''Assassin for Hire'' is a 1951 British crime film directed by Michael McCarthy and starring

Sydney Tafler Sydney Tafler (31 July 1916 – 8 November 1979) was an English actor who after having started his career on stage, was best remembered for numerous appearances in films and television from the 1940s to the 1970s. Personal life Tafler was bor ...

, Ronald Howard and Katharine Blake. Its plot follows a

contract killer Contract killing is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or persons. It involves an illegal agreement which includes some form of payment, monetary or otherwise. Either party may be ...

who becomes stricken with remorse when he is led to believe he has murdered his brother. It was the first

feature film A feature film or feature-length film is a narrative film (motion picture or "movie") with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment program. The term ''feature film'' originall ...

made by

Anglo-Amalgamated Anglo-Amalgamated Productions was a British film production company, run by Nat Cohen and Stuart Levy, which operated from 1945 until roughly 1971 (after which it was absorbed into EMI Films). Low-budget and second features, often produced at M ...

. It was made at

Merton Park Studios Merton Park Studios, opened in 1929, was a British film production studio located at Long Lodge, 269 Kingston Road in Merton Park, South London. In the 1940s, it was owned by Piprodia Entertainment, Nikhanj Films and Film Producers Guild. Peter M ...

from a screenplay by Rex Rienits. It was intended as a supporting feature, although it may have been shown as a headline feature in some cinemas.

Plot

Antonio Riccardi, a young British criminal of Italian heritage, works as a professional

in order to pay for his gifted younger brother's

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

lessons so that he can escape from a life of poverty and crime. A series of mistakes lead him to wrongly believe he has killed his brother, and he confesses his crimes to the police.

Cast

– Antonio Riccardi * Ronald Howard – Detective Inspector Carson * Katharine Blake – Maria Riccardi *

John Hewer John Hewer (13 January 1922 – 16 March 2008) was an English actor and business manager who became familiar with audiences for playing Captain Birdseye in ads for Birds Eye. Biography Hewer was born in Leyton, Essex, the son of an engine ...

– Giuseppe Riccardi * June Rodney – Helen Garrett *

Gerald Case (Thomas) Gerald Case (1905 – 22 May 1985) was a British film and television actor known for his role in the 1976 Wodehouse Playhouse episode, 'Strychnine in the Soup'. He was the son of Captain Thomas Elphinstone Case, of the Coldstream Guards ...

– Detective Sergeant Stott * Reginald Dyson – Josef Meyerling *

Sam Kydd Samuel John Kydd (15 February 1915 – 26 March 1982) was a British-Irish actor. His best-known roles were in two major British television series of the 1960s, as the smuggler Orlando O'Connor in '' Crane'' and its sequel ''Orlando''. He als ...

– Bert * Ian Wallace – Charlie * Martin Benson – Catesby *

Ewen Solon Peter Ewen Solon (7 September 1917 – 7 July 1985) was a New Zealand-born actor, who worked extensively in both the United Kingdom and Australia. At the outbreak of World War II, Solon became a member of the First Echelon, 2nd NZEF that sa ...

– Fred

Production

Rex Rienits originally wrote the story as a radio play, which aired in Australia in 1944 in a production starring Keith Eden. Another version was produced in 1952. Rienits moved to London in April 1949 and in May 1950 reported he had sold the script to television. (It was one of two television scripts he sold, the other being ''The Million Pound Note'' which would be filmed in 1954.) The television film ''Assassin for Hire'' was screened by the BBC in September 1950 with Sidney Tafler in the lead. In November 1950 Rienits reported that film rights to his story had been purchased by Anglo Amalgamated. Filming started at Merton Studios on 13 November 1950 with Tafler repeating his television performance. Rienits later turned the story into a novel. It was published along with the Rienits short story ''Wide Boy'' which was later filmed with Sidney Tafler in 1952. The ''Herald'' called the novel ''Assassin for Hire'' "a tightly written, quite exciting report on a professional killer." The ''Advertiser'' called it "An exciting, if not a very convincing, novel. There was also talk the story would be turned into a play.

References

Bibliography

* Chibnall, Steve & McFarlane, Brian. ''The British 'B' Film''. Palgrave MacMillan, 2009.

External links

*
Assassin for Hire
at BFI 1951 films 1951 crime films Films directed by Michael McCarthy 1950s English-language films British crime films British black-and-white films 1950s British films {{1950s-UK-film-stub