Word: kidnaping
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...Star Witness (Warner). Seven members of a middle class family, accidentally present when a gangster kills a policeman, are terrorized by the gangster's subordinates to dissuade them from giving evidence against the murderer. First the gangsters kidnap and beat the father. Then they kidnap and prepare to despatch his urchin son. Finally, a spry, flask-nipping, Civil War veteran grandfather (Chic Sale) rescues the urchin. He wobbles into court munching his whiskers and ready to give the district attorney (Walter Huston) a star witness...
...charge against him: criminal conspiracy. Named as his coconspirators: Luke Lea (52), onetime U. S. Senator, publisher of the Nashville Tennessean, the man who tried to kidnap the Kaiser from Holland as a Christmas present for President Wilson; and Rogers Clark ("Bank On the South") Caldwell, high-flying Tennessee financier and promoter. Last November Lea-Caldwell enterprises, which were beginning to take the whole South for their province, went crashing down into the dust of Depression (TIME, Nov. 24). Last week it seemed likely that their financial crash would rock Governor Horton, their friend and ally, down into political ruin...
...wife heard him repeat the details of a hurry-call for his services; then Dr. Kelley drove away in his car. He did not return that night, nor the next day. . . . Soon St. Louis papers blared their favorite, almost their stereotyped headline: Kid-napped? It was St. Louis' 13th kidnap case in 16 months; and, as in the case of 13-year-old Adolphus Busch Orthwein (TIME, Jan. 19 et ante}, a wealthy and prominent victim. (Mrs. Kelley is a daughter of the late William Cullen McBride, rich...
...anxiety, the rumors, the headlines, the goose-chases were reminiscent of many another kidnap case. There was the family "executive committee," to deal with police and press; a committee headed oddly enough by William D. Orthwein II, a brother-in-law of Mrs. Kelley and a cousin of young Adolphus Busch Orthwein. And there was the most intense rivalry in the local press, notably between St. Louis' two famed newshawks, Harry Thompson Brundidge of the Star, and John T. Rogers of the Post-Dispatch. Brundidge had scooped the town on the Adolphus Busch Orthwein case...
...that includes Marguerite Churchill and Sally Eilers, the whole thing is dull, chiefly because of an incoherence brought on by bad dialog and an attempt to cover too much action in program time. Typical shot: Spencer Tracy and his gang starting out in silk hats and morning suits to kidnap a bride...