Mark of the Whistler

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #117

The Mark of the Whistler was released in 1944, the same year as the first film of the series, and gave us another good, solid Film Noir.

This time, the script was an adaptation of a short story titled "Dormant Account," by Cornell Woolrich, which had been published a few years earlier in the May 1942 issue of Black Mask. In that tale, a homeless man named George Palmer poses as someone else to claim a long dormant bank account and scores big when he gets away with it. But it turns out that some not very nice people have it in for the guy Palmer is pretending to be.

The movie is a pretty faithful adaptation of this story, with Richard Dix giving an excellent performance as the story's sort-of protagonist. In the film, he's named Lee Nugent, which is coincidentally the same name as the person who can claim the dormant bank account. That's what gives the normally honest man the idea of running the scam.

He researches the other Lee Nugent, discovering that the other Lee lost his family in a fire when he was twelve, then disappeared when he ran away from the family he was placed with a few years later. Memorizing these facts and rigging up a few other ways to "prove" who he is, our Lee is soon ready to try to fool the bank. 

The movie adds a few things to the original story, probably to fill out the plot to squeak the 61-minute film into full-length territory. But in each case, this adds to quality of the story. We get indications that our Lee is essentially a decent person, able to make friends, despite his having given into to temptation regarding the bank account. Both the script and Dix's performance combine to give us this impression, most especially in Lee's interaction with a young boy while researching the other Lee, which makes a difference later on when a particular friend takes risks for him. When that happens, it's believable.

There's also a new character added--a perpetually distrustful clothing store owner (wonderfully brought to life by Porter Hall) who helps Lee run the scam on the bank. Once again, he may have been added to flesh out the film's runtime, but he's a great character that fits perfectly into a Film Noir universe.

As in the original story, the newly enriched Lee soon discovers that the man he is impersonating has enemies. When he realizes someone is after him, he decides that moving to a new city would be a wise option. But it might be too late to get away...

I think both the original story and the film suffer from a very, very unlikely plot twist at the end. But The Mark of the Whistler is, on the whole, a good movie and another strong entry in a strong series. 

I own six of the eight Whistler movies on DVD, taped off of TCM a few years ago. The Mark of the Whistler is one of the two I don't own, but I was able to watch it on YouTube. I'm embedding that video below, but please note that I don't know the copyright status of the films, so don't know if it will still be accessible in the future. If it is still under copyright, it might eventually get pulled. So if my future biographers, researching a comprehensive multi-volume biography on how I saved Western culture through my blog, discover that the movie isn't here any more, please note that it's not my fault.

The original short story can be found HERE, reprinted in a 1953 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.