The Main Event
Cast & Crew
Danny Dare
Robert Paige
Jacqueline Wells
Arthur Loft
John Gallaudet
Thurston Hall
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
As G-Men Mac Richards, Captain Phillips and others fight off armed gangsters holed up in a tenement building, Mac decides to outsmart the gang by climbing onto the roof and throwing a gas bomb into the room that the gangsters are occupying. His plan succeeds and the gangsters are soon captured. Later, Mac takes his sweetheart, Helen, the daughter of Captain Phillips, to see the world championship boxing match between title holder Moran and his challenger. As the event begins, however, Moran's manager announces that Moran has been kidnapped. After receiving a note from the kidnappers demanding a ransom payment of $200,000, fight promoter Jack Benson calls Mac and then packs the money in a satchel and goes, with Helen, to a railroad station, where he has been instructed to deposit the cash in a locker. Mac posts a number of undercover officers at the railroad station, but when Jack arrives to make the exchange, he is informed by telegram that the kidnappers have discovered the placement of the agents there. Benson is then instructed to have the money sent by one of his ushers in a cab. Mac disguises himself as the cab driver, while Helen, disguised as Benson's usher, is his passenger. A car soon pulls up beside the taxi cab, and when Mac is ordered to stop, the kidnappers take his keys, the money and Helen. While the gangsters divide the ransom money at their hideout, Helen makes an unsuccessful attempt to capture them. The kidnappers then flee with her when they hear police sirens. When Mac and the police arrive at the hideout, the landlady tells them that she overheard the gangsters mention the words "Cherry Blossom" and that they scribbled a telephone number on the wall. The number turns out to be that of the River Yacht Club. The police go there, and after finding the nightwatchman bound and gagged, they learn that Cherry Blossom is the name of a yacht that has just left the dock. Mac goes after the yacht, and when he reaches it, he finds Helen, tied up and alone, and rescues her. Mac then learns that the boat is registered in Benson's name, but when he accuses Benson of being behind the crime, he denies it. Moran himself and Benson's assistant, Joe Carter, are eventually revealed as the men behind the kidnapping hoax when Mac follows Carter to a garage where the gangsters are hiding. The gangsters are soon apprehended, and when the police find Moran in the trunk of an automobile, they save him in time to take him to the boxing ring for the start of the fight. Moran loses to his opponent in a knockout in the first round, but Mac is upset when he misses seeing the winning punch.
Director
Danny Dare
Cast
Robert Paige
Jacqueline Wells
Arthur Loft
John Gallaudet
Thurston Hall
Gene Morgan
Dick Curtis
Oscar O'shea
Pat Flaherty
John Tyrrell
Nick Copeland
Lester Dorr
Leora Thatcher
Edward J. Lesaint
Frank C. Wilson
Bill Irving
Harry Lash
Charles Hamilton
Reginald Simpson
Walter Anthony Merrill
Carroll Nye
Bud Holzhauer
Bess Flowers
Ann Doran
Dan Wolheim
Sam Ash
James Millican
Bill Lally
Edmund Cobb
Edward Hearn
Al Herman
Edward Peil Sr.
Sammy Finn
Jane Hamilton
Charles R. Moore
Raymond Turner
Rolf Ernest
Eddie Tamblyn
Rex Moore
Warren Mace
Jimmy Hollywood
Eddie Johnson
Ted Mangean
James Campbell
Billy Arnold
Lou Davis
Jack Gardner
George Chesebro
Harry Hollingsworth
Kernan Cripps
Bruce Mitchell
Ernie Alexander
Ernest Shield
Barney Dean
Bob Perry
Jack Cheatham
Jack Dougherty
Lee Shumway
Malcolm Mctaggart
Russ Powell
Robert Lea
Jack Kenney
Gus Reed
Harry Bailey
Crew
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
A working title for this film was Crime of the Year. Much of the plot summary is based on a pre-production synopsis of the script, dated August 19, 1937, which is preserved in the MPAA/PCA Collection at the AMPAS Library. Although some changes were made in the script after the synopsis was printed, a PCA memorandum, dated January 19, 1938, indicates that the August 1937 synopsis "follows closely" the completed script. The script was initially rejected by the PCA on the grounds that the main theme of the story involved kidnapping, and because it gave details of the crime and "showed gangsters in armed and in violent conflict with police." A memorandum in the PCA file, dated August 21, 1937, indicates that Columbia executives, after meeting with PCA officials, agreed to a number of changes in the script, including changing the ending to show that "Moran" was the one who engineered the kidnapping, and that he would be arrested after losing his fight match and punished for having developed the hoax. The stated purpose of these changes was to eliminate a gun battle scene between "Mac" and the kidnappers that resulted in the killing of three men.
