Island in the Sky
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Herbert I. Leeds
Gloria Stuart
Michael Whalen
Paul Kelly
Robert Kellard
June Storey
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Assistant district attorney Michael Fraser and his secretary, Julie Hayes, visit the fashionable nightclub "Island in the Sky," located on the seventieth floor of the Courtland Building in New York. Without informing Julie of his plans, Michael tells owner Marty Butler that they are going to be married. Taken aback, Julie agrees to marry him the next day, but their plans are interrupted when Michael is called to investigate the murder of Stephen Vincent. Vincent's son Peter is indicted, and after he refuses to testify on his own behalf, he is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to die October 12. Believing Peter to be innocent, Julie promises his fiancée, Lucy Rhodes, that she will help Peter and, to Michael's dismay, puts off the wedding. After Julie learns from a real estate agent that Vincent had asked him to find a house for him to buy in a secluded area that would be ready no later than October 15, and that Vincent gave as his business address the address of the "Island in the Sky," Julie goes there to investigate. She learns from a cleaning woman that Johnny Doyle, a leading racketeer during prohibition, used to have an office there and that he will soon be paroled from prison after having served five years. When Butler overhears her call the prison and find out that Doyle will be paroled next Tuesday, the fifteenth of October, he sends two men to follow her to the prison, and they run her car off the road into a ditch. Three days later, on the day Peter is to be executed, Julie revives and finds herself in a hospital. With the connivance of Happy, a police officer working for Michael, Julie escapes from the hospital, and the two go to the prison, where Julie learns that Doyle is really Peter's father. When Peter was two-years-old and his mother died, Doyle left him with Vincent and continued to supply them with money. Doyle, formerly Butler's partner, decided to go straight while he was in prison and planned to live with Vincent and Peter in the country. Butler knew that Doyle's share of their racketeering money, $200,000, was in Vincent's safe, which was robbed the night Vincent was murdered. When the warden refuses to let Doyle out early so that he could prove Peter innocent, Doyle grabs a gun in the warden's desk and escapes with Julie as a willing hostage. After collecting members of his old gang, Doyle goes with Julie and Happy to the "Island in the Sky" and waits outside while Julie gets a table. She calls Michael, and after he arrives, Doyle has his men block the elevators so that Butler cannot escape. After Butler overhears Julie and Michael discuss the murder, he locks them in a closet. Doyle confronts Butler, and while a cohort holds a hidden radio microphone that had been broadcasting the band, Butler confesses over the air that he killed Vincent. One of Butler's men then shoots Doyle, who wounds Butler before he dies. Michael breaks out of the closet, and while Julie calls the governor to stop Peter's execution, Michael captures Butler. Julie and Michael plan to go to Albany the next day to meet with the governor and decide to continue on to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon.
Director
Herbert I. Leeds
Cast
Gloria Stuart
Michael Whalen
Paul Kelly
Robert Kellard
June Storey
Paul Hurst
Leon Ames
Willard Robertson
George Humbert
Aggie Herring
Charles D. Brown
Peter Lynn
Murray Alper
Ruth Peterson
Robert Lowery
Arthur Rankin
Harold Goodwin
Ralph Dunn
Pat O'malley
John Dilson
Dick Rush
Guy Usher
Emmett Vogan
Henry Otho
Regis Toomey
Alphonse Martell
Gennaro Curci
Madame Sul-te-wan
Jonathan Hale
Harry Strang
Ruth Warren
Albert Pollet
Arthur Housman
Frank Mcglynn Jr.
Eleanor Davenport
Paul Mcvey
Gloria Roy
Crew
Joseph E. Aiken
William H. Anderson
Jerry Cady
Edward Cronjager
Chester Gore
Herschel
Bernard Herzbrun
Frances Hyland
Samuel Kaylin
Maurice Rapf
Albert Ray
Harry Reynolds
Saul Wurtzel
Sol M. Wurtzel
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
According to information in the Twentieth Century-Fox Records of the Legal Department at the UCLA Theater Arts Library, the studio purchased the story "Island in the Sky" by Leonard Lee, which was published in McCall's (Mar 1936). Although that story takes place at a nightclub in a skyscraper, as does the film, the story is completely different from the film. However, according to Variety, Lee filed a suit on May 23, 1938 alleging breach of contract against the studio for omitting his name from the screen credits after agreeing to credit him. No information has been located concerning the disputation of the suit. According to the Twentieth Century-Fox Produced Scripts Collection, also at UCLA, Saul Elkins, Alfred Golden and José López Rubio worked on outlines based on the Lee story. Various news items in September 1937 noted that a film of the same name was to be about explorations then taking place at the Grand Canyon, in which a wooded plateau was discovered where animals had been isolated since the last glacial age, but no further information about that project has been located. According to a Hollywood Reporter news item, this film was scheduled to start production early in September 1937 with H. Bruce Humberstone as director and Brian Donlevy and Rochelle Hudson in the leading roles, but it was postponed and Maurice Rapf was assigned to write a new script. A Los Angeles Times July 1937 news item stated that in addition to Donlevy and Hudson, J. Edward Bromberg and John Carradine were to be in the cast.
