Written and posted by Larry Gleeson

February 5th, 2025, The annual TCM 31 Days of Oscar is featuring notable films in a category, Best Original Story, that fell by the wayside in 1956. Best Original Story is often correlated with a film’s treatment. Today the Academy of Motion Pictures bestows Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Out of the seven films screening today ; The Doorway to Hell (1930), One Way Passage (1932), Manhattan Melodrama (1934), Action in the North Atlantic (1943), The Stratton Story (1949), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), and The Brave One (1956), I selected  One Way Passage (1932), a Pre-Code film based on the story by Robert Lord.

One Way Passage is a Warner Brothers Production, directed by Tay Garnett, that tells the doomed story of a dying heiress, and a charming and sophisticated criminal who meet and fall in love on an ocean voyage to San Francisco without knowing each other’s secret. William Powell (The Thin Man (1935), My Man Godfrey (1937), portrays the criminal, Dan Hardesty, and Kay Francis (Passion Flower (1931), Trouble in Paradise (1932), portrays, the terminally ill heiress, Joan Ames. Powell and Francis made six films together with One Way Passage being their final film. Many dedicated cinephiles consider One Way Passage their finest work and one of the great love stories on the big screen.

Dan and Joan initially meet in a Hong Kong bar over a spilled drink. One of the dynamics that make the opening of the film so special is the cinematography and camera movement showcasing the idiosyncratic bar performers and bartender and it’s capped off with Joan turning around so the camera captures her in a stunning Hollywood medium close up. The two engage highbrow dialogue. And “trust that luck will come again.”

As Joan and Dan begin to separate with a troubled look overtakes her face and she quickly turns away. Dan is left standing with a bewildered and rueful look before turning and walking out of frame. The camera cuts back to Joan as she slowly watches Dan walk away. In a reverse angle shot Dan turns and looks over the swinging bar door. The camera cuts to a close up of Dan looking towards Joan before tipping his hat. Joan looks ecstatic waving as her friends call out her name to rejoin the group. She does to the chagrin of Dan who turns with a gun poking his ribs. Dan is caught by Steve Burke (Warren Hymer) after eluding arrest in Berlin. Burke has strict orders to return Dan in handcuffs to San Francisco aboard a luxury liner, the S.S. Maloa.

Once on board the S.S. Maloa, in a cunning move, Dan manages to have his handcuffs removed and reconnects with Joan. The luck has come back. Seeing Francis and Powell acting together is magic. In what could have been a tragic, sad, and grim story, Garnett manages to soften it with a touch of camp and a bit of screwball comedy through character development and snappy dialogue. In addition to Dan, Joan, and Steve, Frank McHugh (Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), The Roaring Twenties (1939) portrays Skippy, one of those character types that adds those colors as is Barrel House Betty, pretending to be a countess, portrayed by Aline MacMahon, (Gold Diggers of 1933, Kind Lady (1935). With a runtime of 68 minutes One Way Passage utilizes impressive pacing that doesn’t miss a beat. What unfolds is an elegant, highly watchable, Pre-Code, Depression-era film with an unpredictable conclusion. Highly recommended.

Written and posted by Larry Gleeson

Foreign Correspondent (1940), part of TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar, is directed by Alfred Hitchcock and tells the story of a reporter caught up in an assassination of a Dutch Diplomat.  Joel McRae (Sullivan’s Travels, The Barbary Coast) portrays John Jones in the film’s lead. Jones is a news reporter who has garnered a reputation for himself by running down a payroll robbery while beating up a police officer “in the line of duty.”

The film opens with a scrolling text dedicating the picture to the Foreign Correspondents, “the intrepid ones who went across the seas to be the eyes and ears of America. To those forthright ones who early saw the clouds of war while many of us at home were seeing rainbows…” Then, opens up to reveal a New York setting as the camera pulls out and then pushes in toward a window a dissolve reveals a newsroom for the New York Globe.

A cable gram has come in from London dated August 13th, 1939, reading that no war is imminent due to bad crops. This gets the ire of the Globe’s head man, Mr. Powers, who has an instinct Europe is under great stress. He wants facts not a daily guess, “a reporter who doesn’t know the difference between an ism and a kangaroo. A good honest crime reporter.” Powers is convinced a terrible crime is being committed in Europe when the light bulb goes on and Powers decides to send Jones, an “ideal person to go to Europe.” Powers is hell-bent on getting news out of Europe not correspondence.

As the narrative moves forward, Jones has a myriad of experiences on a steamship, at London Station, and inside a bar, before meeting Van Meer. Van Meer is the Dutch ambassador who reportedly has a treaty clause that can keep the peace in Europe. Much like the narrative in Hitchcock’s 39 Steps (1935), the clause becomes a McGuffin of considerable interest and moves forward the budding love romance between Jones, and Carol Fisher, portrayed by Laraine Day (Those Endearing Young Charms, The Locket). Carol Fisher is the daughter of Stephen Fisher, an international peace seeker. As with any Hitchcock film things aren’t always what they seem.

The pacing and spectacle, however, of Foreign Correspondent is vastly quicker and more extravagant than the 39 Steps. In particular, a stunning scene in the Dutch countryside occurs in an area with three enormous windmills. A master of suspense, Foreign Correspondent‘s scene inside one of the windmills is one of Hitch’s best. The action coupled with non-diegetic music helps the scene to not only create suspense, but it also causes tension. Truthfully, the windmill scene is where the action takes off and doesn’t stop until the denouement. It is also at the beginning of Act 2 in the film’s classical Hollywood three-act narrative.

Foreign Correspondent received six Oscar nominations in 1940 for Best Picture, Best Writing (Original Screenplay), Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Special Effects, and Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Having come to the United States from Great Britain at the onset of WWII, Foreign Correspondent was Hitchcock’s second film under the start of his US production. Interestingly, Hitchcock’s first American production, Rebecca, nominated for Best Picture alongside Foreign Correspondent, is the only film of his to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Nevertheless, Foreign Correspondent has tremendous spectacle, witty repartee, head-spinning plot twists, and it ends with a symbolic gesture that would make Donald Trump proud. Highly recommended.