''Isle of Missing Men'' is a 1942 American

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

directed by

Richard Oswald Richard Oswald (5 November 1880 – 11 September 1963) was an Austrian film director, producer, screenwriter, and father of German-American film director Gerd Oswald. Early career Richard Oswald, born in Vienna as Richard W. Ornstein, began h ...

and starring

John Howard John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party. His eleven-year tenure as prime minister is the ...

, Helen Gilbert and

Gilbert Roland Luis Antonio Dámaso de Alonso (December 11, 1905 – May 15, 1994), known professionally as Gilbert Roland, was a Mexican-born American film and television actor whose career spanned seven decades from the 1920s until the 1980s. He was twice no ...

. In the film, a young woman receives an invitation from the governor of an island prison to spend a week with him. She does so, but conceals the fact that her husband is being held as a convict on the island.

Plot summary

Merrill Hammond (

), governor on the prison island of Caruba, is traveling with S.S. Bombay towards Australia. The ship is attacked by

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese bombers and the ship has to return to Caruba. Merrill invites one of the other passengers, a woman named Diana Bryce ( Helen Gilbert), to stay at his place while they wait for another transport. The island inhabitants are few; there is Doc Brown (

Alan Mowbray Alan Mowbray (born Alfred Ernest Allen; 18 August 1896 – 25 March 1969) was an English stage and film actor who found success in Hollywood. Early life Mowbray was born in London, England. He served with distinction in the British Army in Wo ...

), the prison doctor and George Kent ( Bradley Page), prison administrator. Diana gets to stay in a house that Merrill originally built for his wife, who died shortly after her arrival to the island. Her presence is not appreciated by Kent, who dislikes the idea of a woman living there. Diana is interested in the prisoners and expresses a wish to see them. Soon after Doc Brown tells of a typhoid epidemic on the island. While the four inhabitants have dinner one night, they are watched by Dan Curtis (

), one of the convicts, who has been found guilty of murder. The others are unaware that Diana is in fact Dan's wife. Dan is discovered and sent back to his room. In the night, Diana secretly meets Dan and explains that she is there to set him free. He tells her he will try to escape, but she wants him to wait until his retrial, where she will help him get a new verdict. Kent hears someone talking and is about to investigate, when Merrill comes around and leaves Diana a book, this interrupting Kent in his search. Diana gives her money and jewels to Dan to help him in his escape. Kent looks closer into Curtis' background, and finds the jewels when he searches his room. To avoid surprises he puts Curtis in an isolation cell, which makes it impossible for him to break out. Diana tries to get Brown on her side, telling him about her husband. She wants the doctor to tell the others that Curtis has died from the epidemic and help him escape. The doctor agrees. While Diana is left alone in the doctor's office, she happens to look into Curtis' records and finds out that he is a pathological liar and two-timer. She is appalled by this, and when Curtis has been safely stored on a ship on its away from the island, she tells him she will leave him because she doesn't love him anymore. The doctor tells Merrill what he has done, but Merrill lets Curtis escape because of Diana, whom he has fallen in love with. When Kent questions his decisions and judgement, he resigns his position. During a fight aboard the ship, Curtis is killed, and Diana returns to the island to look for Merrill. She finds him and confesses her love for him, and they leave the island together.

Cast

as Merrill Hammond * Helen Gilbert as Diana Bryce *

as Thomas 'Dan' Bentley, alias Curtis *

as Doctor Henry Brown * Bradley Page as George Kent * George Chandler as Bar Steward * Ernie Adams as Captain Sanchez of the Mariposa *

Geraldine Gray Geraldine may refer to: People * Geraldine (name), the feminine form of the first name Gerald, with list of people thus named. * The Geraldines, Irish dynasty descended from the Anglo-Norman Gerald FitzWalter de Windsor * Geraldine of Albania, th ...

as Sally - Ship Passenger *

Egon Brecher Egon Brecher (18 February 1880 – 12 August 1946) was an Austria-Hungary-born actor and director, who also served as the chief director of Vienna's Stadttheater, before entering the motion picture industry. Early years The son of a professor, ...

as Richard Heller *

Kitty O'Neil Kitty Linn O'Neil (March 24, 1946 – November 2, 2018) was an American stuntwoman and racer, known as "the fastest woman in the world". An illness in early childhood left her deaf, and more illnesses in early adulthood cut short a career in dr ...

as Nurse Pauline *

Kenne Duncan Kenne Duncan (February 17, 1903 – February 5, 1972) was a Canadian-born American B-movie character actor. Hyped professionally as "The Meanest Man in the Movies," the vast majority of his over 250 appearances on camera were Westerns, bu ...

as Bob Henderson * Charles Williams as Jo-Jo *

Dewey Robinson Dewey Robinson (August 17, 1898 – December 11, 1950) was an American film character actor who appeared in more than 250 films made between 1931 and 1952. Career Dewey Robinson was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1898, and made his B ...

as Prisoner Tony *

Alex Havier Alex is a given name. It can refer to a shortened version of Alexander, Alexandra, Alexis. People Multiple *Alex Brown (disambiguation), multiple people *Alex Gordon (disambiguation), multiple people *Alex Harris (disambiguation), multiple peo ...

as Sani

Production

The film was made by Oswald for the

Poverty Row Poverty Row is a slang term used to refer to Hollywood films produced from the 1920s to the 1950s by small (and mostly short-lived) B movie studios. Although many of them were based on (or near) today's Gower Street in Hollywood, the term did ...

studio Monogram Pictures. Oswald was an exiled Austrian director who had fled Germany when the Nazis came to power going back to Austria, then to the Netherlands, to France and finally to Hollywood where he made a handful of films.Langman p.80

References

Bibliography

* Langman, Larry. Destination Hollywood: The Influence of Europeans on American Filmmaking''. McFarland & Co, 2000.

External links

* * * * {{Richard Oswald 1942 films 1942 drama films American drama films 1940s English-language films Films directed by Richard Oswald Films set in Oceania American black-and-white films 1940s American films English-language drama films