The 49th Man

Last updated
The 49th Man
The 49th Man poster.jpg
Theatrical poster
Directed by Fred F. Sears
Screenplay by Harry Essex
Based on Ivan Tors
Produced by Sam Katzman
Starring John Ireland
Richard Denning
Narrated by Gerald Mohr
Cinematography Lester White
Edited by William A. Lyon
Production
company
Columbia Pictures
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date
  • May 20, 1953 (1953-05-20)
Running time
73 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

The 49th Man is a 1953 American film noir crime film directed by Fred F. Sears, and starring John Ireland and Richard Denning. It was released by Columbia Pictures. The Cold War thriller was based on a story by Ivan Tors and the screenplay written by Harry Essex.

Contents

The film's title is a cryptic reference to the men in the film hired to smuggle 48 nuclear weapons components into the United States as part of a secret war game and the unexpected 49th man, using the war game as cover, smuggling in a real atomic bomb as part of a plot to destroy an American city.

Plot

After a fatal car crash in Lordsburg, New Mexico, investigators find a mysterious machine component that they turn over to the nearby Los Alamos National Laboratory for identification. Scientists there declare that it is one component of an advanced portable nuclear weapon designed by an unknown, presumably hostile power. The discovery prompts Paul Reagan (Richard Denning), chief of the Security Investigation Division (SID), to send agent John Williams (John Ireland) to investigate the source of these components and to prevent them from being assembled into a functioning weapon. As more parts are smuggled into the United States, the investigation expands and a pattern begins to emerge which points to Marseilles, France.

After uranium is found welded to the hull of a U.S. Navy submarine in New London, Connecticut, Williams continues his investigation aboard that submarine, now bound for the French port, undercover as a naval officer preparing a training film. While in Marseilles, he learns that civilians Margo Wayne (Suzanne Dalbert) and her husband Leo Wayne (Peter Marshall) are working with clarinet player Buzz Olin (Richard Avonde) and an unknown member of the submarine's crew to smuggle the parts in special metal cases built by Pierre Neff (George Dee). After a fight near the dock, Williams believes that Lt. Magrew (Mike Connors) and Commander Jackson (Robert Foulk) are in on the plot. He orders them arrested, only to be betrayed by his colleague, agent Andy (Robert Hunter), and taken into custody himself.

Arriving in Washington, D.C., Williams escapes from his captors and contacts Reagan at SID headquarters where he finds Jackson and Magrew waiting for him in Reagan's office. The whole exercise was a war game, put on in secret by the Defense Department to test the nation's readiness for a subversive attack. However, the Waynes and Olin are not part of the war game. They have used Neff to construct 4 cases, in addition to the 48 ordered by the naval officers, and smuggled their own portable nuclear weapon into the United States. With less than 48 hours before the bomb's scheduled detonation at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Williams and his team track Buzz Olin and the Waynes to the San Francisco area. After a desperate attempt to escape with the bomb and destroy San Francisco by air, Leo Wayne is killed and Jackson has just two hours to attempt to defuse the bomb while Williams flies towards Nevada. This fails and with less than a minute to go the bomb is dropped from the plane to detonate over Frenchman Flat at the Nevada Test Site. Crisis averted, the film ends with the narrator intoning, "...and three o'clock is just the middle of another afternoon in the life of a city."

Cast

Production

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fat Man</span> U.S. atomic bomb type used at Nagasaki, 1945

"Fat Man" was the codename for the type of nuclear weapon the United States detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the first being Little Boy, and its detonation marked the third nuclear explosion in history. The first one was built by scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium manufactured at the Hanford Site and was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar piloted by Major Charles Sweeney.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Klaus Fuchs</span> German-born British physicist and atomic spy (1911–1988)

Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British, and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after World War II. While at the Los Alamos Laboratory, Fuchs was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first nuclear weapons and, later, early models of the hydrogen bomb. After his conviction in 1950, he served nine years in prison in the United Kingdom, then migrated to East Germany where he resumed his career as a physicist and scientific leader.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuclear technology</span> Technology that involves the reactions of atomic nuclei

Nuclear technology is technology that involves the nuclear reactions of atomic nuclei. Among the notable nuclear technologies are nuclear reactors, nuclear medicine and nuclear weapons. It is also used, among other things, in smoke detectors and gun sights.

<i>The Atomic Cafe</i> 1982 documentary film

The Atomic Cafe is a 1982 American documentary film directed by Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty. It is a compilation of clips from newsreels, military training films, and other footage produced in the United States early in the Cold War on the subject of nuclear warfare. Without any narration, the footage is edited and presented in a manner to demonstrate how misinformation and propaganda was used by the U.S. government and popular culture to ease fears about nuclear weapons among the American public.

<i>The Fourth Protocol</i> 1984 novel by Frederick Forsyth

The Fourth Protocol is a thriller novel by British writer Frederick Forsyth, published in August 1984.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Submarine films</span> Subgenre of war film

The submarine film is a subgenre of war film in which most of the plot revolves around a submarine below the ocean's surface. Films of this subgenre typically focus on a small but determined crew of submariners battling against enemy submarines or submarine-hunter ships, or against other problems ranging from disputes amongst the crew, threats of mutiny, life-threatening mechanical breakdowns, or the daily difficulties of living on a submarine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States and weapons of mass destruction</span>

The United States is known to have possessed three types of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The U.S. is the only country to have used nuclear weapons on another country, when it detonated two atomic bombs over two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. It had secretly developed the earliest form of the atomic weapon during the 1940s under the title "Manhattan Project". The United States pioneered the development of both the nuclear fission and hydrogen bombs. It was the world's first and only nuclear power for four years, from 1945 until 1949, when the Soviet Union produced its own nuclear weapon. The United States has the second-largest number of nuclear weapons in the world, after the Russian Federation.

<i>Whoops Apocalypse</i> 1982 British television sitcom for ITV

Whoops Apocalypse is a six-part 1982 television sitcom by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, made by London Weekend Television for ITV. Marshall and Renwick later reworked the concept as a 1986 film of the same name from ITC Entertainment, with almost completely different characters and plot, although one or two of the original actors returned in different roles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuclear weapons in popular culture</span>

Since their public debut in August 1945, nuclear weapons and their potential effects have been a recurring motif in popular culture, to the extent that the decades of the Cold War are often referred to as the "atomic age".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Netherlands and weapons of mass destruction</span>

Although the Netherlands does not have weapons of mass destruction made by itself, the country participates in NATO's nuclear weapons sharing arrangements and trains for delivering US nuclear weapons. These weapons were first stored in the Netherlands in 1960.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement</span> Nuclear weapons security pact

The US–UK Mutual Defense Agreement, or the 1958 UK–US Mutual Defence Agreement, is a bilateral treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom on nuclear weapons co-operation. The treaty's full name is Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for Cooperation on the uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defense Purposes. It allows the US and the UK to exchange nuclear materials, technology and information. The US has nuclear co-operation agreements with other countries, including France and other NATO countries, but this agreement is by far the most comprehensive. Because of the agreement's strategic value to Britain, Harold Macmillan called it "the Great Prize".

The Cold War was reflected in culture through music, movies, books, television, and other media, as well as sports, social beliefs, and behavior. Major elements of the Cold War included the threat of communist expansion, a nuclear war, and – connected to both – espionage. Many works use the Cold War as a backdrop or directly take part in a fictional conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. The period 1953–62 saw Cold War themes becoming mainstream as a public preoccupation.

<i>Cloak and Dagger</i> (1946 film) 1946 film by Fritz Lang

Cloak and Dagger is a 1946 American spy film directed by Fritz Lang which stars Gary Cooper as an American scientist sent by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to contact European scientists working on the German nuclear weapons program and Lilli Palmer as a member of the Italian resistance movement who shelters and guides him. The story was drawn from the 1946 non-fiction book Cloak and Dagger: The Secret Story of O.S.S. by Corey Ford and Alastair MacBain, while a former OSS agent E. Michael Burke acted as technical advisor. Like 13 Rue Madeleine (1947), the film was intended as a tribute to Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operations in German-occupied Europe during World War II.

<i>Hell and High Water</i> (1954 film) 1954 film by Samuel Fuller

Hell and High Water is a 1954 American Technicolor Cold War drama film from 20th Century Fox, directed by Samuel Fuller and starring Richard Widmark, Bella Darvi, and Victor Francen. The film was made to showcase CinemaScope in the confined sets of a submarine, and is not related to the 1933 film by the same name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuclear weapons and Israel</span> Israels possible control of nuclear weapons

The State of Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons. Estimates of Israel's stockpile range between 90 and 400 nuclear warheads, and the country is believed to possess the ability to deliver them in several methods, including by aircraft, as submarine-launched cruise missiles, and via the Jericho series of intermediate to intercontinental range ballistic missiles. Its first deliverable nuclear weapon is thought to have been completed in late 1966 or early 1967; which would make it the sixth country in the world to have developed them.

<i>FBI Girl</i> 1951 film by William A. Berke

FBI Girl is a 1951 American film noir crime film about a female FBI employee who becomes involved in a government plot involving corruption and murder. The film was directed by William A. Berke, and stars Cesar Romero, George Brent and Audrey Totter. It was made by Lippert Pictures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Armed Forces Special Weapons Project</span> U.S. nuclear weapons agency until 1947

The Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP) was a United States military agency responsible for those aspects of nuclear weapons remaining under military control after the Manhattan Project was succeeded by the Atomic Energy Commission on 1 January 1947. These responsibilities included the maintenance, storage, surveillance, security and handling of nuclear weapons, as well as supporting nuclear testing. The AFSWP was a joint organization, staffed by the United States Army, United States Navy and United States Air Force; its chief was supported by deputies from the other two services. Major General Leslie R. Groves, the former head of the Manhattan Project, was its first chief.

<i>Whoops Apocalypse</i> (film) 1986 British film

Whoops Apocalypse is a 1986 British comedy film directed by Tom Bussmann and starring Loretta Swit, Herbert Lom, and Peter Cook. The film shares the same title as the TV series Whoops Apocalypse, but uses an almost completely different plot from the series.

References