Non-Stop New York

In NYC, struggling actress Jennie Carr (Anna Lee) finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery, with her own life in imminent danger. After fleeing to London, and getting little help from Scotland Yard, Jennie stows away on the transatlantic mega-plane of the title.

The NON-STOP NEW YORK is a sort of luxury liner in the sky. It gets very interesting when both the killers and a Scotland Yard Inspector happen to be aboard for the flight.

Packed with intrigue, thrills, and humor, this movie deserves to be rediscovered...

I saw this film some years back on PBS and only wish I could find a copy of it now. A young woman witnesses a murder in New York, and promptly leaves for England. She sees the news in a London paper about a man in New York about to be executed for the murder, and she knows he is innocent. She has to get back to NY as fast as possible to save an innocent man from the electric chair, and so she stows on the Air Boat, Non-stop to New York. Some of the lines are so good that years later, they still echo in my head.

Much of the movie takes place on this incredible aircraft, which takes off from the Thames in London, and is like a flying..., well, boat. Dining room, state rooms, close quarters, nasty travel companions. It's all here.

Borders on Film Noir, but with a wry sense of humor.

If you like the style of the 1940s, and slightly outlandish stories so characteristic of the period, I dare say you will enjoy this English trifle quite a bit!

I won't reveal the ending, so you'll have to see the film to know if she arrives in time!

Robert Stevenson (1905-1986) was a superb British director, but his name is not widely enough recognised. He is probably most famous for JANE EYRE (1944) with Orson Welles and TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS (1940). Less well known are his excellent DISHONORED LADY (1947, see my review), and his truly magnificent OWD BOB (1938, see my review), which he made the year after this. In this year, he also made KING SOLOMON'S MINES with Anna Lee, who stars once again in this film of his. This really is a most fascinating film, because of the spectacular second half which takes place on a trans-Atlantic Clipper seaplane, the interior of which resembles that of a zeppelin, on multiple levels with individual sleeping compartments, bar and restaurant. It even has a little balcony where people stand outside to take the air and look down upon the ships which are not far below them. Francis L. Sullivan here gives one of his finest performances as the oiliest and least scrupulous of villains, truly hair-raising in his wickedness. Anna Lee is a typical 1930s English 'sweetie', but with more fibre and character than is usual for that time, and she handles the part of the courageous accidental heroine very well. She is determined to save the wrong man from being executed in America for a crime he did not commit. Anna stows away on the Clipper to get back to America to give her evidence, which Scotland Yard had refused to take seriously. This is very much a Hitchcock-style suspense thriller, and makes excellent viewing. It deserves to be more widely known, as it is certainly a British pre-War classic. If Britain had as many film buffs as there are in America, where almost any trivial B or C movie can achieve fame nowadays, films like this would be familiar and praised, rather than obscure and forgotten. But the British are lazy about their cinematic heritage, and films like this are never shown on British television, so no one even knows they exist. In this film, the child actor Desmond Tester is most amusing as an eccentric child musical prodigy who becomes entangled in the murderous intrigues going on aboard the Clipper plane. If only British films still produced wonderfully strange character actors like that! It was also amusing to see a young Peter Bull scowling with his heavy jowls as a blackmailer in this film. In real life, he was actually rather jolly, although extraordinarily bombastic and often too loud, and he was always available for a chat when he ran his astrological shop in Notting Hill Gate in the 1960s and 1970s.

I bought the video of Non-Stop New York on a whim when I saw it was about a double-decker airplane with an outside deck(!). However, the plane only comes into play during the last half of the film, and when it does, the design of it is so downplayed that we assume double-decker planes were mainstream travel in 1938. The plot involves a chorus girl trying to free an innocent man from death row while being pursued by the gangsters that did it. Yeah, we've all seen it before, but the plane, and the way the movie uses it, truly make this trip worth it.

In my opinion, if you stumbled across a film as esoteric as this in the IMDb and actually are taking the time to read about it, you'll enjoy it. This is what all those Airport movies wish they were.

This unknown classic is a must see. It is fast paced in the Hitchcock style and well acted with a lot of droll sequences intertwined between. Anna Lee couldn't be prettier or more charming. The entire cast including the villain Francis Sullivan are great. The British attempt at American slang is slightly noticeable but otherwise the direction is top notch. I just love that luxury aeroplane and wish that it was a reality to the present air traveller to rid him of the monotony of long travel. The storyline may be a little slow paced but is offset by the acting. Certainly a movie far before its period and not necessarily a curio but most interesting to watch.