Warner Oland in "Charlie Chan in London" (1934) - feat. Ray Milland

Description:

Pamela Gray (Drue Leyton) goes with Geoffrey Richmond (Alan Mowbray) to appeal to Home Secretary Sir Lionel Bashford (David Torrence) to intervene and stop the planned hanging of her brother, Paul Gray (Douglas Walton), Richmond's former hunt secretary, in three days for the murder of Captain Hamilton of the Royal Air Force, who had been a guest at Richmond's country home at Retfordshire. After the Home Secretary refuses to help, Kemp (Perry Ivins), his private secretary, instructs Pamela and her fiancé, Neil Howard (Ray Milland, as Raymond Milland), to seek the help of Inspector Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) of the Honolulu police department, who has captured in Honolulu and brought back to London a wanted British criminal. When Neil, who is Paul's barrister, tells Chan that he believes that Paul is guilty, Pamela overhears the conversation and breaks their engagement. Chan, who wants to help, follows her to Retfordshire, where guests are gathered for a hunt. After Lake (John Rogers), the stud groom who, Chan suspects, knows more than he admits, is found dead with a suicide note, Chan, while investigating in the study, is almost killed by a missile from an air-blown pistol. The next day, during the hunt, Chan goes to the Farmwell Aerodrome, where he learns that Hamilton, an inventor, had developed a scheme for silencing war planes just before he died. Returning to the hunt, Chan learns that Richmond's fiancée, Lady Mary Bristol (Mona Barrie), who had important evidence to tell Chan, had a near-fatal riding accident because pepper was put on her horse's eyes. After Chan tells the suspected guests that the murderer's fingerprints will be on the missing plans, he tricks Richmond into firing at him with a gun filled with blanks as Chan seemingly finds the papers. Richmond is revealed to be a spy whom military intelligence has been following for years. Sometime later, Paul, released, has dinner with Pamela and Neil, who now have been reunited, and Chan. A 1934 American Black & White crime thriller mystery film directed by Eugene Forde, produced by John Stone, screenplay by Philip MacDonald, based on the character "Charlie Chan" created by Earl Derr Biggers, Cinematography by L. William O'Connell, starring Warner Oland, Drue Leyton, Ray Milland (as Raymond Milland), Mona Barrie, Douglas Walton, Alan Mowbray, George Barraud, Paul England, Madge Bellamy, Walter Johnson, Murray Kinnell, E. E. Clive, Elsa Buchanan, Reginald Sheffield, Perry Ivins, John Rogers, C. Montague Shaw, David Torrence, Claude King, and Arthur Clayton. Released by Fox Film. Drue Leyton (1903-1997), born Dorothy Elizabeth Blackman in Somers, Wisconsin, was an American actress and member of the French Resistance. She also was billed as Freya Leigh. Leyton lived with her family in Mexico, where her father was a mining engineer. She was educated at the Bennett School for Girls in Millbrook, New York; a school in Lausanne, Switzerland; and at the Sorbonne. She became an actress after a failed marriage. In 1937, Leyton acted in a Works Progress Administration Theatre Project in New York. She went from there to England and performed in "Golden Boy". In 1937, Leyton moved to Paris with her future husband Jacques Terrane, a Franco-American actor who died in Syria in 1941 fighting with the Free French forces. In France, Leyton produced and interviewed people on programs for Radio Mondial, a shortwave radio station operated by France's Ministry of Information. The programs were designed to promote France to an American audience. Leyton broadcast for the Voice of America while acting in Paris in 1938 and her criticisms of the Nazi regime during these broadcasts earned her a promise of execution announced by Berlin radio. In September 1942, she was arrested by the Nazis after northern and western France came under German occupation, only because she was an American woman, her true identity unknown to the authorities. She managed to escape from her prison camp with the help of French doctors by feigning cancer. She returned to her home in Barbizon in 1942 and joined the resistance movement, helping 42 downed Allied airmen escape to freedom and hiding others in her home until the war ended. During this period, she was known as Dorothy Tartière, using her married name. The sixth of sixteen films produced by Fox with Warner Oland as the detective, the second not to be lost, after "The Black Camel" (1931), and the first of the Charlie Chan films with an original screenplay not based on one of the Earl Derr Biggers stories. A neat mixture of comedy and mystery, good production values, and solid acting. Typical of the Chan series, the cast is first rate, offering an early glimpse of future Oscar-winner Ray Milland as well as a memorable performance by character actor E.E. Clive, who graced such films of the era as "The Invisible Man" (1933) and "Dracula's Daughter" (1936). One of the best of Oland Charlie Chan films. Well done and a must for a Chan fan.