Plot
Paul Julius Reuter (Edward G. Robinson) starts a messenger service using homing pigeons to fill a gap in the telegraph network spanning Europe, but has difficulty convincing anyone to subscribe. When poison is sent to a hospital by mistake, Reuter's message saves the day (and many lives). However, he is persuaded by Ida Magnus (Edna Best), the pretty daughter of Dr. Magnus (Otto Kruger), to keep it quiet, as a scandal would undo all the good work the doctors are doing.
Finally though, with some hot news about Russia invading Hungary (which would depress the stock market), Reuter is able to convince bankers that he can provide them with financial information much more quickly than by any other means. He is particularly pleased and surprised by how reliable his lifelong, lackadaisical friend Max Wagner (Eddie Albert) has become at the Brussels office, until his associate Franz Geller (Albert Bassermann) informs him that Ida had, while there on a visit, taken over and run the place. Reuter sends a message by pigeon, asking her to marry him. She sends one back with her assent.
When the telegraph network finally fills the gap Reuter's business had been exploiting, he realizes that he can use the employees he has in place all over Europe to gather the news and sell it to the newspapers. Once again, he encounters resistance, particularly from John Delane (Montagu Love), influential editor of The Times , but overcomes it by persuading Louis Napoleon III (Walter Kingsford) to allow him to disseminate the text of an extremely important speech at the same time as it is being presented.
Later, a rival company appears; Anglo Irish secretly builds a telegraph line in Ireland that gives it a two-hour lead in getting news from ships coming from America. Reuter borrows money from his client and good friend, Sir Randolph Persham (Nigel Bruce), and builds his own line, one that extends further west and gets the news even quicker. Its first use is to announce the assassination of President Lincoln. As nobody knows about Reuter's new telegraph line, he is accused of making the tragedy up in order to manipulate the stock market; even Sir Randolph believes the rumors at first. The matter is brought up in the British Parliament, but Reuter is vindicated when slower services confirm his story.
Paul Julius Freiherr von Reuter was a German-born, British entrepreneur who was a pioneer of telegraphy and news reporting. He was a reporter and media owner, and the founder of Reuters News Agency, which became part of the Thomson Reuters conglomerate in 2008.
Edna Clara Best was a British stage and screen actress.
Gracie Lantz, also known by her stage name Grace Stafford, was an American actress and the wife of animation producer Walter Lantz. Stafford is best known for providing the voice of Woody Woodpecker, a creation of Lantz's, from 1950 to 1991.
Kidnapped (1938) is an adventure film directed by Otto Preminger and Alfred L. Werker, starring Warner Baxter and Freddie Bartholomew, and based on the 1886 novel Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Nigel Hector Munro Stock was an English actor of stage, screen, radio and television, who played character roles in many films and television dramas.
The Son of Monte Cristo is a 1940 American black-and-white swashbuckling adventure film from United Artists, produced by Edward Small, directed by Rowland V. Lee, that stars Louis Hayward, Joan Bennett, and George Sanders. The Small production uses the same sets and many of the same cast and production crew as his previous year's production of The Man in the Iron Mask.
Egon Brecher was an Austria-Hungary-born actor and director, who also served as the chief director of Vienna's Stadttheater, before entering the motion picture industry.
Edward the Seventh is a 1975 British television drama series, made by ATV in 13 episodes.
Treasure Island is a 1934 film directed by Victor Fleming and starring Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, and Nigel Bruce. It is an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous 1883 novel of the same name. Jim Hawkins discovers a treasure map and travels on a sailing ship to a remote island, but pirates led by Long John Silver threaten to take away the honest seafarers’ riches and lives.
Otto Kruger was an American actor, originally a Broadway matinee idol, who established a niche as a charming villain in films, such as Hitchcock's Saboteur. He also appeared in CBS's Perry Mason and other TV series. He was the grandnephew of South African president Paul Kruger.
Harry Montagu Love, usually credited as Montagu Love, was an English screen, stage and vaudeville actor.
Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet is a 1940 biographical film directed by William Dieterle and starring Edward G. Robinson, based on the true story of the German doctor and scientist Dr. Paul Ehrlich. The film was released by Warner Bros., with some controversy considering the subject of syphilis in a major studio release. It was nominated for an Oscar for its original screenplay, but lost to The Great McGinty.
Paul Weigel was a German-American actor. He appeared in 114 films between 1916 and 1945.
Louis Samuel Montagu, 2nd Baron Swaythling (1869–1927) was a prominent member of the British Jewish community, a financier, and a political activist. He was the son and heir of Samuel Montagu, 1st Baron Swaythling, and of his wife Ellen (Cohen).
Walter Kingsford was a British stage, film and television actor.
Devotion is a 1946 American biographical film directed by Curtis Bernhardt and starring Ida Lupino, Paul Henreid, Olivia de Havilland, and Sydney Greenstreet. Based on a story by Theodore Reeves, the film is a highly fictionalized account of the lives of the Brontë sisters. The movie features Montagu Love's last role; he died almost three years before the film's delayed release.
Confirm or Deny is a 1941 film made by 20th Century Fox, directed by Archie Mayo and Fritz Lang (uncredited), and starring by Don Ameche and Joan Bennett. The screenplay was written by Jo Swerling, based on a story by Samuel Fuller and Henry Wales.
Leonard Carey was an English character actor who very often played butlers in Hollywood films of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. He was also active in television during the 1950s. He is perhaps best known for his role as the beach hermit, Ben, in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940).
Lulu Belle is a 1948 American drama musical romance film directed by Leslie Fenton and starring Dorothy Lamour. The film was an adaption of a sensational 1920s hit play by Charles MacArthur and Edward Sheldon, about a mulatto songstress, a "man-trap" who bewitched powerful men in New Orleans. This convoluted but heavily sanitized post-Code film version of the play was about a Caucasian songbird who could not be true to her boxer beau. Although the film offered a change of pace for its star, Dorothy Lamour, it was not a success at the box office.
Francis Lumsden Hare was an Irish-born film and theatre actor. He was also a theatre director and theatrical producer.
