23 Paces to Baker Street | |
---|---|
Directed by | Henry Hathaway |
Screenplay by | Nigel Balchin |
Based on | Warrant for X 1938 novel by Philip MacDonald |
Produced by | Henry Ephron |
Starring | Van Johnson Vera Miles Cecil Parker |
Cinematography | Milton R. Krasner |
Edited by | James B. Clark |
Music by | Leigh Harline |
Production company | |
Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date |
|
Running time | 103 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $1,375,000 [1] |
Box office | $1 million (US rentals) [2] |
23 Paces to Baker Street is a 1956 American DeLuxe Color mystery thriller film directed by Henry Hathaway. It was released by 20th Century Fox and filmed in Cinemascope on location in London. The screenplay by Nigel Balchin was based on the 1938 novel Warrant for X, original UK title The Nursemaid Who Disappeared by Philip MacDonald. The film focuses on Philip Hannon (Van Johnson), a blind playwright who overhears a partial conversation he believes is related to the planning of a kidnapping. Hannon searches for the child with the help of his butler and ex-fiancée, using his acute sense of hearing to gather evidence and serve as guidance. The plot of the film is similar to Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window of 1954, which also features a disabled protagonist witnessing a crime whom the police refuse to take seriously, therefore placing him in danger and culminating in a final standoff with the killer in the protagonist's darkened apartment.
Philip Hannon is a blind man who lives in a London flat with a spectacular view over the Thames river between Waterloo Bridge and Charing Cross Station, with his trusted butler Bob Matthews; he works as a playwright. One day, he overhears part of a conversation in his local pub that possibly involves a plot to commit a crime. He tries to contact Inspector Grovening who offers no help, so he teams up with his butler and his ex-fiancée, Jean, who is over from America, to bring the kidnappers to justice. Their sleuthing soon leads them to a nanny agency with dire repercussions.
In his review in The New York Times , Bosley Crowther observed, "a large part of this picture is curiously casual and slow, as Van Johnson, as the blind man, bores the mischief out of everybody with his hazy suspicions...for that matter, he bores the audience, too. Lots of unimpressed fellows were ho-humming in the balcony at Loew's State yesterday...matters do start popping about half or two-thirds of the way along, when it is finally discovered, through various coincidences, that something has been cooking all the time. But you have to depend on Mr. Johnson — and Nigel Balchin, the screenwriter — to give you the details after they've been discovered. This is not a good way to get people interested in a mystery show...it would be a more exciting picture if it got going with a little more snap, established a more compelling mystery and built up some genuine suspense." [3]
Heaven Can Wait is a 1943 Technicolor American supernatural comedy film produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. The screenplay was by Samson Raphaelson based on the play Birthday by Ladislaus Bus-Fekete. The music score was by Alfred Newman and the cinematography by Edward Cronjager.
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Charles Van Dell Johnson was an American film, television, theatre and radio actor. He was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during and after World War II.
William Maurice Denham OBE was an English character actor who appeared in over 100 films and television programmes in his long career.
Nigel Marlin Balchin was an English psychologist and author, particularly known for his novels written during and immediately after World War II: Darkness Falls from the Air, The Small Back Room and Mine Own Executioner.
Clancy Street Boys is a 1943 comedy film directed by William Beaudine and starring the East Side Kids. It is Beaudine's first film with the team; he would direct several more in the series and many in the Bowery Boys canon. Leo Gorcey married the female lead Amelita Ward. There is no mention of "Clancy Street" in the film, but a rival gang at Cherry Street appears at the beginning and climax of the film.
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The Nursemaid Who Disappeared is a 1939 British, black-and-white, crime film, directed by Arthur B. Woods and starring Ronald Shiner as Detective Smith (uncredited), Ian Fleming, Arthur Margetson, Peter Coke and Edward Chapman. Based on a 1938 Philip Macdonald novel, it was produced by Warner Brothers – First National Productions. The 1956 American 20th Century-Fox film, 23 Paces to Baker Street, was based on the same novel.
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