Patrolling the Ether

A amateur radio buff is told by a Radio Intelligence Division man that he can't chat with his friends in South America because spies use radios to transmit their information elsewhere in a "this is why we can't have nice things" way. Then we go into a made-up story about tracking down some spies in Pennsylvania because CRIME DOES NOT PAY.

It's not a particularly interesting entry in MGM's long-running crime series, which is probably why its first appearance was on television, twelve days before it was released into theaters.

Up until WWII, the Crime Does Not Pay series from MGM was exceptional and very realistic. However, with the advent of the war, the studio began using the shorts more and more for propaganda purposes and realism began to wane. In fact, when this film begins, you'll probably notice that the format has changed--there is no MGM crime reporter or introduction by some fake government official. In fact, there's no introduction at all--the first like this in the series.

The film begins just before the US enters WWII and an FCC agent is shown, briefly, visiting the home of a young HAM radio operator to ask him to stop broadcasting but begin monitoring for unusual activity. Then, the film jumps ahead to 1944 and the story is about a ring of spies who are broadcasting information to the German fleet about the movement of American cargo ships. Here's where it gets really crazy, as one of the broadcasting locations is in a cemetery--under the earth in a fake grave!!! But these evil scum have escaped--is there any chance they'll catch them and save democracy? While there were a few substantiated cases of Axis spies in the US during the war, they were very few and far between. However, if you watched a lot of Hollywood films at the time, you'd think they were just about everywhere! And, having them working inside a subterranean fake grave is just silly. Overall, a ridiculous but reasonably enjoyable propaganda film--and clearly not up to the standards of the usual Crime Does Not Pay short.

I catch this series whenever an episode comes on and I was rather disappointed in this one. From the early part of the film when the mother says, "Son this man from the FCC wants to talk to you" I knew it was going to be lame. As having been an amateur radio operator and a professional broadcaster, I can tell you that people from the FCC don't come by to talk sports with you. Such a visit would have been as welcome as "Hey Charlie, this motorcycle cop who has been following you for three miles wants to talk to you." It doesn't make sense.

And someone who was 16 in 1940 is a Federal agent in 1944? While I can't say for sure, my guess is that the kid would have had to have had an engineering degree to work for the FCC. The film was interesting, but with too many gaps in logic to make it really enjoyable.

Patrolling the Ether (1944)

** (out of 4)

Pretty weak entry in MGM's "Crime Does Not Pay" series takes a look at how foreign agents are using radio broadcasts to stay in touch and how the U.S. government came up with the RID (Radio Intelligence Division) to try and locate them. That's pretty much all the "story" you get here and while the Crime Does Not Pay series is my favorite of all the MGM dramas this one here is without question the worst I've seen. This isn't a really awful movie but at the same time it comes across rather boring without an inch of energy to be found. One of the biggest problems is that there's just not too much that happens because there are so many drawn out sequences where we see the agents just driving around hoping to pick up on one of the signals. This constant driving around and not accomplishing anything might have been a reality but it doesn't translate to the screen very well. There are two long sequences where nothing much happens and one can't help but grow tired of the lack of action going on. The director doesn't manage to build up any suspense and there's never a drop of drama. There's no question that when the war started every studio transformed their shorts to fit war subjects but this thing here certainly doesn't belong in the series. We don't get the narration that normally opens these shorts and in the end the entire thing is worth skipping.

FCC has a video of this film and with the studio's permission uses it for training - hence I saw it. It was part of a series of WWII propaganda films on how obscure agencies were contributing to the war effort. There is some truth to the wartime role of the FCC in listening for axis spies who used radio and having armed agents look for them. This mission left FCC after the war. The details of the film are highly fictionalized and the acting reminds one of Reefer Madness.

J. Edgar Hoover was reportedly annoyed about the film saying it gave the FCC too much credit.

If you are interested in radio technology or FCC this is a good movie to watch with a beer in hand. It is historically significant in that it was the first film shown on TV before theatrical release - but at that time TV was an experiment and viewership was minimal.