Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Leslie Banks | ... | Inspector Anthony Slade | |
Greta Gynt | ... | Gwen Lee | |
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Ian McLean | ... | Police Sgt. Clinton (as Ian Maclean) |
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Liane Linden | ... | Inga Larson |
Anthony Bushell | ... | John Doyce - Trojan Team Member | |
Esmond Knight | ... | Raille - Trojan Team Member | |
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Brian Worth | ... | Philip Morring - Trojan Team Member |
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Richard Norris | ... | Setchley - Trojan Team Member |
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Wyndham Goldie | ... | Kindilett |
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Alastair MacIntyre | ... | Carter (as Alastair Macintyre) |
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George Allison | ... | George Allison |
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Tom Whittaker | ... | Tom Whittaker |
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E.V.H. Emmett | ... | E.V.H. Emmett |
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Dennis Wyndham | ... | Commissionaire |
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David Keir | ... | Dr. Meadow |
During a charity soccer match between top professional side Arsenal and touring amateur side Trojans, the Trojan's new star player collapses. When he dies, Inspector Slade of Scotland Yard is called in and declares it was murder. It takes all his ingenuity and another death before the motive is discovered and the killer revealed. Written by Ian Harries <ih@doc.ic.ac.uk>
There are several reasons to relish this curio. It was a prentice work by Thorold Dickinson, the Hitchcock assistant and cutter who would shoot "Gaslight" and "The Queen of Spades" before becoming Britain's first professor of film. It is one of the earliest sports movies to feature real sportsmen- acting very woodenly, as befits stiff-upper-lip soccer stars. It is anchored by a mischievously eccentric performance by Leslie Banks, who a few years later was to be the magnificent Chorus of Olivier's "Henry V".
Above all, the film lets us glimpse pre-war Britain's, maybe the world's, leading football club. Arsenal FC, the "Gunners", had been raised to pre-eminence by Herbert Chapman, Britain's first modern soccer manager, until his untimely death in 1934. Five years later his team were still on top, coached by his deputy George Allison, who appears in the movie.
Highbury Stadium, the setting for the murder, was state of the art. The scene in the treatment room underlines Chapman's far-sighted, scientific approach to caring for his players. He was an early advocate of floodlights and numbered shirts, and even got the name of the local Tube station altered to advertise the Gunners. The film was a massive plug for them; alas, soon after its release the Second World War meant that the lads had to pick up real guns and compete in a more dangerous game. Afterwards Arsenal did not recover its top-of-the-tree status for 25 years. Unwittingly this production memorialises its greatest era.