The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt

United States

1939

71 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

English

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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SCR Jonathan Latimer, Louis Joseph Vance

CAST Warren William, Ida Lupino, Rita Hayworth, Virginia Weidler, Ralph Morgan, Tom Dugan, Don Beddoe, Leonard Carey, Ben Welden, Brandon Tynan, Helen Lynd

PROD DES Lionel Banks, Jerome Pycha Jr.

The Wolf is abducted by a band of crooks who force him to steal secret anti-aircraft plans. William takes only half of the plans. This enables him to track down the crooks and the documents. Lupino is William’s girl friend and Weidler is the ex-thief’s daughter. This was the only Michael Lanyard adventure to include the Lone Wolf’s daughter and had been filmed twice before, in 1919 and 1929, under its original title, THE LONE WOLF’S DAUGHTER. This film was also the first in which Rita Hayworth had her own specially designed wardrobe and stand-in (Ellen Duffy). —tvguide.com

Director

Peter Godfrey

Briton Peter Godfrey enjoyed a lengthy stage career in London and the provinces as an actor, director, producer, vaudeville comedian (in partnership with his first wife Renee Haal) and sleight-of-hand artist before packing up for Hollywood. Godfrey’s first film directorial assignment was The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt (1939), arguably the best-ever entry in Columbia’s “Lone Wolf” series. After a brief stay at RKO, Godfrey entered into a long association with Warner Bros. Most of his Warners films were fluffy vehicles for such contractees as Jack Carson, Jane Wyman, Barbara Stanwyck and Errol Flynn. His two crowning achievements at the studio were the Yuletide TV perennial Christmas in Connecticut (1945) and the marrow-chilling Gothic melodrama The Woman in White (1947). In the 1950s, Peter Godfrey turned to filmed television, directing many a half-hour anthology episode and virtually all 39 installments of Ella Raines’ TV series Janet Dean, Registered Nurse. —Hal Erickson, Rovi read more