell of Miss Cummings. Wherever such pictures as "White Heat," "Scarface," and the like went over, "Deadly is the Female" should go over likewise: — In reform school since the age of 14 for stealing a gun, for which he had a mania, John Dall, released on his 21st birthday, enlists in the Army and is assigned to teach soldiers how to shoot. He returns home after World War II, and one night visits a carnival, where he sees Peggy Cummins perform in a shooting act. The show's manager challenges any one to beat Peggy at shooting. Harry Lewis and Nedrick Young, Dall's friends, induce him to accept the challenge and bet the manager on the outcome. Dall out shoots Peggy, who offers him her diamond ring when the manager is unable to pay off. Dall declines the offer, but accepts a job in the act. Peggy and Dall fall in love and, despite the manager's efforts to break up the affair by revealing that he had been intimate with Peggy, Dall marries her. Unable to find employment after they leave the show, Peggy urges Dall to join her on a series of holdups. He refuses at first, but gives in when she insists because of his passionate love for her. Their life of crime includes killings by Peggy, despite Dall's protests. They manage to elude the police and eventually reach his home town, where they hide out in the home of his sister, Anabel Shew. Lewis and Young, Dall's pals and now deputies, learn of their presence and plead with them to surrender, but they refuse. They escape again and are followed and trapped by Lewis and Young. Peggy prepares to shoot them down. Dall, unable to dissuade her, shoots and kills her. At the sound of the pistol report, the deputies fire, killing Dall. It was produced by Frank and Maurice King, and directed by Joseph H. Lewis, from a screen play by MacKinlay Kantor and Millard Kaufman, based on Mr. Kantor's own story, "Gun Crazy." Adult fare. "All the King's Men" with Broderick Crawford, John Ireland and Joanne Dru (Columbia, no rel. date set; time, 109 min.) A powerful political drama, based on Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize novel of the same name. Those who will see the picture will recognize the similarity of the central character to the late Huey Long, for it centers around the political career of a young back-country lawyer in an unnamed Southern state, an honest crusader who rises to the governorship as a man of the people, only to become corrupted by success and caught between his desire to do good for the people and his ruthless urge for more power — the Presidency of the United States. The heartaches he causes to friends and family while pursuing his egotistical plans make for drama of considerable intensity. The film features a number of fine, sensitive performances, outstanding of which is the one turned in by Broderick Crawford, as the power-happy Governor whose career is ended by assassination. It is a performance that will rate Academy Award attention. Robert Rossen, who produced, directed and wrote the screen play, deserves high praise for the excellent job he has done in each department. He has kept the picture moving at an exciting pace, and has given it a ring of authenticity in his expert use of authentic settings and backgrounds, which help considerably to capture the sordidness of crooked politics, as well as the mood of a mob swayed by a man's oratory. Briefly, the story picks up Crawford as a small-town lawyer with political ambitions, whose efforts to buck a crooked political machine prove fruitless until several children die in the collapse of a school building built by the crooked politicians. The townspeople, remembering Crawford's warnings, flock to his support. Recognizing that he had a following, scheming politicians set up a third party and run him for governor, their true purpose being to split the vote so that their own man would win. Basically honest, Crawford tours the state and makes dull prepared speeches about a balanced tax program until John Ireland, a friendly reporter, and Mercedes McCambridge, an aide of the crooked politicians, reveal to him that he was being used as a stooge. Fighting mad, Crawford crosses his backers by disclosing to the people that he had been played for a "sucker." He begins to talk to the people in their own down-to-earth language and. after several years, based on a platform of soaking the rich for the benefit of the poor, is elected governor. Drunk with power, Crawford embarks on a wild spending spree to give the people what he had promised, always with an eye on personal aggrandizement, and resorts to violence and political trickery to crush those who dared to oppose him. In the process he forsakes his loyal wife (Ann Seymour), carries on an affair with Mercedes, now his secretary, and eventually discards her for Joanne Dru, Ireland's sweetheart, who had fallen victim to his fatal fascination, breaking the heart of Ireland, whom Crawford now employed to dig up dirt on his political enemies. Crawford's efforts to hush up the involvement of his son (John Derek) in a drunken driving accident furnish his enemies with ammunition to impeach him, but he calls on the people to put pressure on the legislature and succeeds in beating the charges. His victory is short-lived, however, when he is assassinated in the halls of the capitol by Shepherd Strudwick, Joanne's brother, who bad learned of Crawford's affair with his sister, and who held Crawford responsible for the suicide of an uncle, u political enemy. Adult fare.