***SPOILERS***Traveling to Germany to see his famous actress Mother, Alla Nazimova, The American, Robert Taylor, finds that she's nowhere to be found and seemed to have disappeared in a puff of smoke!
It's later that he, The American, finds out that his Mother is interned in a local Bavarian Nazi concentration Camp for treason and is to be shot at sunrise within the next 72 hours! As it turns out The Mother was a bit outspoken against the Hitler Regime in its repressive polices against equal rights and self-determination of the German people. But by far the worst crime that the Mother committed was sell her house without permission of the high Nazi officials in town and then attempting to take the cash out of Germany and put it in her bank account in America! Which is considered to be a capital crime in Nazi Germany!
As luck would have it the Nazi Doctor, Philip Dorn, at the concentration camp has been a big fan of the actress Mother since he was a little boy and as her last wish smuggles out a personal letter from her to mail to her son,The American, back in the US. By sheer coincidence The Doctor meets The Mother's son The American at a local beer hall in town. As all this was going on The American almost by accident met the beautiful and stately-looking German Countess, Norma Shearer, whom he finds out not only happens to be a transplanted, to Germany, American but was also brought up, on W 57th street in Manhattan, in the same neighborhood where The American comes from!
Despite being a loyal and die in the wool Nazi The Doctor goes out of his way, when he finds out that The American's Mother is in his internment camp waiting to be executed, to not only save The Mother's life but also have her body smuggled out of the country! The Doctor plans to do all this by giving The Mother a drug that will induce her into a deep coma simulating death!
The only roadblock to this ingenious plan is The Countess' boyfriend The General, Conrad Veidt, who's not one to have the wool pulled over his eyes. And with an at first reluctant Countess going along with this bizarre plan it's a cinch that The General, who's always making himself at home at the Countess' house, will get wind of it and report it to the proper authorities the dreaded Gestapo or political police! Headed by those Nogoodnicks the towns two top Gestapo enforces the guy with the extra dark eyebrows, Hans Schumm, and the one with the wide and oversizes Danish nose, Henry Victor!
Despite the serious subject matter, life in pre-war Nazi Germany, the film almost comes across like an long lost episode of "Hogen's Heroes". Norma Shearer was never more beautiful as the bewildered, in what she was getting herself into, but kind hearted German Countess. And at the same time her co-star Robert Taylor was never more ridicules as the totally naive American who has no idea what life in Nazi Germany is all about as well as understanding the meaning of treason, something he says he once read about in a history book, which his mother was convicted of and is now to be executed for!
The jaw dropping ending with The American and his also, like the Countess, transplanted-from W 57th street in Manhattan- American German Friend, Felix Bressant, shipping his Mother out of Germany. This is all done with a fake passport photo of The Mother, actually that of a local high school student, looking some 40 years younger then herself was just too much to take! Even in an unbelievably over the top anti-Nazi Hollywood movie!
***SPOILER***As for The Countess' boyfriend The General after he got wind of what she was up to in sneaking a dead person out of Nazi Germany in order to prevent her, The Mother, from being executed that the shock was go great to his already weak heart that he never lived to see the end of the movie!
It's later that he, The American, finds out that his Mother is interned in a local Bavarian Nazi concentration Camp for treason and is to be shot at sunrise within the next 72 hours! As it turns out The Mother was a bit outspoken against the Hitler Regime in its repressive polices against equal rights and self-determination of the German people. But by far the worst crime that the Mother committed was sell her house without permission of the high Nazi officials in town and then attempting to take the cash out of Germany and put it in her bank account in America! Which is considered to be a capital crime in Nazi Germany!
As luck would have it the Nazi Doctor, Philip Dorn, at the concentration camp has been a big fan of the actress Mother since he was a little boy and as her last wish smuggles out a personal letter from her to mail to her son,The American, back in the US. By sheer coincidence The Doctor meets The Mother's son The American at a local beer hall in town. As all this was going on The American almost by accident met the beautiful and stately-looking German Countess, Norma Shearer, whom he finds out not only happens to be a transplanted, to Germany, American but was also brought up, on W 57th street in Manhattan, in the same neighborhood where The American comes from!
Despite being a loyal and die in the wool Nazi The Doctor goes out of his way, when he finds out that The American's Mother is in his internment camp waiting to be executed, to not only save The Mother's life but also have her body smuggled out of the country! The Doctor plans to do all this by giving The Mother a drug that will induce her into a deep coma simulating death!
The only roadblock to this ingenious plan is The Countess' boyfriend The General, Conrad Veidt, who's not one to have the wool pulled over his eyes. And with an at first reluctant Countess going along with this bizarre plan it's a cinch that The General, who's always making himself at home at the Countess' house, will get wind of it and report it to the proper authorities the dreaded Gestapo or political police! Headed by those Nogoodnicks the towns two top Gestapo enforces the guy with the extra dark eyebrows, Hans Schumm, and the one with the wide and oversizes Danish nose, Henry Victor!
Despite the serious subject matter, life in pre-war Nazi Germany, the film almost comes across like an long lost episode of "Hogen's Heroes". Norma Shearer was never more beautiful as the bewildered, in what she was getting herself into, but kind hearted German Countess. And at the same time her co-star Robert Taylor was never more ridicules as the totally naive American who has no idea what life in Nazi Germany is all about as well as understanding the meaning of treason, something he says he once read about in a history book, which his mother was convicted of and is now to be executed for!
The jaw dropping ending with The American and his also, like the Countess, transplanted-from W 57th street in Manhattan- American German Friend, Felix Bressant, shipping his Mother out of Germany. This is all done with a fake passport photo of The Mother, actually that of a local high school student, looking some 40 years younger then herself was just too much to take! Even in an unbelievably over the top anti-Nazi Hollywood movie!
***SPOILER***As for The Countess' boyfriend The General after he got wind of what she was up to in sneaking a dead person out of Nazi Germany in order to prevent her, The Mother, from being executed that the shock was go great to his already weak heart that he never lived to see the end of the movie!