By Whose Hand?

This film was shown on Turner Classic Movies in the early hours of the AM and I was very glad to have been able to view this nice Classic Film from 1932. The story is all centered on a train ride with a prisoner aboard the Steam Engine powered train and some very shady characters both men and women. A detective on the train loses his prisoner and everyone went crazy trying to locate him, they searched the Pullman car with its bunk bed arrangements with a drawn curtain over each bunk. Some of the passengers were lovers and some couples were newly-weds and they all had to get out of their beds. There is lots of comedy even though there is murder, funny cigarettes give out and a few jewel thieves. Ben Lyon, (Jimmy), Hell's Angels" played the role of a reporter along with Barbara Weeks (Alice),"One Man Justice" who gave a great supporting role. There seemed to be plenty of blonde women on this train, it was during the 30's and everyone wanted Jean Harlow in their pictures or someone who looked like her. Ben Lyon was the star of "Hell's Angels" produced and directed by Howard Hughes. If you can catch this film on TV, you will enjoy a Classic Great Film from the PAST.

Murder mystery B-movies are a dime a dozen and they must have made thousands of them in the 1930s and 40s. Because of this, I had low expectations for "By Whose Hand?"....fortunately, my first instinct was wrong!

The story begins with a man being murdered while aboard a train. Soon, you see newspaper headlines announcing that 'Killer' Delmar, the escaped maniac, is responsible! The scene then cuts to a train station and a bunch of different folks and their stories are introduced...much like you'd see in a film like "Airport". This would seem to indicate that Killer Delmar will strike on this train. But what you don't realize is that there are more evil people aboard. There's the convicted criminal being taken to prison as well as several career criminals who are hiding out among the many passengers.

The reason why I enjoyed this Columbia movie so much was the excellent writing. I almost gave the movie an 8 but decided against it due to a couple cheesy things I saw in the film (such as the comic relief drunk)...but otherwise an excellent film. In particular, the finale is marvelous and makes such a humble picture seem bigger and better.

A Little Spoiler - Every pre-code fan should catch this movie, "By Whose Hand?". It was a very entertaining and rare 65 minute classic movie that was shown on Turner Classic Movies. This movie is another example of pre-code greatness. Crime, Love, Betrayal, and Murder all takes place on a train ride. Slick and Smooth Ben Lyon plays Jimmy Hawley, a newspaper reporter who is always got his eye out for a story. He gets kissed accidentally by pretty Alice (Barbara Weeks) and because of that he follows her to California on a train where a big story evolves right before his eyes. The train ride has plenty of suspects with a shady past, a jewelry distributor (Kenneth Thomson), a gorgeous moll named Eileen (Ethel Kenyon), a criminal, a bitter man, and the wife of a criminal who's going to help her husband get even with the man who framed him who's on the train. The jewelry man is killed and the beautiful moll is suspected because of her being seen with him and because of her past, the bitter guy who the jewelry man fired is suspected of killing out of revenge. The convict and his wife are suspects too even Alice (Barbara Weeks). Ben Lyon plays detective and points out the guilty and innocent. I won't give all all the details in case some of you haven't seen it.

There is mention of dope cigarettes - weed - which was given to the man to fall asleep so he could be killed. There is also plenty of sexual innuendos that pre-code movies were known for. The newlywed couple was cute, especially, the blonde, little cutie. During the drama, the funny part is when the detective tells everyone to come out of their sleepers and he ask the newlywed couple what they were doing during the murder and the newlywed couple starts to blush and look guilty and giggles because they were having sex during the murder - they didn't say that but their face told it. That's what I like about pre-code, pre-code didn't have to be filthy and vulgar to be entertaining and sexy like movies today. Movies today should learn something from pre-code movies. This movie has everything and it's jam-packed for being just a 65 minute movie. That's what I love about pre-code, pre-code proved a movie doesn't have to be 2 hours long to be entertaining or to tell the story fully. There was a beginning, middle, and end, the pre-code movies get to the point without a lot of unnecessary parts which is good for an impatient person like me. Pre-code is entertaining all the way through. Please see this movie, I personally recommend it!

This is a beautifully crafted murder-cum-jewel heist-cum-romance with some great stunt work on a train. We see the characters assemble in Los Angeles station ready to board the train to San Francisco. As we meet them we get shown the various ways they could come into conflict. There's the jeweler with an eye for the ladies, a lady with an eye for the jewels and various others of differing degrees of respectability. Not shown, though it is clear he will pop up some time is the mad murderer on the run.

The love interest comes from Jimmy, a reporter who gets on the train at the last minute and Alice.

The first killing shakes everything up, turning people out of their dormitory style beds as the police try to catch the killer.

It's very hard to make a bad film set on a train unless it's the Orient Express, but the action in those one is great.

Pure joy from start to finish.

Back in the mid-1990s, while researching, along with Greg Mank, the biography of Dwight Frye, it was believed that "By Whose Hand?" was a "lost" early talkie. Therefore, we were not able to screen it for the book. A few years later (approx. 1998), it was learned that the film, along with a number of other early Columbia titles, had been preserved but was unlikely to ever be released on DVD or shown on TV. That was until this morning, when TCM ran a beautiful print of "By Whose Hand?" The film is a breezy murder mystery (working title was "Murder Express") with Ben Lyon doing a fine job as the lead Jimmy Hawley, a crime reporter, who boards a train more to pursue the beautiful Barbara Weeks than to follow a lead that the escaped Killer Delmar (Nat Pendleton) might be on the train. There are many suspicious characters aboard the train, including Ethel Kenyon as a jewel thief, Kenneth Thomson as a womanizing jeweler, Helene Millard as a "grieving" widow, and the always enjoyable William V. Mong as a vengeful, bitter old man. Detective William Halligan has in his care (in cuffs) one Chick Lewis (Dwight Frye), who had squealed on his old buddy Delmar and is now being transported to prison near San Francisco. There are others on the train who somewhat spoil the mood - a goofy newlywed couple (Lorin Raker and Dolores Rey) and the usually good comic actor Tom Dugan, who somewhat overplays a drunk here and who becomes attached to Lyon. Oscar Smith plays a nervous porter with some good comedy moments.

There are some plot twists and murders on the train which will not be revealed in case TCM airs this again. Suffice it to say Lyon and Weeks play off one another quite well. Their performances do not seem that dated for a 75 year old film. Dwight Frye is more subdued than usual and has a nice sympathetic moment with an actress playing his elderly mother prior to his boarding the train in an early sequence. Mong was beginning to become typecast as miserly old men, but here shows the skills of a veteran actor, even in a role without much dimension. Millard and Kenyon were good in their respective roles, but neither had much success in Hollywood. Barbara Weeks, however, is a fine actress who has never received her proper due from film historians. She gave up her film career (except for a few later appearances) while still in her twenties and was rumored to have died in 1954 (when she actually lived almost 50 years more - until 2003). Her grace, beauty, charm, and sense of humor all come across on screen and make one wonder why her career never really took off.

"By Whose Hand?" is a film I have waited to see for many years and feared I'd never get the chance. Now that I have finally viewed it, I am pleased to say it met and even succeeded my expectations!