Framed for the murder of a colleague, a reporter has to evade both the police and international criminals while trying to learn the truth about an album that contains "a fortune in blackmail" information in this noir thriller from 'Zulu' and 'Jet Storm' director Cy Endfield. Released shortly after the end of World War II, the film intimately ties itself to the aftermath of the war with the album featuring the names of those who profiteered from the war, those who were traitors and those who cut deals to advantage themselves no matter which side won. War connections aside though, this is a pretty typical noir entry with an unremarkable slate of shady supporting characters. The idea of having to elude police and antagonists alike is hardly fresh or original and as others have pointed out, the film is too reminiscent of 'The Maltese Falcon' for its own good at times. The movie has some pretty neat touches of its own though including hypnotic spiral effects and swirls after the protagonist is knocked unconscious. Leads William Gargan and Marjorie Lord also certainly try to get the most out of their characters and clocking in at just over an hour, the film at least avoids outstaying its welcome.
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sol-17 November 2017
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blanche-29 November 2021Stylish B starring William Gargan and two TV moms - Barbara Billingsley and Marjorie Lord, along with John Banner, and Ralph Byrd.
Similar to the Maltese Falcon, Gargan is Harry Mitchell, a newspaperman who is singled out among a bunch of newspapermen at the hospital to see an injured reporter. The reporter gives him an album cover for "The Argyle Album" but before he can say much more, he is dead, supposedly from a heart attack. Rip back the covers and there's a knife in his heart. Mitchell takes off.
The Argyle Album is an album with the names of people who profited from the war, traitors and people who made deals feathering their nests no matter who won.
Everyone is after it, including Lord and a gang of tough guys. Barbara Billingsley plays the dead reporter's secretary.
There were some neat things in this - spiral effects with swirls when Mitchell is knocked unconscious; and the cop who comes home, says goodbye to Mitchell, a former neighbor, and then opens the newspaper to his wanted photo on the front page.
Reminiscent of another fast talker, Lee Tracy, Gargan's voice box was removed in 1958 due to cancer, and from thereon he had an artificial voice box. While it stopped his career, he became an anti-cancer spokesperson for the American Cancer Association, living for another 21 years. -
mgmax4 October 1999Very rare low-budget film from director Endfield (Zulu) plays like a not-bad student film version of The Maltese Falcon-- the supporting performances aren't always convincing but there are nice touches of visual imagination and good pacing.
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mark.waltz3 April 2018This post World War II espionage thriller focuses on the search for a book which lists the names of allies who betrayed their country to gain a profit by selling secrets to the Nazi's. William Gargan tells his story from a hospital bed just in case something happens to him of how he went on a mission to find this book and all the dangers he encounters. A bunch of bizarre characters (one of them an unrecognizable John Banner of "Hogan's Heroes", another being two of the favorite of all TV moms, Marjorie Lord and Barbara Billingsley in obvious femme fatale parts) pop in and out. He has guns pulled on him, but then the person holding the gun is shot so the second shooter can pull a gun on Gargan. It's complex, darkly shadowed and intense, all over in just under 65 minutes, the way B movies ought to be. Ralph Byrd ("Dick Tracy") plays the police lieutenant Gargan manages to fool. I wouldn't call this the most sensible or easy to follow plotlines, but it's a film that with repeat viewings can provide plenty of intrigue and thrills and might begin to make more sense. At any rate, it's a nice minor B thrller/film noir that is aided by some nice photography and superb editing, and went to show that just because peace was declared didn't mean that the war was officially over.
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jellopuke19 October 2022Everyone wants the argyle papers that have the names of nazi sympathizers on them and could be used as blackmail. A reporter searches them out and gets caught up in a web of betrayals.
This is basically just a redo of the Maltese Falcon on a low budget with no names. It's not bad at all and is entertainingly brief. It's just by the book and uninteresting. What was the deal with everyone calling the lead youngster and new kid when he's clearly 50 years old?
Guy goes to look for the papers, gets captured, hears exposition, escapes, rinse repeat. Kind of bleh when you get right down to it, but it's nice to see that it's stayed alive after disappearing for so long. -
SnoopyStyle16 October 2022D. C. insider and investigative reporter Allen Pierce has returned to town, but immediately ends up in the hospital. He tells junior reporter Harry Mitchell (William Gargan) about "The Argyle Album". After leaving the room, Harry returns to find him dead. Harry wants a head start on the story and convinces the photographer to delay reporting the death. By the time the doctor arrives, there is a knife stuck in Allen's body, and the photographer has been stabbed to death. Harry goes on the run and searches for the album without knowing what it is.
I really love the premise. It becomes not much more than a McGuffin hunt. I would like more paranoia and more kinetic action. This movie needs some car chases and a few foot chases. I like some of the villains, but they could be more compelling. The ending is a little anti-climatic. I would have expected a victim of the blackmail come hunting for it. This has a great start, but the movie isn't able to elevate above its B-movie nature. -
mossgrymk18 June 2022If, like Ben Mankewiecz the other night, I were to extol the tragic, shamefully HUAC truncated career of writer/director Cy Enfield, this agressively ordinary murder/espionage mystery with way too much dull narration and a rather flat acting job by lead William Gargan would not be my first choice as evidence. Think I'd go with either "Zulu" or "Hell Drivers" instead. Still, it's always nice to see the future June Cleaver get clocked and Enfield brings the thing in at under seventy minutes, which is almost always a plus in these kinds of el cheapo Saturday matinee type deals. C plus.
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ksf-216 November 2022In this noir, bill gargan is harry, reporter for the herald. When a bigshot turns up dead under mysterious circumstances, harry is at the top of the list of suspects. And everyone is looking for the missing album of shameful secrets. More bodies are piling up, and harry always seems to be in the room. Some fun smaller roles; barbara billingsley (mom cleaver!) is in here as the secretary. John banner (schultzy!) is winter, using a very different accent here. It's pretty good. Done with a tongue in cheek... nothing is to be taken too seriously, although there are numerous moidas. Recently restored by UCLA. With only 454 votes, clearly this is pretty new to TCM. Written and directed by cy endfield, who moved to england after allegedly being connected with the HUAC witch-hunts in the 1950s.
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Written and directed by Cy Endfield with Harry Mitchell (William Gargan) becoming the only reporter allowed to interview the person lying in bed, who reveals to him regarding the "Argyle Secrets". As soon as he dies, Henry Mitchell becomes the prime suspect since he was supposedly be the last person who has seen with him. And before he died he reveals to him the reason he may be killed and that is because "The Argyle" statuette hence the title which at first viewers assume that it is the statute like the "The Maltese Falcon but as the movie is progressing it is actually an album full of names which is more relevant to WWII and not a basic copy of "the Maltese Falcon".
Because the short running time of less than a an hour and a half this film is intriguing enough to keep me guessing until the very end I become enlightened enough to know who was using who. There is also a an element of Murder She Said in it as well as there is a strong lug in here which makes the overall experience to be unpredictable as well. -
The Babel of foreign and regional accents in The Argyle Secrets seems too exotic overdone until you learn that Cy Endfield directed this short, cheap thriller from his own radio play. There, probably no more than four actors took the many and generic parts, distinguishing them with funny voices. Movies can't get away with that, so a roster of character players several of them familiar from 50s television was rounded up to fill out the cast. Since the stars are William Gargan (a couple of seasons as Martin Kane, Private Eye) and Marjorie Lord (Make Room For Daddy), with Barbara Billingsley (Leave It To Beaver) visible to those who don't blink, viewers should know better than to expect The Big Sleep.
Actually, The Maltese Falcon is the better template, of which The Argyle Secrets resembles a fifth-generation knockoff. The object in demand is a book called The Argyle Album, a detailed list of war profiteers that's being used for blackmail. A famous investigative columnist, in hospital, tells his younger colleague Gargan about it shortly before he expires, either of poison or a scalpel plunged into his pajamas. In tracking down the album, Gargan meets up with and fends off a motley of grotesques, including femme fatale Lord.
By no stretch of hyperbole can it be called good it's coarse and jumpy but now and again it shows flashes of talent (Endfield, two years later, would direct the much better The Underworld Story). There are some neat shots of the waterfront at night (the city's unspecified, but Boston comes to mind) and a tense and well-photographed sequence where an acetylene torch burns through a metal gate behind which Gargan has locked himself for safety.
Alas, Gargan is foisted off as an energetic young turk of the fourth estate, even though at the time he was 42 and looked at least 10 years older. He had started in movies in 1917, chalking up a more than respectable list of credits, but what charisma he may have once displayed had long since dissipated. Sad that the Indian Summer of his career would be spent in those lesser mediums of radio and newfangled TV. But he earns praise for spending the last years of his life, following a laryngectomy, working for the American Cancer Society. -
As I was boxing up some old films for an upcoming move, I stumbled across THE ARGYLE SECRETS, a film I must have watched a decade ago. I didn't remember anything about it and even thought it starred Tom Conway (!!), but I must have been thinking of another film. So THE ARGYLE SECRETS seemed new to me, and I was VERY impressed by it. Yes, there are some similarities with THE MALTESE FALCON, but many detective/crime films were influenced by that classic. I have not heard the radio play on which this film is based, but taken on its own, this is--like many of the releases from the fascinating "Film Classics" company, an outfit that specialized in very low-budget but quirky and atmospheric crime and detective and late noir films--a moody and distinctive film that is surprisingly good. William Gargan (close your eyes while he is speaking and see if you don't think that his speech rhythms are reminiscent of George Raft) is always an excellent hard-boiled leading man, and here he plays a journalist who is entrusted with some vague information about something called The Argyle Album, which supposedly contains all kinds of incriminating information about WWII traitors and collaborators and profiteers. He is framed for the death of the man who gave him the information, and thus he is being pursued by both police and international crooks. There are a number of hair-raising sequences where he is about to be caught or killed (one scene where he sneaks into an apartment where a policeman--an almost unrecognizable Robert Kellard-- and his mother live, and the cop has a newspaper with Gargan's face on the cover, but insists on looking at the sports section first, but is always ABOUT TO look at the front page) is very cleverly done, and there is a very creative hallucination montage after Gargan is beaten up by the bad guys. There's also an undercurrent of suggested brutality in the film that is disquieting. Gargan beats a woman who asks him to so that she will have bruises on her and thus she can claim he escaped after choking her; Gargan strong-arms a woman into submission; and there's a scene with an acetylene blow torch that is quite effective and would be considered a classic if it had appeared in , say, THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI. Writer-director Cyril Enfield was responsible for some excellent and creative mysteries in the late 40s and early 50s--THE SOUND OF FURY (aka TRY AND GET ME) is an amazing film with a strong liberal message, and THE LIMPING MAN is a wonderful mystery with a switch ending that has to be seen to be believed. Endfield is superb at creating a sense of dislocation, of disorder. A surprising credit for Assistant to the Producer is famous silent-film archivist and entrepreneur Raymond Rohauer. The film is produced by Sam X. Abarbanel, a writer and producer responsible for some of my favorite guilty pleasure such as the Spanish crime films THE NARCO MEN starring the late Tom Tryon, and THE SUMMERTIME KILLER with Chris Mitchum. Also, there are a number of juicy supporting performances--Ralph Byrd as the police inspector who isn't sure about Gargan and appears in the final scene of the film which is hilarious (and which I won't give away), and Jack Reitzen (who was in a LOT of grade-c crime films in the late 40s), doing a florid Southern accent and chewing the scenery. There are many distinctive little touches in this film--for instance, when Gargan is being interrogated by Ralph Byrd, we see a few shadows of men with hats hanging suspiciously outside the opaque windows of the office. When Gargan leaves the office and walks off screen, about five seconds later we see these shadows head in his direction. Maybe using shadows allowed the producer to use non-actors to play the roles and save money, but the effect works for whatever reason it may have been done. I will undoubtedly watch this film again soon and show it to some like-minded friends who appreciate low-budget, indie crime films of the post-World War II era. Check it out if you get a chance--it will be worth your time if you find the above description interesting.
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boblipton30 December 2018Newspaperman William Gargan interviews a hospitalized newspaperman about "the Argyle Album." While Gargan gets him a glass of water, the other guy dies of a heart attack ..... and a knife in his heart. Gargan heads off to figure out what is going on, with the cops on his trail, encountering a gaggle of eccentric characters played by Marjorie Lord, Jack Reitzen and John Banner, all looking for the Maguffin, with Ralph Byrd as a dumb cop.
Yes, it's pretty much THE MALTESE FALCON rewritten and directed by Cy Enfield, with the characteristics of participants assorted differently and no homosexuality anywhere. It's definitely second-string Universal material, with only one interesting credit behind the camera: Raymond J. Rohauer as "Assistant to the Producer." Everyone has to start somewhere, I suppose.
Enfield's script is pretty much an unremarkable retread, except that Gargan occasionally does a voice-over in the linking scenes, telling us what we can see him doing. The IMDb shows it was originally written as a radio script. No one pointed out that the voice-overs were unnecessary and annoying. -
happytrigger-64-3905176 March 2019... and not his best movie by far : very talkative, dull casting, no rhythm, only a few good scenes in an hour movie that lacks a real script. Cy Enfield would do a much lot better two years later with "The Underworld Story" and "The Sound Of Fury", in 1957 with "Hell Drivers" and of course in 1964 with "Zulu", strong movies with real casting. But forget this dull "Argyles Secrets".
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"The Argyle Secrets" is a poverty-row noir made in 1948 for Eronel Productions (heard of them? I sure haven't) that follows newsman Harry Mitchell (William Gargan), hot on the trail of the mysterious Argyle album, a package of incriminating evidence of wartime collaboration and betrayal that results early on in the death of an older, famous reporter whose fragmentary whispers and one photo-stat of the cover of the album lead Mitchell on what first seems to be a wild goose chase in search of an item that may or may not even really exist. This might seem reminiscent of The Maltese Falcon and other mcguffins, though in this case it seems that the album really does exist - though what it actually contains, we never know.
This is classic noir territory, with a femme fatale (Marjorie Lord) who is apparently playing any side of the fence she needs to, seedy European thugs and their suave boss, a fat corrupt private eye named "Panama" who speaks in courtly Southernisms, a murder pinned on our hero, who at one point outwits both police and thugs to find himself in the cheap apartment of old neighbors of his, a Jewish family whose rather dimwitted older son turns out to be a cop himself, coming home with the newspaper that has Mitchell's face splashed on its front page. This scene is a bit of calmness and comedy in the middle of a very short (64 minute) and frantic film, and it exudes a warmth and loving attitude towards the American dream of immigrants - the bright side of the postwar dream contrasting with the dark side of ex-Nazis and collaborators trying to find refuge or start up new criminal activities here.
Though the film is overall plenty cynical and as downbeat as plenty of other noirs, the central scene I mentioned shows something of director Cy Endfield's passion for his country, and his belief in the American dream and the Good War, which makes it all the more sad that soon he would have to flee for being "un-American", never to work in Hollywood again. -
planktonrules18 October 2022Harry (William Gargan) is a reporter who thinks he has a big scoop coming...and instead is soon hounded by police and killers! It begins with a group of reporters waiting outside a hospital room...waiting to interview a reviewer who has been very ill. Somehow, the sick man has asked for Harry in order to give him first dibs on the story of his 'Argyle Secrets'...though Harry and the other reporters have no idea what this means. What are the Argyle Secrets?? Well, before he can tell Harry, someone has poisoned the guy and he dies. When Harry returns with a doctor, there's now a scalpel sticking out of the already dead man...and the police come to arrest Harry because they think he killed the guy. Like most B-mysteries, Harry manages to escape and spends the rest of the film trying to track down the documents...and learns that it has inside dope on war profiteers who will likely go to jail is the information is published. So, now THESE people are chasing him as well...hoping to kill him and get the documents that they think he has. But at this point, no living person seems to know where the papers are. What's next?
This film is quite unusual for a cheap B-movie. After all, it was filmed in only eight days. But somehow the director and cinematographer managed to make a great looking movie...one with lots of film noir camera angles, shadows and lighting. It's really an amazing film for a cheap picture! As for the plot, it's not all that unusual.... I've seen quite a few films similar to it. But they managed to make the most of it...partially due to the grittiness of the story. A good example is one of the villainesses (Marjorie Lord)...as Harry is being severely beaten by three guys, she looks as if she's getting incredibly turned on watching the beating! What makes this interesting is that Lord later played the nice wife on Danny Thomas' show, "Make Room for Daddy"! Additionally, Barbara Billingsley ("Leave it to Beaver") is in the film as well, but she doesn't play such a disturbing and weird creature. Overall, an exceptionally dark and enjoyable B-movie that is so much better than you might expect.