Tag Archives: Robert Beatty

An Irish “oracle” foretells the next day’s track results to a newspaperman, resulting in a national uproar.

Young Dubliner, Gulliver Sheils, fantasises about escaping his humdrum life and living in Tahiti.

Robert Beatty stars in this rapid-fire British programmer as an innocent bystander mixed up with drug smugglers. When things look darkest, Beatty is helped out by femme fatale Elizabeth Sellars. The smugglers are routed, and the figurative broken horseshoe of the title is mended so far as Beatty is concerned. The film was based on a popular British TV series by Francis Durbridge.

All the various Bulldog Drummond movie series had run their courses by 1951; nonetheless, MGM decided to revive the property (and simultaneously liquidate some “frozen funds”) with the British-filmed Calling Bulldog Drummond. Walter Pidgeon stars as novelist Sapper’s soldier-of-fortune, here retooled as a respectable retired military officer. Summoned to London by Scotland Yard, Drummond is assigned to break up a dangerous criminal gang. He is aided by female undercover officer Helen Smith (Margaret Leighton), who turns out to be not much help at all. Trapped in a bombed-out building and surrounded by hulking henchmen, Drummond seems to have run out of luck. Some of the film’s brightest moments are provided by David Tomlinson as a traditional “silly ass” type who is lot smarter than he seems. Bernard Lee, the future “M” in the James Bond films of the 1960s, appears as a secondary villain.

When Richard Van Ness tries to ground dashing pilot Nick Talbot, his girlfriend’s brother, from flying an unimportant cargo run in foul weather, he is blackmailed into allowing it because Nick threatens to tell airline boss Boyd Spencer about Van’s intermittent blackouts. When Nick’s plane apparently crashes near the Channel Islands, there are many nagging questions about the circumstances. Although he is innocent himself of wrongdoing, Van Ness is pressured by the police to aid them in uncovering some of the criminal activities associated with the operation, including blackmail, smuggling gold, and counterfeiting. In order to obtain the information he needs, Van Ness is forced into romancing Boyd’s grasping girlfriend, who finds herself very attracted to the flier.