'Bureau of Missing Persons' is a solid B-movie programmer of the type that Warner Brothers did so well, featuring excellent lead performances by Bette Davis (not yet at her full stardom) and MGM stalwart Lewis Stone (on loan-out to Warners) as Captain Webb, the head of the Missing Persons department of New York City's police force. Pat O'Brien, in his cynical tough-guy mode, plays a hardboiled cop who's been excessively violent in his previous assignments, and who is re-assigned to Webb's division. There's a fine scene early on, in which Stone informs O'Brien that the Bureau of Missing Persons is different from the other police divisions ... because they specialise in finding people rather than making arrests.
Some of the finest Warner Bros supporting players are here, including Allen Jenkins (always excellent, but even better than usual here) as O'Brien's partner, plus Glenda Farrell and the underrated Ruth Donnelly. Two of my favourite supporting actors, Dewey Robinson and Charles Sellon, are fine in small roles. Even Hugh Herbert is less annoying than usual here, avoiding his usual 'Woo, woo! Oh my!' schtick.
The film is somewhat episodic, yet realistic (as usual for Warners) when O'Brien goes from case to case. There's a touching sequence in which he's assigned to locate a boy genius who has inexplicably vanished. The way O'Brien solves the case is convincing ... and what happened to the boy, and why, is extremely plausible. (A good performance by Tad Alexander as the prodigy.) The film has excellent direction by Roy Del Ruth, an underrated craftsman who shunted among the major studios, rather than concentrating his talents in one place.
SPOILER COMING. The excellent character actor Alan Dinehart is less impressive than usual here, playing a role that's less plausible than usual for him. Dinehart plays a crooked businessman named Roberts who turns up dead when his crimes catch up to him, apparently a suicide ... until his crony Bette Davis reveals that Roberts conveniently had an identical twin brother, totally unknown to the world, who was shut away since birth because he was 'a babbling idiot' (as Davis puts it). Sure enough, Roberts faked his own suicide by murdering his twin. This is utterly implausible. The facial muscles of severely retarded people are much slacker than the faces of normal people, and over the course of 30 or 40 years the cumulative difference in muscle tone becomes so pronounced that a retarded man (even a dead one) could never be mistaken for a normal man. Coincidentally, I saw 'Bureau of Missing Persons' at an art-house cinema in New York City, shortly after the scandal in which a corrupt New York politician named Donald Manes committed suicide. Manes was survived by his identical twin brother, and for a moment I thought: 'You don't suppose...?' But Donald Manes's twin brother wasn't retarded.
I'll rate 'Bureau of Missing Persons' 7 points out of 10. It's a short feature with a fast-moving plot, and no annoying romantic subplots. I recommend it.
Some of the finest Warner Bros supporting players are here, including Allen Jenkins (always excellent, but even better than usual here) as O'Brien's partner, plus Glenda Farrell and the underrated Ruth Donnelly. Two of my favourite supporting actors, Dewey Robinson and Charles Sellon, are fine in small roles. Even Hugh Herbert is less annoying than usual here, avoiding his usual 'Woo, woo! Oh my!' schtick.
The film is somewhat episodic, yet realistic (as usual for Warners) when O'Brien goes from case to case. There's a touching sequence in which he's assigned to locate a boy genius who has inexplicably vanished. The way O'Brien solves the case is convincing ... and what happened to the boy, and why, is extremely plausible. (A good performance by Tad Alexander as the prodigy.) The film has excellent direction by Roy Del Ruth, an underrated craftsman who shunted among the major studios, rather than concentrating his talents in one place.
SPOILER COMING. The excellent character actor Alan Dinehart is less impressive than usual here, playing a role that's less plausible than usual for him. Dinehart plays a crooked businessman named Roberts who turns up dead when his crimes catch up to him, apparently a suicide ... until his crony Bette Davis reveals that Roberts conveniently had an identical twin brother, totally unknown to the world, who was shut away since birth because he was 'a babbling idiot' (as Davis puts it). Sure enough, Roberts faked his own suicide by murdering his twin. This is utterly implausible. The facial muscles of severely retarded people are much slacker than the faces of normal people, and over the course of 30 or 40 years the cumulative difference in muscle tone becomes so pronounced that a retarded man (even a dead one) could never be mistaken for a normal man. Coincidentally, I saw 'Bureau of Missing Persons' at an art-house cinema in New York City, shortly after the scandal in which a corrupt New York politician named Donald Manes committed suicide. Manes was survived by his identical twin brother, and for a moment I thought: 'You don't suppose...?' But Donald Manes's twin brother wasn't retarded.
I'll rate 'Bureau of Missing Persons' 7 points out of 10. It's a short feature with a fast-moving plot, and no annoying romantic subplots. I recommend it.