Secret Command (1944)

User Rating:

6.3/10   

Director:

A. Edward Sutherland

Writers:

Roy Chanslor (writer)
John Hawkins (story)

Release Date:

30 July 1944 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Drama | War

Tagline:

DRAMA...by a handful of men and women who fight the enemy within our gates!

Plot Keywords:

WWII | Spy | Melodrama | Beautiful Woman

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar.

Cast

Pat O'Brien	...	Sam Gallagher
Carole Landis	...	Jill McGann
Chester Morris	...	Jeff Gallagher
Ruth Warrick	...	Lea Damaron
Barton MacLane	...	Red Kelly
Tom Tully	...	Colonel Hugo Von Braun aka 'Brownie' Brownell
Wallace Ford	...	Miller
Howard Freeman	...	Max Lessing
Erik Rolf	...	Ben Royall
Matt McHugh	...	Curly
Frank Sully	...	Shawn
Frank Fenton	...	Simms
Charles D. Brown	...	James Thane
Carol Nugent	...	Joan
Richard Lyon	...	Paul

Runtime:

82 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16

Company:

Torneen Productions

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Red Kelly (Barton MacLane) first meets Jill McGann (Carole Landis), he says, "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Kelly," which is HIS character's last name. A moment later, he calls her by her 'proper' name, Mrs. Gallagher.

Story the standout in a mediocre espionage film

The film is based on a story THE SABOTEURS taken from the Saturday Evening Post by John and Ward Hawkins. The story is an absorbing one but it has been given mediocre treatment in this Grade B wartime melodrama, set in a shipyard.

Pat O'Brien is an undercover agent who is set up in his home town with a fake wife and children to join a shipyard and ferret out Nazi saboteurs. Complications ensue in that the foreman (Chester Morris) is his brother and he is holding a grudge against O'Brien for dropping out of the family's life for four years, not even responding to news of the death of their mother, and leaving his former girlfriend (Ruth Warrick) high and dry. Considering Morris hopes to marry Warrick if she can ever get O'Brien out of her heart, he has a vested interest in suspecting his brother of shady dealings. Carole Landis plays the fake wife and this is also complicated by the fact that she and O'Brien are falling for each other, despite their pact that the arrangement is "strictly business."

There are Nazis and sympathizers not only amongst the shipyard's crew but in higher up places, places we least suspect. All this material could have made a very gripping film but instead we get a routinely directed, acted and filmed potboiler and a pretty tame spy story at that.

The hoot is that it got nominated for an Oscar for Special Effects, despite the fact that there are none in the film. This was during the early forties when every studio could name what it considered its best in the categories of Sound, Song, Original Score, Adapted Score and Special Effects and be guaranteed a nomination. In this case, the Academy was duped - I guess no one screened the films being nominated in each category. The effect is that of giving an Art Direction nod to a film shot entirely in the desert or a Costume Design nod to a film set in a nudist colony. One of the best jokes ever perpetrated on the Academy.

There are some back projection shots but these hardly constitute special effects.

A minor film not worth seeking out. Note that the young actor who plays the refugee boy who masquerades as O'Brien's real son is Richard Lyon, so effective as the creepy child in THE UNSEEN.