Bury Me Dead (1947)

It pays to ignore first impressions, especially when they are several years old. I saw Bury Me Dead several years ago and, to be honest, I really didn’t remember enjoying it a whole lot. But I decided to see it again, and I am really glad I did. True, it is a B film with a very low budget, and this lack of money shows in almost everything about the film, including the first time that the star, June Lockhart (playing Barbara Carlin), appears on-screen. She is supposed to be dead, and she shows up to attend her own funeral. The veil she is wearing looks like a thin piece of untrimmed burlap died black, pleated with pins, and thrown over her head!

In spite of the low budget, Bury Me Dead portrays a tight story of less than seventy minutes. It is deadly serious (pun alert!) about its murder and other crimes, but a lot of the story is told with humor that makes the film surprisingly fun to watch. The cinematographer John Alton does a fantastic job making the best of the budget to create shadowy sets that emphasize the action and the characters’ emotions. The film is worth watching just to see a master’s lighting techniques. Just imagine what it would have looked like if the print was restored to its original condition.

Bury Me Dead is available for free online. Click here to watch it at the Internet Archive. I watched the film on DVD because it came with audio commentary (by Jay Felton), but the print quality is rather poor both on the DVD and at the Internet Archive.

The opening credits appear over a minimalist shot of a bare, leafless, dead-looking tree that looks more like an artist’s rendering, then the film cuts right away to a conflagration. A barn is supposed to be burning, but Jay Fenton says in his commentary that it is stock footage used with rear projection. (I found it convincing.) Horses neighing and running, with some being rescued, add to the chaos. Viewers learn that someone, Barbara Carlin, is unaccounted for and presumed dead. Right away, before the fire is even out, the housekeeper, Mrs. Haskins, points the finger at Rod Carlin; she thinks he is responsible for his wife’s death. She has no evidence to back up her suspicions, so Rod is free to go when his lawyer Mike Dunne (played by Hugh Beaumont) shows up to take charge.

Barbara Carlin and her husband Rod are having some problems in their marriage, and she had decided to take a break and spend time at Arrowhead, her summer place, at the time of the fire. She reads about the fire and her own death in the newspaper. (This film was released in 1947, way before the Internet and social media were introduced.) Rather than rush back to reveal that she is alive and well, Barbara decides to show up at her own funeral to find out what she can. Who is in the casket at the burial? Was her death an accident, or was it really murder? And if it was murder, who wanted her dead?

(This article about Bury Me Dead contains some spoilers.)

After the ceremony, Barbara asks for a ride with Mike Dunn. He doesn’t recognize her behind the tacky black veil, nor does he recognize her voice (which was a bit unbelievable for me, quite honestly). But when she lifts her veil and reveals her true identity, Mike is in a state of shock. He asks her, reasonably enough, why let the funeral go on? But Barbara wants to know if someone really is trying to kill her, and she wants that person or persons to think that she is dead. Mike says that it was an accident, but Barbara has her doubts.

Next, Barbara and Mike visit Rusty, Barbara’s adopted sister, because Barbara noticed that she did not come to the funeral. Rusty is not home, but they get an idea of her current state of mind by examining the books she has left lying around: Misconceptions of Psychoanalysis and The Neurotic Personality. (Later in the film, Rusty tries her hand at amateur psychology and tries to convince Rod Carlin that he is really in love with her.)

In a flashback, Barbara explains to Mike the shock she and Rusty both suffered when their father died: Rusty was never adopted by the father, and Barbara and Rusty aren’t related by blood. They aren’t the sisters that they both thought they were. Rusty’s insecurities were heightened by this revelation. Rusty was in love and is still in love with Barbara’s husband Rod. There’s a bit of competition and jealousy between them, but it seems to come mostly from Rusty. Or was Barbara always insincere about her feeling for her younger sister?

Rusty wasn’t the only complicating factor in Barbara and Rod Carlin’s marriage. Rusty became infatuated with a prizefighter named George Mandley, but Barbara disapproved of him. George is mostly beefcake and not too bright, but Barbara falls for him anyway, much to Rusty’s and Ron’s consternation. But it isn’t too long before George Mandley’s secretary Helen Lawrence becomes Rod Carlin’s mistress.

It quickly becomes evident through the flashbacks and their many revelations that there is no shortage of suspects if Barbara’s death is indeed a murder. Each flashback fills in details and casts suspicion on different characters as they are introduced. A lot of the story is told in flashback, and almost everyone could have a motive for killing Barbara. The remainder of the film follows Barbara’s investigation of her own murder. It also includes more humor than is typical for film noir: lots of puns, physical slapstick, dark banter between Rod and Barbara Carlin about her death, and the fight scenes between Barbara and Helen and between George and Rod.

The DVD commentary by Jay Fenton, a film restoration consultant, has lots of great information about the film, the actors, and the production. Here are just a few of the points that he made:

◊ Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) was considered the lowest of the B studios, but it managed to attract talent in all departments.

◊ PRC had no interest in preservation or restoration. The company did not renew the copyrights for its films, including Bury Me Dead.

◊ Bury Me Dead is a comic noir and has many comic moments. The first one is the double-take by the cab driver taking Barbara Carlin to her own funeral. It lets viewers know that the film will have comic elements. The humor also deflects suspicion: Viewers find it hard to believe that a comical character can commit murder.

◊ Many don’t consider Bury Me Dead a noir at all because of the humor. But the humor serves a purpose (see above). The comic noir is the most unusual subgenre of noir.

◊ Sets from Bury Me Dead were also used in The Amazing Mr. X.

◊ The cinematography is beautiful, especially the indoor scenes. John Alton put the same effort into all his films, both B and A.

◊ Alton liked to light the good women so that their lips and eyes glow, their hair is backlit. The femme fatale, if there is such a character, is lit with darker lighting.

◊ The fight scenes are well staged. The fight scene between Rod Carlin and George Mandley used stunt performers.

For viewers who have watched June Lockhart and Hugh Beaumont in television shows like Lassie, Lost in Space, and Leave It to Beaver, it’s a pleasant change to see them in a darker film, even if it does include more comedy than is typical of film noir. The cinematography and the lighting give it a polish that minimizes the tight budget, especially once Barbara Carlin gets rid of that awful burlap veil.

So there really is plenty to recommend Bury Me Dead. It’s free to watch online, and it’s a great way to spend about seventy minutes.

October 18, 1947, release date  •  Directed by Bernard Vorhaus  •  Screenplay by Dwight V. Babcock, Karen DeWolf  •  Based on the radio play Bury Me Dead by Irene Winston  •  Music by Emil Cadkin  •  Edited by W. Donn Hayes  •  Cinematography by John Alton

Cathy O’Donnell as Rusty  •  June Lockhart as Barbara Carlin  •  Hugh Beaumont as Michael Dunn  •  Mark Daniels as Rod Carlin  •  Greg McClure as George Mandley  •  Milton Parsons as Jeffers, the butler  •  Virginia Farmer as Mrs. Haskins, the housekeeper  •  Sonia Darrin as Helen Lawrence  •  Cliff Clark as Detective Archer  •  Charles Lane as District Attorney Brighton

Distributed by Eagle-Lion Films  •  Produced by Ben Stoloff Productions, Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC)

Night Shift (2020)

If noir is about ambiguity, ambivalence, and personal anguish, Night Shift certainly qualifies. The film addresses global issues on a small scale, through the interactions of its four main characters. Asomidin Tohirov is a prisoner who is scheduled for deportation to his home country of Tajikistan. His background is never fully explained, but it appears that he is an illegal immigrant seeking asylum in France who has overstayed some predetermined time limit. Three police officers—Virginie, Erik, and Aristide—are given the task of taking Tohirov to the airport. Title cards identify each officer by first name only, and viewers are given brief glimpses into their personal and work lives.

(This article about Night Shift contains almost all the spoilers.)

Virginie starts her day with her husband and her eighteen-month-old baby boy. Before reporting for work, Virginie goes to an appointment to schedule an abortion. When she starts her workday, she is in the locker room changing into her uniform, and as she does so, her demeanor seems to shift: She is taking on her role of an officer. Virginie goes to a break room, where one of the officers there, Aristide, calls her Miss Norway. She continues through the room to a corridor. Another officer, Erik, asks her to accompany him: He is taking a battered woman back to her home to retrieve her belongings.

En route to the woman’s home, the woman starts crying in the backseat of the police car. Virginie tries to reassure her. At the battered woman’s home, the husband harasses Virginie, and Erik restrains him. The wife starts crying again and asks the officers to leave. Virginie writes her incident report back at the police station. Aristide interrupts her to ask her out to lunch at their usual kebab place, but she refuses.

The next police task is a public brawl between several civilians, which the police, including Virginie and Aristide, break up. After many of the civilians are arrested, restrained, and on their way to police vans, Virginie tells Aristide that she is pregnant with his child. In a flashback, viewers see how the two (Virginie and Aristide) first became attracted to one another during a night out with other police officers.

Back again at the police station, Hervé, one of the commanding officers, asks for volunteers to escort a prisoner to the airport for deportation. The so-called Escort Crew is unavailable because its members are fighting a prison fire. Erik agrees to go when asked. Virginie volunteers before being asked. Aristide joins at the last minute when he sees Virginie is going; he had originally refused the job.

When Erik’s day starts, viewers learn that he is married and does not have any children. His wife tells him that she would take things out on them, too, if they had had any. They argue; their marriage is troubled. Viewers see the police activity of the morning from Erik’s perspective, including the battered wife and the call for volunteers to escort the prisoner to the airport.

Viewers also see Erik’s interactions with Aristide because they are partners. They answer a call to help a woman and her child, but there is nothing that they can do because the child is dead. The woman claims that she never meant to hurt him and that she is not a bad mother.

Aristide’s day starts with a zoom call to his grandmother, who is hospitalized in his home country of Senegal. On his way to work, Aristide thinks of the night he and Virginie first were attracted to one another. His flashback continues with more details of that night out.

In this way, viewers learn about the events of the day from the perspective of each of the three police officers. Viewers learn about Tohirov and the police officers through their interactions and their conversations, and sometimes through flashbacks. Tohirov does not talk because he doesn’t understand or speak French. Everything viewers learn about him is through the three police officers: Virginie, Erik, and Aristide.

Virginie did not realize that their assignment involves taking a foreigner to the airport for deportation. She learns this from an offhand comment by Aristide as he drives the police transport van. She has another flashback showing the beginning of her affair with Aristide. They arrive at the prison to find it is the one on fire. As Virginie leads Tohirov out of the prison to the transport vehicle, a woman tries to stop them. She says that they appealed Tohirov’s case to the European Court for Human Rights, that the court is ruling soon, and that Tohirov will be killed on his return to his home country of Tajikistan.

Virginie knows nothing about the prisoner’s circumstances, but she sits in the backseat with him and has his sealed dossier on her lap. The seal on the dossier is minimal, so she opens it and reads it, and she is alarmed by what she reads. It seems the woman who tried to stop her was right. In addition, Tohirov suffered physical abuse and torture. Virginie reads the details to the others, and she becomes increasingly concerned about the task they have set out to do. When the prisoner starts crying, she takes off his handcuffs. Erik is infuriated by her attitude and her actions.

Virginie is the character who makes the argument that they should help the prisoner rather than simply follow the rules of proper police conduct. In a flashback during this sequence, Aristide and Virginie are in bed, and he talks of his grandmother, who raised him. Virginie’s flashbacks seem to be a way for her to reconcile what she knows about Aristide, what she found attractive about him, and his current attitude toward their prisoner. She seems to be the only one touched by the prisoner’s circumstances.

Aristide and Virginie stop to get a bite to eat and talk. Erik and Tohirov wait in the transport vehicle. While they are eating, Aristide begins to see Virginie’s point of view and understand her concerns. In the transport vehicle, Erik talks to Tohirov. He lays out the reasons why they should do their jobs, but Virginie and Aristide are not there to hear him, and Tohirov doesn’t understand. Erik doesn’t know why Tohirov is being sent back to Tajikistan, but he also doesn’t know what Tohirov is doing in France and his isn’t entirely convinced about his reasons for coming to the country in the first place. He acknowledges out loud that Tohirov could be a terrorist. Erik ends by saying, “I don’t understand. I understand nothing.” Aristide eventually comes around to Virginie’s way of thinking. Erik is still infuriated, but he finally accedes to their wishes and agrees not to stand in their way. He has given the reasons why they should follow police procedure, in contrast to Virginie.

They leave the prisoner, without handcuffs, alone in the transport vehicle in the woods, but he won’t leave the vehicle. Even when they push him out, Tohirov won’t leave. He probably doesn’t understand what they are trying to do, doesn’t understand what they want for him, and/or doesn’t know where to go. Erik says that Tohirov probably thinks they will try to kill him.

By now the tension is rising among the three police officers. They argue, and Aristide and Erik challenge one another. Virginie convinces everyone to get back into the vehicle, and they continue to the airport. No one is happy about the task, but they continue anyway. Erik is relieved to be getting it over with and staying out of trouble. He doesn’t want any marks on his service record because it is clean. They continue to the airport in silence and drop off the prisoner when they arrive.

After Tohirov is frisked by two new police officers, he is taken to the airport transport bus. Before the officers can load him in, he puts up a fight and starts screaming. Virginie, Erik, and Aristide watch Tohirov in still silence. As the three police officers start the drive out of the airport, Virginie starts to feel sick. Aristide asks her if she is alright, and she tells him she needs some air. In a few seconds, she sees, in her mind’s eye, Tohirov being dragged into the airport vehicle, and she starts running back to the terminal.

Aristide drives after her, then follows her on foot into the terminal and onto the plane. They talk first to the pilot, then tell the officers escorting Tohirov that he is a dangerous man. They demand to take the prisoner back. The escorting officers protest, but the pilot doesn’t want trouble in the air. He agrees to let the prisoner return to the ground.

During this scene, the camera focuses on Tohirov. He doesn’t understand at first. Everyone’s voices become muted to demonstrate his lack of understanding. But when Virginie makes eye contact with him, he understands finally that they are trying to help him.

On their way back to the station, Aristide thanks Erik for calming the customs officials down, but Erik is worried about the consequences of their actions. They all agree, including Erik, to include in their report that the prisoner was uncooperative, but Erik still fears the consequences. He has twenty years of service and not one blemish on his record—until now. Virginie, Erik, and Aristide have bought more time for Tohirov, but there is no guarantee that the European Court for Human Rights will make its decision in time to avoid another attempt to deport Tohirov. And I can’t help but think that calling him “dangerous” and “uncooperative” will hurt his chances.

The three officers continue with their respective days. Erik visits the seashore, where he looks happy for the first time in the film. Aristide goes to the clinic with Virginie. They walk out and down the street together, hand in hand. All three of them have no resolution to the day’s activities. They do not know what will become of Tohirov, who is presented as one of the most important decisions they faced that day. But they are peace with themselves, and that is a day that ends well.

Night Shift is called Police in France. It is based on a French novel, also called Police, by Hugo Boris. I cannot understand why the title was changed for English-language audiences. The three main characters, the police officers, are not really working a night shift; they have volunteered for an extra assignment, with overtime, that lasts until the assignment is finished. There is no time limit or shift work involved. I wish the distributors stuck with the original title: It would have made more sense.

But this is hardly a major complaint. The film takes its time explaining the stories of the officers and their prisoner. We know what the officers are facing at home and on the job, and we understand that the prisoner is really caught in an unfortunate situation created mostly by government red tape, at least as far as the film’s plot is concerned, and not by anything that he has done. Viewers are drawn into the story via the four main characters (the police officers and their prisoner), and they see the anguish, anger, and fear that each character experiences to varying degrees. Even though it takes place in France, the story could stand in for all the immigration stories taking place across the United States today, in 2025.

What I especially enjoyed about the film was its lack of a tidy ending. It resolves something about each of the four strands of the plot. Viewers learn that Tohirov is taken off the plane and returned to French custody, but we never learn if the European Court for Human Rights rules in time to have any effect on the man’s future. His impossible dilemma is resolved, but maybe only for a day or two, as Erik rightly points out. Still, it’s a relief to know that Virginie accomplished what she set out to do after she opened Tohirov’s file in the transport vehicle. Everything else is left to fate, which is one of the hallmarks of noir, old and new.

February 23, 2020 (Berlin), September 2, 2020 (France, Belgium), release dates  •  Directed by Anne Fontaine  •  Screenplay by Claire Barré  •  Based on the novel Police by Hugo Boris  •  Music by Guillaume Clément  •  Edited by Fabrice Rounaud  •  Cinematography by Yves Angelo

Omar Sy as Aristide  •  Virginie Efira as Virginie  •  Grégory Gadebois as Erik  •  Payman Maadi as Asomidin Tohirov  •  Aurore Broutin as the psychologist  •  Thierry Levaret as Hervé  •  Cécile Rebboah as the social worker  •  Anne-Pascale Clairembourg as Martine  •  Cédric Vieira as Virginie’s husband  •  Tadrina Hocking as the gynecologist  •  Elisa Lasowski as Sonia  •  Emmanuel Barrouyer as the abusive husband

Distributed by StudioCanal, Athena Film  •  Produced by F Comme Film, Ciné@, StudioCanal, France 2 Cinéma, France 3 Cinéma, Korokoro, Scope Pictures

Appointment with Danger (1950)

I have seen Alan Ladd in several films now, and he has become one of my noir favorites. He can play both sides of the law with an equal amount of cynicism. His role in Appointment with Danger is Al Goddard, a U.S. postal inspector, and he is definitely on the right side of the law, and he is definitely very cynical.

The film opens in a semidocumentary style, with different interior and exterior shots of the largest post office building in the country. Viewers also see postal workers at work. A voice-over narrator explains the working of the post office in general, then points out that postal inspectors are members of the oldest police force in the United States. Appointment with Danger is the story of one postal inspector, and it starts on a rainy summer night in Gary, Indiana.

This narrated opening is a bit bland, I must confess. But once the action starts—with Postal Inspector Harry Gruber already dead in Gary, Indiana, and his body being dumped in an alley in nearby La Porte—the switch in tone is dramatic. The dramatic tension is accentuated because a nun, Sister Augustine, stops at one end of the alley where two men are trying to hide Gruber’s body. She struggles to open her umbrella in the pouring rain. One of the men, George Soderquist, arrives to help her, and she asks him about the man slumped against their car. Soderquist explains that the man is very drunk. But Sister Augustine doesn’t buy the story. She very soon reports the incident to a nearby police officer on a motorcycle, who chases after the fleeing car. Harry Gruber’s body is eventually found in the alley, and Sister Augustine is now a key witness.

Al Goddard is newly arrived in La Porte from Chicago, Illinois. His boss, Maury Ahearn, is a new arrival as well. Goddard’s reputation has preceded him; everyone in La Porte already knows that he is hard and unfeeling. The secretary in the La Porter branch office tells the investigators who arrive with Gruber’s effects that Goddard has ordered “a small boy with mustard” for lunch. When they bring the evidence into Ahearn’s office, Goddard implies that they are not doing their jobs well enough or they would have found the nun, their key witness, by now.

Al Goddard wants to get the job done and that’s all. Maury Ahearn warns him about antagonizing others on the case. Ahearn has to leave town, and on the way to the airport, he and Al Goddard have a conversation about the case and Goddard’s general attitude. Here’s an excerpt:

• Maury Ahearn: “You’ve been chasing hoodlums for so long, you don’t know how to treat ordinary people. Warm up, will ya?

• Al Goddard: “Sure, I’ll fall in love for ya.”

• Maury Ahearn: “I don’t think you could because you don’t know what a love affair is.”

• Al Goddard: “It’s what goes on between a man and a .45 pistol that won’t jam.”

To say that Goddard is all business would be an understatement.

Goddard is efficient and knows what he is doing. He takes a taxi to investigate known locations behind the killing of Harry Gruber, and he arrives by chance at the railway stop in La Porte. He takes the train from La Porte to Fort Wayne Junction. At Fort Wayne Junction, he questions two railway workers, one of whom saw two nuns board a bus. Goddard takes a bus from Fort Wayne Junction to Belle Isle, where he stops in front of a convent, church, and school. There, naturally, he finds Sister Augustine.

(This article about Appointment with Danger contains some spoilers.)

Part of the charm of the Appointment with Danger is Al Goddard’s character transformation: He starts to care about the welfare of Sister Augustine. Their banter back and forth throughout the film is humorous. But Goddard’s gets off to a rocky start with her, just as he manages to do with everyone he meets. When he first meets her and asks about her whereabouts the night of the murder, Goddard makes the usual bad first impression:

• Sister Augustine: “I got off the train to get Sister Paula some medicine. She wasn’t feeling so well.”

• Al Goddard: “Neither was the guy in the alley. He was a dead government agent by the name of Harry Gruber.”

• Sister Augustine: “Oh. Did he have a family?”

• Al Goddard: “What’s the difference, Sister? He’s just as dead either way.”

• Sister Augustine: “Not quite, Mr. Goddard.”

Al Goddard and Maury Ahearn work with a local homicide detective Dave Goodman. They all wonder about the following: Why did two gunsels kill Gruber? Why did they dump his body out of town instead of leaving town, as most murderers do? What is it about La Porte that is keeping the criminals in town? Maybe something to do with the postal service and something that Gruber was investigating? They eventually narrow their search to three individuals: Earl Boettiger, who is the ring leader of a big heist planned for La Porte; Joe Regas, who would have been just as happy to have gotten rid of Sister Augustine from the start; and George Soderquist, who helped Sister Augustine with her umbrella. Al Goddard insinuates himself into the gang to learn their plans, and the chase is on.

Jan Sterling plays Dodie, the femme fatale and the girlfriend of the criminal ringleader and mastermind, Earl Boettiger. But her role of femme fatale is a bit unusual. She isn’t completely loyal to Boettiger. When she overhears Goddard warning the police and his boss about a change in the heist plans, she doesn’t bother to tell Boettiger anything about it. She confronts Goddard after his phone conversation, and she tells him that she won’t rat on Boettiger because he has always treated her well. When Goddard points out that she could be considered an accessory to a crime. She decides to do her civic duty; she reports the crime to a government agent: Goddard! She doesn’t care that he already knows all about it. She tells Goddard that she hopes Boettiger survives and kills him. Then she leaves to start packing, get out of town, and save herself.

Jan Sterling’s character isn’t the only unusual feature of this noir. Now that I have seen several of Alan Ladd’s films noir, many of them are unusual in this respect: He rarely has a romantic lead, unless his costar is Veronica Lake, that is. In Appointment with Danger, the lead opposite Al Goddard is a nun, hardly a romantic prospect. In This Gun for Hire (1941), Veronica Lake plays Ellen Graham, a woman who helps Alan Ladd’s character, Philip Raven, Ladd’s breakout film noir role. But she is not his costar, nor does she play his girlfriend in their first film together (it’s the one exception to the Veronica Lake as Alan Ladd’s costar and romantic lead). Alan Ladd gets fourth billing in This Gun for Hire, but the film launched him to stardom. He does get the girl, that is, any character played by Veronica Lake, at least after This Gun for Hire. In the next two films noir that they starred in together, The Glass Key (1942) and The Blue Dahlia (1946), the romantic subplot involves their respective characters.

And then there is Chicago Deadline (1949), in which Alan Ladd plays Ed Adams, a newspaper reporter investigating the death of a young woman, Rosita Jean d’Ur, who is found alone in a shabby hotel room. Donna Reed plays Rosita Jean d’Ur, who is already dead at the start of the film. Ed Adams and viewers get to know her only through flashbacks.

There is one detail about Appointment with Danger that does not stand the test of time at all, and that is its portrayal of the nuns. Sister Augustine and Mother Ambrose are portrayed as simple innocents who are horrified by violence and who are protective of children. This part of the film I found hard to swallow, coming as I do from a 2025 perspective. I kept thinking what a farce this portrayal of nuns is, now that we know both nuns and priests have been accused, some even convicted, of abuse against children around the world. In 1950, a nun in a traditional habit was assumed to be a good person, one even with exceptional moral character. But this just kept getting in the way of my enjoying the film as much as I did the first time I saw it many years ago. The fact that I spent some years under the tutelage of nuns has colored my perspective, I admit. But I think many people today would find the portrayal of the nuns as wide-eyed innocents a little tough to take.

April 7, 1950 (United Kingdom), May 9, 1951 (United States), release dates  •  Directed by Lewis Allen  •  Screenplay by Richard L. Breen, Warren Duff  •  Music by Victor Young  •  Edited by Le Roy Stone  •  Cinematography by John F. Seitz

Alan Ladd as Al Goddard  •  Phyllis Calvert as Sister Augustine  •  Paul Stewart as Earl Boettiger  •  Jan Sterling as Dodie  •  Jack Webb as Joe Regas  •  Stacy Harris as Paul Ferrar  •  Harry Morgan as George Soderquist (credited as Henry Morgan)  •  David Wolfe as David Goodman, homicide detective in Gary, Indiana  •  Dan Riss as Maury Ahearn, chief postal inspector  •  Harry Antrim as Postmaster Taylor  •  Geraldine Wall as Mother Ambrose  •  George J. Lewis as Leo Cronin  •  Paul Lees as Gene Gunner

Distributed by Paramount Pictures  •  Produced by Paramount Pictures