''Walk East on Beacon'' is a 1952 American film noir

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...

film directed by Alfred L. Werker and starring

George Murphy George Lloyd Murphy (July 4, 1902 – May 3, 1992) was an American dancer, actor, and politician. Murphy was a song-and-dance leading man in many big-budget Hollywood musicals from 1930 to 1952. He was the president of the Screen Actors Guild fro ...

, Finlay Currie, and Virginia Gilmore. It was released by

Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...

. The screenplay was inspired by a May 1951 ''

Reader's Digest ''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wif ...

'' article by

J. Edgar Hoover John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation � ...

entitled "The Crime of the Century: The Case of the A-Bomb Spies." The article covers the meeting of German physicist and atomic spy Klaus Fuchs and American chemist

Harry Gold Harry Gold (born Henrich Golodnitsky, December 11, 1910 – August 28, 1972) was a Swiss-born American laboratory chemist who was convicted as a courier for the Soviet Union passing atomic secrets from Klaus Fuchs, an agent of the Soviet Union, ...

as well as details of the Soviet espionage network in the United States. Gold's testimony would later lead to the case against

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and Ethel Rosenberg (; September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were American citizens who were convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. The couple were convicted of providing top-secret i ...

for treason. The film substitutes real atomic spying with vague top secret scientific programs. Extensive location shooting was done in

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

, around

Washington Union Station Washington Union Station is a major train station, transportation hub, and leisure destination in Washington, D.C. Designed by Daniel Burnham and opened in 1907, it is Amtrak's headquarters, the railroad's second-busiest station, and North Ame ...

and in

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...

laboratories.

Plot summary

Federal agent Belden (

) is assigned to locate the communist mastermind behind the leak, and to trace all avenues of informational access utilized by the

Communists Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

. Professor Albert Kafer ( Finlay Currie) is the space-weapons scientist who is being blackmailed by the Reds into cooperating with them, while Alexi Laschenkov (

Karel Stepanek Karel may refer to: People * Karel (given name) * Karel (surname) * Charles Karel Bouley, talk radio personality known on air as Karel * Christiaan Karel Appel, Dutch painter Business * Karel Electronics, a Turkish electronics manufacturer * Gr ...

) is the top Eastern-Bloc spy. Using state of the art technology, such as an early miniature

video camera A video camera is an optical instrument that captures videos (as opposed to a movie camera, which records images on film). Video cameras were initially developed for the television industry but have since become widely used for a variety of oth ...

, and ingenious methods like a roomful of foreign language lip readers, the G-men crack the case and with the help of the

US Coast Guard The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and maritime law enforcement, law enforcement military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight Uniformed services ...

rescue the professor before he can be spirited away by submarine.

Cast

as Inspector James 'Jim' Belden * Finlay Currie as Professor Albert Kafer * Virginia Gilmore as Millie / Teresa Zalenko *

as Alexi Laschenkov / Gregory Anders * Louisa Horton as Mrs. Elaine Wilben *

Peter Capell Peter Capell (3 September 1912 – 3 March 1986) was a German actor who was active on screen from 1945 until 1985. Apart from a lengthy film career, he appeared in many television series and mini-series. He appeared in many old time radio pr ...

as Chris Zalenko / Gino * Bruno Wick as Luther Danzig * Jack Manning as Melvin Foss / Vincent * Karl Weber as FBI Agent Charlie Reynolds * Robert A. Dunn as Dr. Wincott (as Rev. Robert Dunn) * Vilma Kurer as Mrs. Rita Foss * Michael Garrettas Michael Dorndoff / Frank Torrance * Lotte Palfi Andor as Mrs. Anna Kafer (as Lotte Palfi) * Ernest Graves as Robert Martin * Robert Carroll as Boldany *

George Roy Hill George Roy Hill (December 20, 1921 – December 27, 2002) was an American film director. He is most noted for directing such films as ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' (1969) and ''The Sting'' (1973), both starring Paul Newman and Robert Re ...

as Nicholas Wilben * Helen Mitchell as one of the lip readers

Comic book adaption

* Fawcett Motion Picture Comics #113 (November 1952)

References

External links

''Walk East on Beacon'' at IMDB
* * * * {{Alfred L. Werker 1952 films 1950s spy drama films American anti-communist propaganda films American spy drama films American black-and-white films Cold War spy films Films critical of communism Columbia Pictures films Films scored by Louis Applebaum Films adapted into comics 1950s English-language films 1950s American films