The Thirteenth Guest | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Directed by | Albert Ray |
Written by | Arthur Hoerl (screenplay) Frances Hyland (screenplay) Armitage Trail (additional dialogue) |
Produced by | M.H. Hoffman |
Starring | Ginger Rogers Lyle Talbot J. Farrell MacDonald Paul Hurst Erville Alderson Ethel Wales Crauford Kent Eddie Phillips Frances Rich |
Cinematography | Tom Galligan Harry Neumann |
Edited by | Leete Renick Brown |
Production company | Monogram Pictures Corporation |
Distributed by | Monogram Pictures Corporation |
Release date |
|
Running time | 69 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Thirteenth Guest is a 1932 American pre-Code mystery comedy thriller film, released on August 9, 1932. The film is also known as Lady Beware in the United Kingdom. It is based on the 1929 novel The Thirteenth Guest written by crime fiction author Armitage Trail, [1] best known for the novel Scarface [2] on which the 1932 movie of the same name was based. The novel was filmed again in 1943 as Mystery of the 13th Guest . [3]
Marie Morgan has been lured to an old abandoned house by a false note from a friend, and is in jeopardy although she doesn't yet realize it. As she sits at the table inside, she thinks back to the banquet held there 13 years earlier, when she was a little girl. Only 12 of 13 guests had attended, and the manor's owner, the Morgan family patriarch, who was then dying, has since passed on. The chance to claim the bulk of the estate fortune has resulted in an ongoing campaign of murder by someone targeting the original 12 guests, whose dead bodies are being left at the table in the same seats they had occupied originally.
The film was a box office success and received mostly positive reviews from critics. Variety called it "vastly superior" and "a positive money maker". [4]
Tom London was an American actor who played frequently in B-Westerns. According to The Guinness Book of Movie Records, London is credited with appearing in the most films in the history of Hollywood, according to the 2001 book Film Facts, which says that the performer who played in the most films was "Tom London, who made his first of over 2,000 appearances in The Great Train Robbery, 1903. He used his birth name in films until 1924.
Edwin Maxwell was an Irish character actor in Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 1940s, frequently cast as businessmen and shysters, though often ones with a pompous or dignified bearing. Prior to that, he was an actor on the Broadway stage and a director of plays.
Arthur Hoyt was an American film character actor who appeared in more than 275 films in his 34-year film career, about a third of them silent films.
Don Haggerty was an American actor of film and television.
Alfred Morton Bridge was an American character actor who played mostly small roles in over 270 films between 1931 and 1954. Bridge's persona was an unpleasant, gravel-voiced man with an untidy moustache. Sometimes credited as Alan Bridge, and frequently not credited onscreen at all, he appeared in many westerns, especially in the Hopalong Cassidy series, where he played crooked sheriffs and henchmen.
Paul Causey Hurst was an American actor and director.
John Farrell MacDonald was an American character actor and director. He played supporting roles and occasional leads. He appeared in over 325 films over a four-decade career from 1911 to 1951, and directed forty-four silent films from 1912 to 1917.
Samuel Southey Hinds was an American actor and former lawyer. He was often cast as kindly authority figures and appeared in more than 200 films in a career lasting 22 years.
Wheeler Oakman was an American film actor.
John Stuart, was a Scottish actor, and a very popular leading man in British silent films in the 1920s. He appeared in three films directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Cyrus Willard Kendall was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 140 films between 1935 and 1950. Kendall's heavy-set, square-jawed appearance and deep voice were perfect for wiseguy roles such as policemen and police chiefs, wardens, military officers, bartenders, reporters, and mobsters.
Guy Edward Hearn was an American actor who, in a forty-year film career, starting in 1915, played hundreds of roles, starting with juvenile leads, then, briefly, as leading man, all during the silent era.
DeWitt Clarke Jennings was an American film and stage actor. He appeared in 17 Broadway plays between 1906 and 1920, and in more than 150 films between 1915 and 1937.
Purnell Pratt was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 110 films between 1914 and 1941. He was born in Bethel, Illinois and died in Hollywood, California.
Francis Lumsden Hare was an American film and theatre actor. He was also a theatre director and theatrical producer.
Maurice R. Coons, known by the pen name Armitage Trail, was an American pulp fiction author, known best for his 1929 novel Scarface. This novel was based on the life of gangster Al Capone, and was adapted as the 1932 movie Scarface directed by Howard Hawks and produced by Howard Hughes. The movie of 1932 was later modernized and remade as 1983's movie Scarface. His only other significant work is the detective novel The Thirteenth Guest, though Coons is speculated to have used a variety of pseudonyms.
Claude Ewart King was an English-born character actor and unionist, who appeared in American silent film. With his distinctive wavy hair, King appeared on both stage and screen. He served his country, Great Britain, in World War I in Field Artillery, reaching the rank of Major and surviving the war. He began his stage career in his native country, before emigrating to the US. In 1919, he appeared on Broadway in support of Ethel Barrymore in the play Declassee.
The Mystery of the 13th Guest is a 1943 American crime/mystery film directed by William Beaudine and released by Monogram Pictures. It is based on Armitage Trail's 1929 novel The 13th Guest and is an updated version of the 1932 film The Thirteenth Guest. The film stars Helen Parrish as a young woman who returns to her grandfather's house 13 years after his passing to read his will as per his wishes.
John Hugh Elliott was an American actor who appeared on Broadway and in over 300 films during his career. He worked sporadically during the silent film era, but with the advent of sound his career took off, where he worked constantly for 25 years, finding a particular niche in "B" westerns.
Scarface is a novel written by Armitage Trail in 1929 and published in 1930. The 1932 and 1983 films were loosely based on it. The twenty-eight-year-old author died suddenly of a heart attack nine months after the novel was published.