World War II Spy Film “Action in Arabia”

Last Sunday, as part of its Memorial Day weekend of war pictures, Turner Classic Movies showed a little, and little known, espionage film from 1944 called “Action in Arabia.”

The movie, made two years after “Casablanca,” owes a lot to that Academy Award winning Humphrey Bogart flick. While “Action in Arabia” could not hope to match the older film, it has plenty of intrigue and style.

George Sanders stars as a newspaper reporter in Damascus, waiting for a flight out of the region when a colleague is stabled to death. Sanders refuses to leave until he finds out why. He starts his investigation by searching for the woman his friend met and went off with. The antagonistic French authorities want Sanders to go home. American not-so-undercover agents want Sanders to go home. A sinister hotel owner wants Sanders to go home. And bunch of other people want Sanders dead as he gets too close to solving the mystery.

The mystery is not much of a puzzle. Nazi agents in the region are stirring up and recruiting Arab fighters to come into the war on their side.

The story line is corny and simple, too many characters are thin stereotypes, and most of the action scenes are just so-so, but the ever-suave Sanders brings a sophistication to the movie. He also wears a white dinner jacket well, as Bogart did in “Casablanca.”

Director Leonide Moguy gives this 75-minute, black and white film a smooth, slick, and very dark atmosphere. Russian-born Moguy, who directed films in France before going to Hollywood, makes the most of this little RKO production. It looks less like the usual Hollywood movie of the time and more like a European film. If the name Leonide Moguy sounds familiar, it may be because Quentin Tarantino used the name for one of his characters in “Django Unchained” as a tribute to a filmmaker whose movies he likes.

Early in “Action in Arabia,” Sanders’ character meets an attractive, mysterious woman, played by co-star Virginia Bruce, gambling at a baccarat table. A surprisingly similar baccarat scene was filmed 18 years later by director Terrence Young for “Dr. No.” Young’s scene introduced Bond, James Bond.

(For more posts on film and television, check out Todd Mason's blog.) 

Early police-procedural film, Naked City, holds up

Television’s “Law & Order” from the 1990s and 2000s, may owe a nod of gratitude to the movie, “The Naked City,” for showing how a fast-paced, no-nonsense, police procedural is done.

The 1948 picture is the granddaddy of police procedural films and TV, and all these years later it still holds up.

Like the film, “Law & Order” follows two detectives as they work a case, spending little or no time on their personal lives. Also like the movie, the show was filmed entirely in New York City.

At the time the movie was made, location filming was rare. Hollywood started doing more movies in real places after Louis DeRochemont, a producer of newsreels, made several features partially on location in the mid-1940s. But the extensive use of locations in “The Naked City” was unique enough to be noted in a voice-over prologue delivered by producer Mark Hellinger.

The location photography is a big plus for the movie. It gives the film a documentary reality. It also gives viewers today a glimpse of city life as it was nearly 70 years ago. 

In the opening, Hellinger, and director Jules Dassin present New York in a rough-edged travelogue. They show the life of the city during the day, then at night, and wind up in the apartment of a model. The model is murdered by two thugs, her body discovered in the morning by a house keeper. The police arrive, the crime scene unit goes to work, and the case goes to a veteran detective, Lt. Dan Muldoon. He is assisted by a young detective, Jimmy Halloran, newly promoted into the squad. Muldoon, played by Barry Fitzgerald and Halloran, played by Don Taylor, are the main characters. The filmmakers follow them as they work to find out why the girl was murdered, who did it, and were to find the bad guys.

Fitzgerald, the Irish actor best known for his parts in “The Quiet Man,” and “Going My Way,” seems like an odd choice for the lead role as a detective. But it was a canny choice. Not only was Fitzgerald a versatile actor, but he also brought warmth to the movie. Without him, its realistic story and settings could have been too coarse and cold. Don Taylor was another good choice. Taylor had been around a few years in small parts, but at the time of “The Naked City” he was starting to break through. He was a post-war every man and may be best remembered as Elizabeth Taylor’s fiancée in “Father of the Bride.”


Ted de Corsia plays the baddie the cops are after, and that is not a spoiler. Seen at the beginning, he also turns up at other times in the film, following the detectives’ progress.

When Halloran gets a break, learning where he can find the man he is hunting, he makes a mistake and goes after him alone. The picture winds up in an exciting chase around the tenement streets of Manhattan and onto one of its bridges.

Jules Dassin, who made a mark with noir films in the mid-1940s, does an excellent job in keeping this 96-minute, black-and-white movie moving. Soon after making “The Naked City” Dassin ran afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He found himself unable to work in America, went to England, and there made the Richard Widmark noir classic, “Night and the City.” Dassin then moved to Paris where he made the heist classic “Rififi.” Finally he moved to Greece where he married actress Melina Mercouri. Together they made several films including the social comedy “Never on Sunday,” and the comic heist film, “Topkapi.”

One of the writers on the picture, Albert Maltz, was later jailed for contempt of Congress by the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was one of the famous “Hollywood Ten” – 10 writers and directors who resisted the committee’s insistence they confess to being Communists and accuse friends and associates of being Communists.

The other writer on the film was Malvin Wald, the younger brother of Warner Bros. writer and producer, Jerry Wald.

Before "The Naked City" was released, producer Mark Hellinger died of a heart attack in December 1947 at the age of 44. Hellinger, a famous New York newspaper columnist of the 1930s, went to Hollywood where he produced some great films like the James Cagney gangster picture, “The Roaring ’20s,” and the noir classic “The Killers.” Heard a second time in “The Naked City,” he delivers a spoken epilogue that has this classic closing line:

“There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”

(For more posts on movies and TV, check out Todd Mason’s blog.)

Excellent British Crime Series “Line of Duty”

My friend Col of Col’s Criminal Library put me on to a terrific British television series called “Line of Duty.”

This show is so good, I had to do my part and pass along the tip.

The first season (a five-episode series on two DVDs here in the U.S.) starts with a bang. A heavily armed police task force hits an apartment block, crashes in on a suspected terrorist, kills him in front of his family, only to find out it is the wrong address.

Blame flows down from the brass, landing on a young cop, Sgt. Steve Arnott. He is ordered to lie at an inquisition. He refuses and his career is over, unless he accepts the only position left open to him in the police department – an investigator in AC-12. This is the hated unit investigating corrupt cops.

Arnott’s new boss has a target in mind – DCI Tony Gates, a chief inspector with a track record so good, he must be faking it. Gates’ cases are complicated with plenty of room for the cops in his squad to fudge facts, bend the rules, and even commit crimes themselves.

With his only choices being investigate Gates or quit the force, Arnott is conflicted. He wants to work, but he also longs to be a regular cop and give the subject a break.

And that sums up the first 20 minutes of this five-hour series.

Steve Arnott is played by Martin Compston, a good actor I have not seen before. His boss is played by the Irish actor Adrian Dunbar who has been around a while, and who has a stare so steady in interrogation scenes you may want to do some confessing yourself. DCI Gates is played by Lennie James, a powerful and charismatic presence who will have viewers wondering if he is really guilty and hoping he is not. Fleming, another member of the anti-corruption unit is played by Vicky McClure, an actress with just the right amount of toughness and vulnerability to seem genuine in the part.

“Line of Duty” is not to be missed.

Cary Grant & Audrey Hepburn in “Charade”

Over the weekend, I heard the theme from the movie “Charade” and that spurred me to watch it again.

I have seen “Charade” a half a dozen times over the years, and even though I know the story, know the mystery’s solution, know where the clues are planted, I still enjoy it.

While on vacation at a French mountain resort, Regina Lambert, played by the elegant Audrey Hepburn (in clothes designed by Givenchy) contemplates divorce from her shady husband. She does not have to think too long about it because he is murdered on a train by men searching for stolen money. The men and the husband were all in on the theft, but the husband made off with it, and now they want their share.

Regina meets a dashing, mysterious and somewhat older man, played by Cary Grant, who volunteers to protect her from the bad guys. Or, does he just want the money himself?

Grant was 25 years older than Hepburn, but that hardly matters since these movie stars are such charismatic superstars, complete with their own unique accents.

So right there, the movie has two of the most charming people ever to appear on the silver – or Technicolor – screen.

Hepburn and Grant are plunked down in Paris to solve the mystery, while trying hard not to be killed by three odd villains played by James Coburn, George Kennedy, and Ned Glass. Into this mix comes a square, but humorous American government man, played by Walter Matthau.

For just under two hours, this group dodges, attacks, evades, and detects in a clever, intricate, and light script by Peter Stone and Marc Behm. The doings were guided by director Stanley Donen, in a departure from the musicals he made in the 1950s, many with Gene Kelly.

And talking about music, “Charade” has one of the best theme songs courtesy of the great Henry Mancini. If you don’t remember what it sounded like, click here and listen.

Now a question:

Was there ever a cooler, classier, comic-mystery-thriller than this 1963 film?

Maybe there was. “North by Northwest”? Perhaps. But for me, Hepburn and Grant were a better combo than Grant and Saint.

(For more posts on film and television, check out Todd Mason’s blog.)

“It Always Rains on Sunday” Kitchen Sink Noir

As a fan of British films, particularly those of the post-World War II period, I waited a long time before catching “It Always Rains on Sunday”.

The movie is a surprising combination of styles, one that was near its height when it came out in 1947 and another not quite a style yet. “It Always Rains on Sunday” is a crime picture, a thriller with film-noir touches, and an early example of “kitchen sink” drama, a style that would catch on a decade later with the “angry young man” dramas.

This film could be called an angry young woman film. In fact it has several angry young women in it.

Rose, played by Googie Withers, is a former barmaid whose boyfriend proposes to her just before getting arrested and shipped off to prison. She settles for a man 15 years her senior whom she marries. When the picture opens, she is living with him and his two grown daughters and little son in a tiny attached house. A good deal of Rose’s life, and this movie, is spent in the cramped kitchen which doubles as the dining room, laundry room, and bathroom – that is, the tub is in there, too. The other fixture, I am guessing, is out behind the house.

One night, Rose’s former boyfriend escapes from jail and hides in a shed in her backyard. She finds him, takes him in, feeds him and lets him sleep in her bed while the rest of the family is out on a rainy Sunday. But family members keep returning to the house, giving Rose and the con several scares and breaking up a rekindled romance.

In the meantime, one step-daughter is seeing a shady, married man. The shady man’s brother, a small-time gambler and fence of stolen items, is putting the moves of the other, more naïve step-daughter. And the married man’s wife, who catches on to the affair, is the fourth angry woman in this film.

This moody, edgy film has some unusual twists for its time. It is as crowded with story as its streets are crowded with people. In a subplot, three petty criminals try to unload stolen goods and immediately attract the attention of a police detective, played by Jack Warner (not the Hollywood mogul, but the British actor who looked a bit like Jack Hawkins). The detective is happy to pinch them, but he is busy on the trail of Rose’s old boyfriend. The circle quickly closes in on Rose and the con.

The man makes a run for it and Rose considers suicide in a subtle but horrifying scene in the kitchen.

This rough, crude drama winds itself up with an exciting finish in a railroad yard.

“It Always Rains on Sunday,” based on a novel by Arthur Le Bern, was directed by Robert Hamer, and was produced by Michael Balcon and Henry Cornelius at Ealing Studios. Ealing was famous for its Alec Guinness comedies, but the company produced a variety of very good dramas in the 1940s and 1950s. “It Always Rains on Sunday” was one of them and it is well worth seeing.

(For more posts on film and television, check out Todd Mason's blog.)

FFB: The James Deans by Reed Farrel Coleman

Moe Prager is a former New York City cop who left the force after a knee injury. He splits his time between the up-scale wine shop he owns with his brother, and the occasional private investigation job.

At the beginning of The James Deans, a wealthy man pressures Moe to investigate the unsolved case of a murdered intern of a state senator. The crime derailed the career of the politician, changing him from a rising star to a prime suspect. His wealthy backer wants him cleared so the man can continue his climb.

As a cop in Brooklyn ten years earlier, Moe Prager made the papers when he solved a missing child case. The rich man believes Moe is luckier than the police and the private investigators stumped by the case.

The pressure applied to Moe comes in the form of a state inspector arriving at his wine shop. The message to Moe is people with political pull can make his life miserable if he refuses to work the case. Moe agrees to take a look. A friend in the NYPD helps him with department information. But another former cop, the hard-drinking father of the dead woman, refuses to talk to Moe, which is a smaller mystery within the larger story.

Moe digs into the case, exposing other mysteries and placing himself, his brother, and his wife and child in danger.

The James Deans is Reed Farrel Coleman’s third Moe Prager mystery, but the first I have read. Meeting his cool, savvy P.I. and sampling his hard-edged writing style, I will be reading more Moe Prager stories, soon.


(For more posts on books, check out Patti Abbott's blog.)

Western Movie: Return to Warbow

“Return to Warbow” is one of the better, budget Westerns turned out by Hollywood in the 1950s.

Clay Hollister, a prisoner for eleven years at Yuma for robbing a stagecoach, is on a work detail outside the walls when he coordinates a violent escape. He and two others use their picks and shovels on the guards, steal the work wagon and drive the team of horses nearly to death in their getaway.

The men head for the town of Warbow where Clay plans to meet his brother, Frank, who was in on the robbery, got away and promised to hold the loot until Clay returned. Clay and his tough, untrustworthy gang make their way to the home of Clay’s former love. She is now married to the owner of the stage outfit, whom Clay will force to go fetch his brother. When the brother, now a drunk, learns Clay has escaped, he is terrified.

The prison notifies the sheriff of Warbow of Clay’s escape. The sheriff forms a posse and they comb the area for the gang. Complicating matters, Clay can barely control the two men he brought with him who have no regard for anyone but themselves and are a danger to the woman and her young son.

This 67-minute, Technicolor movie from 1958, has enough action, violence, twists and turns for a full-length feature. It moves along at a nice pace.

Clay is played by Phil Carey, an actor who appeared in many films and television shows from the early 1950s through the 1970s. The owner of the stage line is played by Andrew Duggan, another actor who shows up in supporting roles in movies and TV. Carey, listed on the IMDb as 6-foot-4, and Duggan at 6-foot-5, both close in age, both World War II vets, are well-matched as rivals. Robert J. Wilke, another big guy, 6-2, made a career of playing hard-bitten bad men, and here he is the member of the gang Clay has the most to worry about. Clay’s love interest is played by Catherine McLeod, and her son by Christopher Olsen, one of the better child actors. Clay’s brother Frank is played by James Griffith, a good character actor of the day. And, in a small role, Jay Silverheels, best remembered as Tonto in “The Lone Ranger” series, plays a former stage employee who was blinded in Clay’s hold up.

“Return to Warbow” was written by Les Savage, Jr., based on his novel. It was directed by Ray Nazarro, a man who made dozens of Westerns in the 1940s and 1950s.

(For more posts on film and TV, check out Todd Mason’s blog.)

“Seven Keys” a Tight Little British Mystery Movie

Released in 1961, “Seven Keys” is a fast-paced English crime film about a surly prisoner named Russell, played by Alan Dobie, who is informed by the warden that he has inherited a strange gift from a fellow inmate who died behind bars.

The inheritance is a ring of keys. Russell learns the old prisoner was sent to jail for embezzling £20,000. The money was never recovered and the warden, the guards, the police, and Russell suspect one of the keys will open the secret hiding place of all that loot.

Once Russell is out of the can, he goes through the keys, one-by-one, discovering what each opens. While working his way through the ring, he attracts the attention of baddies who would also like to get their hands on the cash.

This quirky little movie, with a running time of just 57 minutes, was most likely the second feature on a double bill, but it is miles ahead of the usual B-picture. The twisty story, the acting, and the visual style are well above average.

“Seven Keys” was directed by Pat Jackson, who went from making documentaries in the 1930s and 1940s, to feature films in the 1950s, to television in the 1960s and 1970s. He directed several episodes of two shows starring Patrick McGoohan – “Danger Man” (called “Secret Agent” in the U.S.) and “The Prisoner.” Both of those shows have some of the flavor found in “Seven Keys.”

The quirky, jaunty quality of “Seven Keys” with its snappy pace and eccentric supporting characters, may be the influence of producer Julian Wintle. In the 1960s, he produced all the Emma Peel episodes of “The Avengers.”

The writers on the film were Henry Blyth and Jack Davies. Davies had a long career in movies, including the scripts for the tricky Michael Caine picture, “Gambit,” and the comedy, “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines.”

This good little film is out on DVD, part of a series of box sets called "The Edgar Wallace Mysteries." But the discs are not available in a format for the U.S. and Canada.

“Road House” with Patrick Swayze, Sam Elliott

The 1989 movie “Road House” is a rip-roaring action comedy that took me 28 years to see.

Dalton, played by Patrick Swayze, the coolest, toughest bar bouncer in the country is hired to come to a small town and clean up the roughest dive in the burg. Liking the challenge, as well as the big bucks that go along with the job, Dalton sets out to kick ass. And he does, although it takes him half the movie to whup all the dirtbags, and to teach the bouncers and bartenders how to do the same, with style.

Dalton takes his lumps along the way, and when he can’t administer first aid to himself, he is forced to go the hospital, where he meets a beautiful young doctor, played by Kelly Lynch, and – well, you are way ahead of me.

The biggest problem in the town is a rich gangster named Wesley, who is running a protection racket and collecting from all the honest businessmen. Wesley is played with zeal by the great Ben Gazzara, who all but steals the show from Swayze.

Just when Wesley and his goons step up their strong-arm methods, Dalton’s old mentor, Wade, played by Sam Elliott, rides into town to help. Elliott is another actor who nearly steals the show from Swayze. But Swayze persists, taking on the gang, including a one-on-one martial arts showdown with Wesley’s top henchman, and finally Wesley himself.

This film was directed by Rowdy Herrington, who made a handful of action and crime films over the years, along with an interesting movie about pro golfer Bobby Jones. “Road House” was produced by Joel Silver who made tons of action films since the late 1970s.

“A United Kingdom” is a Movie to See

If “A United Kingdom” is still playing at a theater near you, go see it.

It is the true story of Seretse Khama, played by David Oyelowo, the heir to the hereditary kingdom of Bechuanaland (now Botswana, but in the late 1940s, still a British protectorate), who, while a law student in London in 1947, meets an English girl, played by Rosamund Pike, and marries her over the objections of his uncle, the acting king of his country, and the British government.

When I saw the coming attractions, I thought it was going to be good, but it was far better than I expected.

So check your local listings (OK, a Google search), find out if it is playing, and go see it.