The Lady and the Bandit ** (1951, Louis Hayward, Patricia Medina, Suzanne Dalbert, Tom Tully, Alan Mowbray, John Williams) – Classic Movie Review 9378

Director Ralph Murphy’s 1951 black and white adventure The Lady and the Bandit [Dick Turpin’s Ride] stars Louis Hayward, who is reasonably well cast as highwayman Dick Turpin, in this jolly, if not brilliant, American-made, 18th-century English-set costume yarn.

Hayward’s popular partner in four movies, Patricia Medina, plays his wife, Joyce Greene. The two stars are well supported by Tom Tully as Dick’s helper Tom King and Alan Mowbray as the bad guy Lord Charles Willoughby, and John Williams as Archibald Puffin. Also in the cast are Suzanne Dalbert, Malú Gatica, Lumsden Hare, Barbara Brown, Malcolm Keen, Stapleton Kent, Sheldon Jett, Ivan Triesault and Frank Reicher.

Robert Libott and Frank Burt’s screenplay is based on a screen story by Jack DeWitt and Duncan Renaldo, in turn based on Alfred Noyes’s poem Dick Turpin’s Ride about the bandit’s 200-mile trip north from St Albans to York to free Joyce Greene (Medina)’s neck from the hangman’s noose.

The screenplay is not a bad, though totally revisionist script, and the film is a fair effort, but the production values could have been better and the direction could have been sturdier.

Medina appears with Hayward in four films: Fortunes of Captain Blood (1950), The Lady and the Bandit (1951), Lady in the Iron Mask (1952) and Captain Pirate (1952).

The Lady and the Bandit is directed by Ralph Murphy, runs 79 minutes, is made and released by Columbia Pictures, is written by Robert Libott and Frank Burt, based on a screen story by Jack DeWitt and Duncan Renaldo, based on Alfred Noyes’s poem Dick Turpin’s Ride, is shot in black and white by Henry Freulich, is produced by Harry Joe Brown, is scored by George Duning and is designed by George Brooks.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9378

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