The supporting player witness

It wasn't uncommon for studios to remake their B movies back in the day. After all, since there wasn't yet television to show the movies again, the B stuff would likely have fallen out of the consciousness of most of the viewing public. So when I saw the plot synopsis for the 1939 movie The Man Who Dared, I was pretty certain -- correctly, as it turns out -- that this was a remake of a really entertaining little movie called The Star Witness. Still, I watched it anyway.

Once again, the backdrop for the movie is corruption in some unnamed medium-sized city, with newspaper headlines being a good way to have plot exposition. But fortunately, the DA has somebody who's willing to testify against the corrupt mayor. The bad news is that the mayor, being corrupt and powerful, is able to figure out who this witness is, and get some of his goons to put a bomb on the guy's car to kill him.

The dead witness lived in one of those middle class residential districts with detached garages and picket fences, and living in the next house over is the Carter family, led by patriarch Matthew (Henry O'Neill). They see the people who placed the car bomb acting furtively, and trying to escape before the bomb goes off. However, one of the bombers is dressed as a policeman, so when the Carters mention what happened to the police, the bad guys already know what happened.

The Carters are a pretty big family, with the parents (Mom being played by Elisabeth Risdon); adult daughter Madge (Jane Russell); three sons including football-playing Bill (Dickie Jones); and their grandfather, Ulysses (Charley Grapewin), who fought in the Spanish-American War. (The original had Grandpa as a Civil War veteran, but by now that would put Grandpa close to 90.) So there are a lot of people to testify. Except that the bad guys start threatening the Carters, and suddenly they clam up, suddenly doubting whether they really saw what they saw. Meanwhile, the poor family are pretty much prisoners in their own home what with the police protection they're getting

And just to drive the point home, the bad guys take Dad someplace where they can beat the crap out of him before bringing him back home, simply because they can and it will encourage the Carters to keep their mouths shut. Grandpa, as the old fart and war veteran, is the one person who doesn't seem to care what happens to him since he's going to be dead soon anyway. But his intransigence only results in little Bill getting kidnapped on the way to a football game. It's up to Grandpa to save him and, by extension, save the whole city from corruption....

The Man Who Dared is a competently made B movie, although it's still decidedly a B movie. I'd also say that it's not quite as good as The Star Witness, in part because it feels a bit more rushed, and in part because The Star Witness has a bit better of a crew: Walter Huston is the DA, Grant Mitchell the father, and William Wellman is the director.