Sat 27 Feb 2010
A Movie Review by David L. Vineyard: THE DIAMOND WIZARD (1954).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[5] Comments
THE DIAMOND WIZARD. United Artists, US/UK, 1954. Released as The Diamond in the UK. Dennis O’Keefe, Philip Friend, Margaret Sheridan, Alan Wheatley, Francis De Wolff, Paul Hartmuth. Screenplay: John C. Higgins. Story Dennis O’Keefe, based on the novel Rich Is the Treasure (1952) by Maurice Procter. Directed by Dennis O’Keefe & Montgomery Tully.
When a US Treasury agent is killed by British smugglers who have stolen a million dollars, a perfect diamond is found in his mouth. Perfect except for one thing — it’s artificial; and perfect artificial diamonds are a threat to both the British and American economies.
So Treasury Man Joe Dennison (Dennis O’Keefe) is dispatched to England to team up with Special Branch’s Inspector Hector ‘Mac’ McClaren (Philip Friend) to track down the smuggler (Francis De Wolff) who is using a million dollars in stolen money to buy the artificial diamonds.
The case gets more complex when lovely Marline Miller (Margaret Sheridan) shows up. She’s the niece of nuclear physicist Dr. Miller (Paul Hartmuth) who has gone missing — and once a romantic connection for Dennison.
Following a handful of clues the police begin to tie the two cases together ending in an explosive climax somewhere between Edgar Wallace and Ian Fleming as they uncover something more sinister than flooding the diamond market afoot.
This little film, directed by O’Keefe during a brief period when he fled to England like many other American actors of the period, is nothing new or great, but entertaining and loosely based on a novel by British mystery writer Maurice Procter, itself expanded from a novella “The Million Pound Note.” (Proctor is best known for his series of Inspector Harry Martineau police procedural novels.) The thrills are of the standard variety, but well enough done.
There’s the usual master criminal, the usual mad scientists, some nasty thugs, and two tough honest cops. The difference between the American and British police style is played as complimentary rather than conflicting, and the scenes of the artificial diamonds being created have the nice SF touch of the kind that used to dominate German Expressionist cinema.
This is an entertaining little film, not much more than a programmer, but coming in at 83 minutes it moves nicely and never really slows down for a breather. O’Keefe probably got the inspiration for this from his American film Walk a Crooked Mile (1948; Gordon Douglas, dir.) teaming him with Louis Hayward, with the latter the Scotland Yard man out of place in the US.
March 1st, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Nice job, Dave. I keep remembering Orson Welles was working in Europe then, to.
March 1st, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Dan
While actors like James Mason and Stewart Granger were headed to Hollywood, quite a few Americans made their way to England — Welles as you mention, O’Keefe, Dane Clark, Keenan Wynn, Merle Oberon, Anne Baxter, Lloyd Bridges, Paul Douglas, Aldo Ray, Van Johnson, Vera Miles, Susan Hayward, Tyrone Power, Gregory Peck, James Stewart, Gary Cooper, and eventually even Judy Garland.
For some it was just a side step, a film made while they were working in Europe, for others like O’Keefe, Clark, and Bridges the last stop before television. Even John Wayne did the largely British production THE SEA CHASE.
But it provided work for many American actors and names for the British film industry.
September 5th, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Re Louis Hayward
This was designed to be a reteaming of Hayward and O’Keefe and announced as such. The British co-production programed, designed to provide employment for their own people, limited the number of Americans, and as it was Dennis O’Keefe’s deal, Louis was left out and replaced by Phillip Friend. Hayward was an American and had been since 1941.
September 19th, 2012 at 9:08 am
The British government initiated a scheme utilizing tax payer dollars to revitalize the motion picture industry post-war. The was called The EADY Plan and one of its key tents. No foreigners. Or at least as few as possible. Almost all of these films were at the co-feature level and were headlined by Hollywood people in career decline. This has nothing to do with MGM and Fox using their own resources in making big films such as Ivanhoe. These pictures were produced with hard earned British currency that was near impossible to spend or repatriate. Therefore the money was spent, a product appeared and was sold world-wide. Good for all.
June 30th, 2017 at 9:50 pm
I liked this movie. It moved along well and I was interested right up to the end. There was a running gag about the American agent who was trying to quit smoking. The bad guys were beaten in the end. Well done.