Thu 11 Mar 2021
Movie Review: CIPHER BUREAU (1938).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Suspense & espionage films[5] Comments
CIPHER BUREAU. Grand National Pictures, 1938. Leon Ames, Charlotte Wynters, Joan Woodbury. Don Dillaway, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Tenen Holtz. Directed by Charles Lamont. Available for viewing on YouTube here.
Joan Woodbury as a foreign spy?!? Tell me, Maury, that it isn’t so. But even if true – and that’s a big if – she’s as beautiful as ever. And do you know? With the hint of an exotic foreign accent, maybe she should have been cast as a beautiful foreign spy in the movies more often. (And who knows, maybe she was. I haven’t watched all of her movies yet.)
I didn’t happen to catch what country the bad guys were working for, or what the plans they are trying to steal are all about. Just that they are important plans, and do you know, that’s all we really need to know.
The real reason this movie may have been made, though, and I’m just guessing, is to show the movie-going public back in 1938 what governmental code breaking is all about. Or at least what Hollywood thought it was all about back in 1938, with letters in a message called out by one person in the Cipher Bureau, while another uses a chalkboard to keep a tally on how many times each letter is used.
To be honest, some other techniques are used, but they’re never really explained, not really, which makes it seem as though the head of the bureau. Major Waring (Leon Ames) is relying on hunches and guess work as much as anything else.
There are a couple of semi-romantic subplots, and the major’s obsession with the work at hand only results on his brother getting kicked out of the Navy, a fact that the script seems to take in stride, as he is soon back in good graces again.
Even though the movie drags a lot (that is to say, it is rather dull) it was successful enough to produce a sequel, Panama Patrol (1939), starring both Leon Ames and Charlotte Wynters as his faithful secretary, Helen Lane.
March 12th, 2021 at 1:38 am
Joan is yet another wife of Henry Wilcoxon. By God that man could swing a halbard.
March 12th, 2021 at 7:24 am
Obviously, Leon Ames moved on to bigger and better within a few more years. His first movie was in 1931, his last in 1986.
March 12th, 2021 at 8:43 pm
For me, Leon Ames was always an attraction, or at the least, a welcome presence, beginning with Meet Me in St. Louis, but including a character part as the agent for Ginger Rogers, Weekend at The Waldorf, Clark Gable’s cardiologist in the great Any Number Can Play and never to be forgotten as Clarence Day in the early television series, Life With Father.
March 12th, 2021 at 9:14 pm
Never to be forgotten is right. LIFE WITH FATHER was Must Seeing in our house when I was young, the first year we had a TV. (Leon Ames played the father, of course, and to us, to perfection.)
Barry, It’s good to know that someone else hasn’t forgotten it, either.
March 12th, 2021 at 8:53 pm
I’m wondering if this was “inspired” by the William Powell film RENDEZVOUS (1935)where he plays a code breaker in WWI (that one was later remade for the Second War with George Brent).