Daily Archives: March 8, 2015

Angel and the Badman
Directed by James Edward Grant
Written by James Edward Grant
1947/USA
John Wayne Productions/Patnel Productions
First viewing/Netflix Rental

[box] Territorial Marshal Wistful McClintock: You know, Quirt, I always figured on using a new rope when hangin’ you… because I kind of respected ya. You never took the best of things and all your men went down looking at ya.[/box]

Sometimes a rather corny old-time Western is just what the doctor ordered.

The wonderfully named Quirt Evans (John Wayne) is a famous gunslinger.  He gets wounded in a showdown and is rescued by the Worths, a Quaker family, who take him home and nurse him back to health.  The Penelope (Gail Russell), the daughter of the house, instantly falls in love with her patient and frankly tells him so the minute he is back on his feet.  Quirt has been a hard-drinking hard-loving rapscallion but the simple, loving ways of the family begin to win him over.

At the same time, Quirt is under threat from his long-time enemy Laredo Stevens (Bruce Cabot).  The local marshall (Harry Carey) is always hanging around predicting that Laredo will end up shot dead and Quirt will end up hanged or vice versa.  The local doctor keeps warning the family that Quirt is bad news.  But Penelope persists.  Can she reform her wild man?

This is just a nice, romantic Western to watch on a Saturday afternoon.  Some of the screenwriting is a tad overdone but nothing terrible.  All the performances are good.  I especially liked Harry Carey as the Marshall of Doom.

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13 Rue Madeleine 
Directed by Henry Hathaway
Written by John Monks Jr. and Sy Bartlett
1947/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Charles Gibson: 22 potential agents. Most of them have a foreign background. All of them can speak French. One of them can speak German.[/box]

An enjoyable Fox film noir in the semi-documentary style about U.S. intelligence efforts in World War II.

A voice-over narrator sets up the process leading to the creation of the OSS and the recruitment and training of its first class of secret agents.  Their instructor is Bob Sharkey (James Cagney) a tough former businessman with years of experience in Berlin.  He is advised that one of his students is a German agent.  His task is to identify the spy, who is then to be unwittingly used to convey false information about American planning for the D-Day invasion back to the Nazis.  Sharkey intuits early on that Bill O’Connell (Richard Conte) is the bad apple based on his unexpected talents at the game.  O’Connell’s roommate is assigned to accompany him on a fake mission into Holland.  Unfortunately, O’Connell spots the ruse.

Now the only man sufficiently trained for the actual mission is Sharkey himself.  He must stay one step ahead of O’Connell and make contact with an elusive French resistance leader.  His life is in danger throughout.  With Annabella as a beautiful OSS communicator and Sam Jaffe as the mayor of a French town.

This is entertaining if not great.  Cagney is good as always and unforgettable in the classic Cagney style at the end.  Conte makes a totally unconvincing German but is so dynamic we don’t mind too much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7yaT7OCwVA

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