Carbine Williams *** (1952, James Stewart, Jean Hagen, Wendell Corey) – Classic Movie Review 10,174

Director Richard Thorpe’s 1952 black and white biographical crime drama Carbine Williams stars James Stewart, who is effectively cast as David ‘Marsh’ Marshall Williams, an embittered jailed bootlegger, who, in the jail tool-shop, invents a new gun (the World War Two M-1 Carbine automatic rifle) and finally wins a pardon for the false accusation of killing a cop.

Carbine Williams is a brisk and basic little inventor biopic movie, based on a fascinating true-life story, and told in no-nonsense fashion by director Thorpe. Stewart is excellent in a part that stretches him a little, while Jean Hagen is good as Williams’s devoted wife and so is Wendell Corey as Captain H T Peoples, his prison-farm warden and later buddy.

The story and screenplay are by Art Cohn.

Also in the cast are James Arness, Carl Benton Reid, Otto Hulett, Rhys Williams, Herbert Hayes, Porter Hall, Fay Roope, Ralph Dumke, Leif Erickson, Henry Corden, Frank Richards, Howard Petrie, Stuart Randall, Dan Riss, Bobby Hyatt, Willis Bouchey, John Doucette, Sam Flint, Harry Cheshire, Jonathan Hale, Emil Meyer, Jordan Cronenwerth, Emmett Vogan and Duke York.

It is shot by William C Mellor at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Culver City, California, in black and white but is also available in a computer colorized version.

When Hagen and Corey re-created their roles in a radio production of Lux Radio Theatre on 22 March 1954, Ronald Reagan played ‘Marsh’.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,174

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