There are so many interlocking and often paranoid intrigues crammed into one 24-hour storyline in The Argyle Secrets that I'd defy anyone to come up with a comprehensive synopsis even after a couple of viewings.
--Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader (Jan. 15, 1993)
Cy Endfield was a writer and director blacklisted because of HUAC who fled to England in 1953, where he continued his successful career after writing and directing The Underworld Story (see my post of Aug. 18, 1993) and The Sound of Fury in 1950, two corrosive views of America. The Argyle Secrets was first written by Endfield for the radio show Suspense, broadcast as The Argyle Album, directed by William Spier on Dec. 13, 1945, starring Robert Taylor. The film, The Argyle Secrets, was made in 1948 on a budget of $100,000, shot in eight days by cinematographer Mack Stengler, who photographed an incredible 13 films in 1948.
The Argyle Secrets follows the radio play fairly closely, with some additional scenes and complications, including Harry Mitchell's (William Gargan) escape from thugs down the fire escape and through the window of an apartment where an old friend lives with her two sons, one of whom is a cop with a newspaper headlining Mitchell's being wanted for murder. Mitchell, a reporter, visited a sick fellow report to find out about the Argyle document and when the friend ended up dead Mitchell went on the lam in an attempt to find the Argyle report. But others were looking for it, too, including femme fatale Marla (Marjorie Lord), who tells Mitchell that the missing document details the financial help given Nazi Germany by wealthy American industrialists. Marla and others want to use the document for blackmail. Endfield's bleak view of postwar America is very much in the film noir tradition, as Mitchell's search for The Argyle Album leads to half a dozen violent deaths in this dark and complex 63-minute film.
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