Nazi Agent

I mentioned the other day that I had multiple movies on my DVR that were coming up on TCM that I hadn't watched yet and would like to do posts on them. Two of them show up back-to-back tomorrow on TCM. The second, Desperate Journey at 9:15 AM, is one that last I checked is available on DVD, so I'm going to mention the other one that doesn't seem to be: Nazi Agent, at 7:45 AM. So that's the one I made a point of watching to do a post on.

Conrad Veidt plays Otto Becker, a seller of old books and stamps in New York City in the time just before the US wound up in World War II, helped out by assistant Miss Harper (Dorothy Tree). (The movie started production before December 7, 1941 but didn't finish until just after, and was released in January 1942.) Coming into the business one day is the new consul from Nazi Germany, Baron von Detner (also played by Conrad Veidt). The baron being a Nazi, of course he's pure evil, but more than that, he's also Otto's brother. Otto fled Nazi Germany, and now his own brother is here to tell him, no, you're going to work for the Nazis. Otto protests, but it turns out that he didn't quite have all his papers in order to enter the US, and the baron is going to use that to blackmail Otto. Not only that, but Miss Harper is a Nazi agent who will keep Otto in line.

Otto comes up with a reasonable enough plan, which involves enlisting the help of one of his customers who, he knows, shares Otto's dislike of the Nazis. But since we're fairly early in the movie, we know this is going to be a futile gesture and that the Nazis are more than one step ahead of Otto. Otto gives the customer a letter to take to the police, but the Nazis engineer a traffic "accident" before the man can get to the police.

The baron shows up to put some more pressure on Otto, this time bringing a gun to force Otto to do the baron's bidding. But there's a struggle between the two, and it's Otto who winds up shooting the baron. Since both characters are played by the same actor, Otto comes up with the sort of idea that only works in the movies: he's going to cut off his beard and slick his hair back, and pretend that he's the baron and that it was Otto who was killed. Never mind that there are all sorts of things Otto can't possibly know, such as the combination to the safe at the consulate, he's going to try to get away with it!

Amazingly, Otto is able to get away with it, with one key exception. That is Fritz (Frank Reicher), the family's old butler, who stayed with the family with Otto fled for America but has held anti-Nazi tendencies himself. So he's going to keep Otto's secret safe. Inside the consulate, there's all sorts of espionage going on, climaxing in an attempt to bomb a ship as it goes through the Panama Canal. Otto would like to stop it, but he has to deal with a devoted Nazi, Kurt Richten (Martin Kosleck), and a female agent who might not want to work with the Nazis, Kaaren De Relle (Ann Ayars).

Nazi Agent features a good acting job by Conrad Veidt, which is unsurprising. It also features a highly implausible plot, and an ending that I didn't think made much sense, and those definitely take the movie down a couple of notches. Then again, Nazi Agent wasn't conceived as a particularly big movie, but obviously second on the bill behind one of MGM's prestige movies that would have come out at the beginning of the year, and by the time the movie came out, audiences would have wanted movies showing good Americans defeating the evil Nazis, and Nazi Agent certainly does that.

Not to be confused with Young Man With Ideas

Unfortunately, I've come down with a bad cold at just the wrong time of the year, so I don't have the energy to do reviews that are as extensive as I'd like. Thankfully, I recently watched a movie that doesn't need a big review: Young Ideas.

Mary Astor plays Jo Evans, a writer who's recently written an extremely successful -- and rather racy -- novel about life in Paris. Her agent Trent (Allyn Joslyn) has sent her on a speaking tour to discuss the book, but she hasn't shown up to her last several engagements, much to Trent's consternation.

The reason why she hasn't shown up is that she stopped in the college town of Digby, PA, where she met chemistry teacher Michael Kingsley (Herbert Marshall). It was love at first sight, and they got married, with Jo planning to live with Kingsley in Digby. This just won't do.

Jo has two young adult daughters, son Jeff (Elliott Reid) and daughter Susan (Susan Peters), and they're not pleased at all with the idea of their mom getting remarried to... a chemistry professor? So Jeff cooks up a scheme to turn Michael against his new wife.

Frankly, Jeff comes across as a really spoiled jerk here. He does get his comeuppance at the end, but not after any number of complications. Jeff and Susan both enroll at Digby, and while there Susan falls in love with English professor Tom Farrell (Richard Carlson), which is against university rules. But it make her think that perhaps they shouldn't be plotting against Mom. She becomes even more certain of this when Jeff tries to turn Tom against Susan.

This is a standard-issue MGM programmer, nothing particularly noteworthy, and not particularly bad except for the way the characters are written. It's available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive, but is really one of those movies that should be in a box set instead of (or in addition to) a standalone DVD.