Secret Service of the Air

A bold gang is smuggling in aliens via airplane. The Secret Service needs a new agent to infiltrate the gang and find out how they operate. Veteran agent John Litel knows a young pilot who has just been waiting for a chance to join up:

Ronald Reagan is the energetic young flyer who jumps at the chance for some adventure. The G-men cook up a scheme where Reagan is arrested for counterfeiting and put in prison - where he can make some contacts and do some investigating.

The dialog isn't too good but a fairly decent plot moves along quickly. Reagan is fine as the brash undercover hero. James Stephenson is predictably suave and cunning as the head bad guy whom Reagan must outsmart. Eddie Foy Jr. Tries hard but gets few laughs in a comic relief role that's more annoying than funny.

Nothing too exciting but Reagan is undeniably fun to watch.

According to Secret Service Of The Air Ronald Reagan as Brass Bancroft was brought into the service because of his skills as a pilot flying the Trans-Pacific run. Later on in the four film series his pilot skills were not necessarily needed, but this was a B picture series and back then who cared.

An Treasury man on a counterfeiting case got wind of an illegal immigrant smuggling racket and pays with his life in a particularly nasty way being thrown out of an airplane along with the other illegals on that flight. After that the Treasury Department takes the lead on the case and you can see why Reagan is recruited into the Secret Service.

This film introduced Reagan in the role of Brass Bancroft and by the time he had finished his fourth film he was doing other and better things with films like Dark Victory and Santa Fe Trail under his belt and Knute Rockne and Kings Row to come. John Litel as his supervisor and Eddie Foy, Jr. as his sidekick were also introduced.

James Stephenson is the villain here, a really smooth and deadly piece of work. He did a really good job here, almost like he'd come down from another classier film to appear here.

Reagan is breezy, credible, and likable as a fast talking, fast thinking undercover hero. Some of the other Brass Bancroft films were infinitely worse, this one is all right.

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Too many people even today still don't realize the "B" designation merely meant lower budget -- or, sometimes, low budget.

This particular "B" movie -- the first in a series -- didn't cost as much to make as, say, an equally action-packed flick with Errol Flynn, but there is still an entertaining aspect.

The cast is a good one, with some top-notch talent not even getting screen credit. Such stellar names as John Hamilton, and Eddy Chandler and Lane Chandler, Pierre Watkin and Pat O'Malley, are not names at all, until a fan comes to IMDb to look.

Ronald Reagan is the star, and he was still looking to break out of the ranks, after being overshadowed (and I honestly don't understand why, after seeing the film recently) in "Brother Rat" by Eddie Albert.

Yes, Albert turned into a great actor, but in "Brother Rat" he was rather blah, possibly because his character was, and Reagan came across stronger, again possibly because of his character.

In this movie, Reagan shines: He is a very good-looking man, with a great smile, and he handles the action scenes well, and, perhaps most important, he displays a very winning personality.

The Brass Bancroft character appeared in several more films of this popular series and finally, after doing well as secondary characters in bigger-budget movies (with the like of Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart), he got his chance at stardom.

This "Secret Service" entry might not seem like anything startlingly new today, but in 1939 it broke some ground. Right at the beginning, when the pilot fears being caught carrying illegal aliens, the horrific act surely shocked audiences.

I've been wanting for years to see the Bancroft series or at least a Bancroft movie, and finally, thanks to Turner Classic Movies, I have.

All in all, it's a good story with a million-dollar cast.

The film begins with some criminals transporting illegal aliens into the US from Mexico. However, this is NOT the typical group of illegals--many are criminals and those running the business are evil scum. This becomes apparent when the plane is almost captured by a Secret Service agent. How he and the rest of the passengers were done away with in an early scene was truly horrifying and shocked me.

Later, airline pilot Ronald Reagan is approached by the Secret Service and asked to join. The problem is, they need to ruin his clean reputation so that the mob will believe he is their kind of person, so government frames Reagan and sends him for a short stint in prison--after which time he makes contact with the crooks and infiltrates the gang.

This was an obvious B-movie from Warner Brothers due to the style of film (emphasizing action and a very fast pace), the fact that the movie is filled with unknown actors (even star Ronald Reagan was a definite newcomer to the screen) and its short length (at just over one hour). Often, over the years' "B" has come to mean bad or second-rate, though this movie is pretty good considering that it was meant to be a lesser film in a double-feature. Sure, you can't compare it to the very best films of the time, but this breezy little film is a good showcase for Reagan and helps to hide his relatively wooden screen persona. I liked Reagan but gotta admit he wasn't the most charismatic actor of his age. About the only other negatives are common in B's and these are plot holes--little inconsistencies or logical errors that were never effectively dealt with, such as how easy it was for Reagan's cover to get blown--but what do you expect for 63 minutes?!