A Man Betrayed

This John Wayne film is rarely seen and I was surprised to see it being aired on a local TV channel. Since I've seen just above all of Wayne's AVAILABLE films, I was excited to see this film. While it wasn't bad, it also was underwhelming since, at heart, it was just a cheap B- movie made just before John Wayne became a super-star.

When the film begins, a man is murdered. However, it's all quickly chalked up to suicide and it's all swept under the rug. What they didn't anticipate was that the dead guy had a bull-headed friend, Lynn (John Wayne) and he was intent on getting to the bottom of things. At first, the local political boss is able to make Wayne believe that there was no conspiracy and the man died of natural causes. Besides, the man's daughter, Sabra (Frances Dee) was cute and Lynn was obviously very taken with her. But, over time, Lynn starts to realize that there is more than meets the eye to all this...the local 'Progressive Party' is anything but! What's next? See the film.

This film is pretty much like most Bs--hastily written, full of plot problems and yet is entertaining. It's also featuring John Wayne as a caveman, of sorts--the sort of role folks liked back in the 40s but which will annoy many viewers with today's sensibilities. A film mostly for big-time Wayne fans and that's all--especially with the really, really dumb ending where the ultra-bad guy suddenly changes his spots!

In New York, a small-town basketball player stumbles out of kingpin Cameron's club, Inferno, gets struck by lightening and dies. Investigation reveals he was shot but the papers are put under pressure to report it as a suicide. Lawyer Lynn Hollister arrives the next day from Spring Valley to investigate the death, firm in his belief that his friend would not have taken his own life.

From the plot summary, this film sounded like Wayne would be in a tough-talking crime thriller where he uncovers a political web of corruption. However, despite the dramatic (rather supernatural) opening, for over an hour it simply isn't that at all. It actually seems to aim for some sort of light comedy where Lynn is very much the small-town hick who greets everything with a smile and an `ahh-schucks'. This is not a bad thing but it doesn't really sit with the dramatic intensions.

After an hour, Lynn turns on those he has been feeling out for a while, but even then it keeps the gently comic tone in spits and spats. However the arrival of tough talking (even with comic interludes) is welcome and it helps the film a great deal in the final 30 minutes. The lack of tension and excitement is not so much due to the comic stuff as it is to the lack of a really tight, coherent script. The film is about the powerful Cameron who has his hands everywhere - controlling the media and the politicians just enough to put the squeeze on them. However the film doesn't deliver this well enough and I was left unconvinced by the size of the web - and therefore rather uninvolved in the whole film.

Wayne is OK at the comic stuff and the tough talking stuff but it's like he's flicking a switch in this film - tough one minute, completely different the next; it spoils his character a bit. Why his character is called Lynn is beyond me as I've never heard it for a boy before - although Wayne's no stranger to unusual names. Dee is dark and sexy in a good role, but she isn't given enough time. Ellis is OK but fails to come across as the master that the plot requires him to be. A small role for noir favourite Ward Bond adds to the interest.

Overall this is an OK film but it's mix of comedy and drama just doesn't work and it gives the film an uneven feel. It turns it around a bit in the final 25 minutes but by then it is too late to build tension. The power of Cameron never really comes through and, for the majority of the film, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a whimsical romantic comedy rather than a murder mystery film.

An American drama; A story about a country lawyer who courts the daughter of a city politician who he is investigating for corruption. This film is a crime mystery and screwball comedy but it fails to hit the mark on both subgenres because it is short on action and it brims over with dialogue. John Wayne is appealing and his scenes with Francis Dee are satisfying, but he is not so convincing as a small town attorney with small town charm. The film keeps a speedy pace but the story doesn't seem to click together because of its artifice - even the action scenes fail to produce tension because of a trace of comedy.

Lynn Hollister, a small-town lawyer, travels to the nearby big city on business connected with the death of his friend Johnny. (Yes, Lynn is a man despite the feminine-sounding Christian name. Were the scriptwriters trying to make a snide reference to the fact that John Wayne's birth name was "Marion"?) Hollister at first believes Johnny's death to have been an accident, but soon realises that Johnny was murdered. Further investigations reveal a web of corruption, criminality and election rigging connected to Boss Cameron, the leading light in city 's political machine.

That sounds like the plot of a gritty crime thriller, possibly made in the film noir style which was starting to become popular in 1941. It isn't. "A Man Betrayed", despite its theme, is more like a light romantic comedy than a crime drama. Hollister falls in love with Cameron's attractive daughter Sabra, and the film then concentrates as much on their resulting romance as on the suspense elements.

This film might just have worked if it had been made as a straightforward serious drama. One reviewer states that John Wayne is not at all believable as a lawyer, but he couldn't play a cowboy in every movie, and a tough crusading lawyer taking on the forces of organised crime would probably have been well within his compass. Where I do agree with that reviewer is when he says that Wayne was no Cary Grant impersonator. Romantic comedy just wasn't up his street. One of the weaknesses of the studio system is that actors could be required to play any part their bosses demanded of them, regardless of whether it was up their street or not, and as Wayne was one of the few major stars working for Republic Pictures they doubtless wanted to get as much mileage out of him as they could.

That said, not even Cary Grant himself could have made "A Man Betrayed" work as a comedy. That's not a reflection on his comic talents; it's a reflection on the total lack of amusing material in this film. I doubt if anyone, no matter how well developed their sense of humour might be, could find anything to laugh at in it. The film's light-hearted tone doesn't make it a successful comedy; it just prevents it from being taken seriously as anything else. This is one of those films that are neither fish nor flesh nor fowl nor good red herring. 3/10

Lawyer John Wayne's friend, a high school basketball star from his town, is shot down and then run over by a car. The death is declared a suicide by the local coroner. Wayne goes to the big city to investigate.

Wayne's directed to see Edward Ellis who is the local political boss and of course the Duke falls big time for Ellis's daughter Frances Dee. Never mind he's got a job to do, even if it costs him Dee.

This was John Wayne's one and only attempt at playing a crusader type, a scaled down version of Jefferson Smith. Ellis is a combination of the characters played by Edward Arnold and Claude Rains in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Dee combines both Jean Arthur and Astrid Allwyn. I'd say the results were mixed. Perhaps with a better script at a larger studio with more production values, Wayne might have done more with the part.

As it is there are some nice John Wayne style fight scenes in A Man Betrayed, a couple with Ward Bond, and a king sized brawl outside a polling place where Ellis is bringing in repeaters from his sponsored soup kitchens. Machine politics, American style. Hopefully none of those countries where we're crusading for democracy ever sees this film.

Ward Bond plays the moronic brother of Alexander Granach, owner of the red light district club where Wayne's friend was killed in. His performance while good, was a carbon copy of Lon Chaney, Jr.'s from Of Mice and Men. I expected him to ask Granach about the bunny rabbits any minute.

At this phase of Wayne's career, Republic was casting him in a variety of parts to broaden his casting potential in the wake of his success with Stagecoach. Herbert J. Yates of Republic films was making almost as much money loaning Wayne out as in his own films and he was trying to make him more marketable. He didn't succeed with A Man Betrayed, but it wasn't the Duke's fault by any means.