23 Paces to Baker Street *** (1956, Van Johnson, Vera Miles, Cecil Parker, Patricia Laffan, Maurice Denham, Estelle Winwood, Liam Redmond) – Classic Movie Review 3125

Director Henry Hathaway’s 1956 suspense thriller is slick and enjoyable if slightly over-extended feeling at 103 minutes. Nigel Balchin adapts the novel by author Philip MacDonald, writer of the screenplays for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) and the Boris Karloff chiller The Body Snatcher (1945).

A well-cast Van Johnson is on good form as a blind American playwright Phillip Hannon who lives just 23 paces from his front door to Baker Street in London, where he is making revisions to his play currently running in the West End. Vera Miles plays his fiancée, who assists him in his sleuthing, and there’s well-judged comic relief by Cecil Parker as his manservant. There are also memorable appearances by Patricia Laffan (Miss Alice MacDonald), Maurice Denham (police inspector Grovening), Estelle Winwood (barmaid at The Eagle) and Liam Redmond (Joe).

One evening at his local pub, he overhears a conversation between a man and a woman and believes that he has tumbled a dastardly plot being hatched of a kidnapping of a child in a week’s time. After being merely humoured by his friends and disregarded by the police, Phillip doggedly pursues the culprits himself, despite natural and unnatural obstacles, along with former secretary and fiancée Jean Lennox and his faithful manservant Bob Matthews.

Henry Ephron’s production ensures a handsome-looking movie, with fragrant foggy location photography by Milton Krasner, and there’s a nice flavour of London of the time, though it’s confusingly portrayed thanks to Hollywood’s typical bizarrely topographical London setting.

Also in the cast are Isobel Elsom, Martin Benson, Natalie Norwick, Terence de Marney, Queenie Leonard, Charles Keane, Lucie Lancaster and A Cameron Grant.

Van Johnson died on December 12 2008, aged 92. Estelle Winwood died on June 20 1984, aged 101.

Patricia Laffan was born on March 19 1919 in Wandsworth, London, and is also known for Quo Vadis (1951) and Devil Girl from Mars (1954).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3125

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