If you are a fan of the Hollywood films of the Thirties and Forties, one of the ways you can recognize one studio's product from another is the list of supporting players. Lewis Stone I don't think ever did another sound film away from MGM. Yet here he is in the Bureau of Missing Persons along with Warner Brothers regulars Pat O'Brien, Bette Davis, Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins, and Hugh Herbert.
As the head of the NYPD's Bureau of Missing Persons, Stone brings his firm, but wise head to the job he has. An additional job in this film is to break in new detective Pat O'Brien.
O'Brien's been transferred over there because he's a by the book cop who's not squeamish about getting rough, occasionally too rough at times. Later on at Warner Brothers, O'Brien played a lot of the same role in The Great O'Malley.
Both of those roles are a bit odd for him. O'Brien is usually tough, but smart. In most of their films together it's usually James Cagney who's the roughneck and O'Brien his wiser superior. They made their first film together the following year. I wouldn't be surprised if Jack Warner saw this and decided to give Cagney the O'Brien role and move O'Brien up to where Lewis Stone is.
In a fast 73 minutes the detectives deal with a bunch of cases, including finding that one of their own is a missing person. The most complex is one with Bette Davis coming in from Chicago and asking NYPD to find her boss. What she doesn't tell them is she's on the run for murdering that same party.
There's also a little after hours kanoodling with O'Brien and Davis that if things hadn't worked out could have landed O'Brien in one huge jackpot. But it's within his character who is impulsive to say the least.
As the head of the NYPD's Bureau of Missing Persons, Stone brings his firm, but wise head to the job he has. An additional job in this film is to break in new detective Pat O'Brien.
O'Brien's been transferred over there because he's a by the book cop who's not squeamish about getting rough, occasionally too rough at times. Later on at Warner Brothers, O'Brien played a lot of the same role in The Great O'Malley.
Both of those roles are a bit odd for him. O'Brien is usually tough, but smart. In most of their films together it's usually James Cagney who's the roughneck and O'Brien his wiser superior. They made their first film together the following year. I wouldn't be surprised if Jack Warner saw this and decided to give Cagney the O'Brien role and move O'Brien up to where Lewis Stone is.
In a fast 73 minutes the detectives deal with a bunch of cases, including finding that one of their own is a missing person. The most complex is one with Bette Davis coming in from Chicago and asking NYPD to find her boss. What she doesn't tell them is she's on the run for murdering that same party.
There's also a little after hours kanoodling with O'Brien and Davis that if things hadn't worked out could have landed O'Brien in one huge jackpot. But it's within his character who is impulsive to say the least.