Secrets of Scotland Yard

68 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglish

Secrets of Scotland Yard is a 1944 American thriller film directed by George Blair and starring Edgar Barrier, Stephanie Bachelor and C. Aubrey Smith.^[1] The screenplay was by Denison Clift, adapting one of his own stories "Room 40, O.B." from Blue Book Magazine.^[2] It concerns a British police detective who goes undercover to root out a Nazi spy in Britain's decoding organization.

Cast

• Edgar Barrier as John Usher / Robert Usher
• Stephanie Bachelor as Sudan Ainger
• C. Aubrey Smith as Sir Christopher Pelt
• Lionel Atwill as Waterlow
• Henry Stephenson as Sir Reginald Meade
• John Abbott as Mortimer Cope
• Walter Kingsford as Roylott Bevan
• Martin Kosleck as Josef
• Forrester Harvey as Alfred Morgan
• Frederick Worlock as Mason
• Matthew Boulton as Colonel Hedley
• Bobby Cooper as David Usher

Critical reception

• Silentcomedymafia.com noted that director "Blair keeps up the pace and suspense perfectly well, giving the film a relatively expensive look when you know full well (Republic president) Herbert Yates is pinching every penny."^[3]
• In The Star-spangled Screen: The American World War II Film, Bernard F. Dick called the film "first-rate espionage and one of the studios classier efforts...Another instance of a minor film that shows considerably more intelligence than many major ones. It is the only film of the period to explain the techniques of Cryptoanalysis, particularly how page numbers of a book can provide the key to a code."^[4]

Bibliography

• Dick, Bernard F. The Star-Spangled Screen: The American World War II Film. University Press of Kentucky, 1996.
• Glancy, H. Mark. When Hollywood Loved Britain: The Hollywood 'British' Film 1939-1945. Manchester University Press, 1999.

External links

• Secrets of Scotland Yard at IMDb

References