The Hour of 13 *** (1952, Peter Lawford, Dawn Addams, Roland Culver, Derek Bond, Leslie Dwyer) – Classic Movie Review 13,556

Someone’s killing London coppers. Someone’s stealing gems. Scotland Yard think it’s the same man. The 1952 British crime mystery film The Hour of 13 stars Peter Lawford, Dawn Addams, Roland Culver, Derek Bond and Leslie Dwyer.

Director Harold French’s 1952 MGM British crime mystery romance film The Hour of 13 [The Hour of Thirteen] is based on Philip MacDonald’s 1933 novel X vs Rex, and features Peter Lawford, Dawn Addams, Roland Culver, Derek Bond, Leslie Dwyer, Michael Hordern, Colin Gordon, and Michael Goodliffe.

MGM wants to have it all ways: it cannily mixes a gentleman master jewel thief story with a serial killer story, and stirs in a romantic drama too. The cake and eat it too idea works as a rather tasty mix. Darker would be better, but this fairly light-hearted approach to multiple murder and theft is more MGM’s thing, and they know how to pull it off, with a handsome, costly looking production craftsmanly designed by art director Alfred Junge, and striking, moody black and white Victorian noir photography by Guy Green.

At heart, it’s really only one of the many, many Brit crime second features of the era (though that would be a good thing), but given an A-movie budget. Ironically, it’s weirdly kind of disappointing that the production looks so good. There are just too many big impressive sets for this kind of thing.

Two British starlets then making out in America, Peter Lawford and Dawn Addams, fly back for MGM’s fairly humble but amusing and amiable remake of 1934’s The Mystery of Mr X (originally starring Robert Montgomery and Elizabeth Allan) about a series of cop stabbings in Victorian London by a serial killer known as The Terror (Richard Shaw) who is making a 13-course meal of murdering policemen. Peter Lawford plays the jewel thief looking for the killer, while stealing a priceless emerald from the neck of Mrs Chumley Orr ( Heather Thatcher) at a dinner dance, with the help of crooks Ernie Perker and MacStreet (Leslie Dwyer and Colin Gordon).

It’s 1890, London, and gentleman thief Nicholas Revel (Peter Lawford) unwittingly becomes Scotland Yard’s chief suspect, so he must use all his wits to prove he’s not the killer and evade getting caught for the jewel robbery he has just committed near the scene of the latest one of the killings. He takes the emerald off its chain, chucks the chain out of the window, it lands hanging from a shrub exactly where a passing cooper is murdered, and Revel is forced to jump out of the window, too, landing on the same spot!

Revel is clever, involving police boss Sir Herbert Frensham’s daughter Jane (Dawn Addams) in his plot. But Inspector Connor (Roland Culver) from Scotland Yard is onto him. He’s got his number okay. He may think he has his man, but can he actually arrest him either for the killings or the jewel theft?

The Hour of Thirteen is smooth and entertaining, and made with enough skill to cover the numerous plot holes and freshen up the old material, with pleasant performances, especially by the character actors, plenty of 1890 London atmosphere, and brisk handling. Peter Lawford is a young smoothie, not brilliant but okay, Dawn Addams is better, most alluring, while Derek Bond is as stiff as a board in an admittedly boring, unsympathetic part as the heroine’s fiance, leaving the field wide open for Roland Culver to run away with the film as the canny copper from Scotland Yard and also Leslie Dwyer as Lawford’s little helper, a cockney cabbie and crook of course. Michael Hordern has a pretty good time too as Addams’s good-natured police father, and Colin Gordon’s shifty and creepy enough as the crooked insurance value in the league with Lawford.

The are some effective twists and turns, a few surprises, a decent finale, and a surprise ending in the story to make it a pleasantly diverting 79 minutes. But, given that it’s a serial killer story, where’s the real noir? It’s all too gentlemanly by far, as the Peter Lawford star casting suggests.

The cast are Peter Lawford, Dawn Addams, Roland Culver, Derek Bond, Leslie Dwyer, Michael Hordern, Colin Gordon, Heather Thatcher, Fabia Drake, Michael Goodliffe, Peter Copely, Sam Kydd as Reporter, and Richard Shaw (the latter too incredibly briefly).

It was shot at MGM’s Elstree Studios, though there is also some London location shooting, including in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park and at Shad Thames, Southwark. 

The Hour of Thirteen is directed by Harold French, runs 80 minutes, is made and released by MGM, is written by Leon Gordon and Howard Emmett Rogers, is shot in black and white by Guy Green, is produced by Hayes Goetz, and is scored by John Addison.

Dawn Addams (21 September 1930 – 7 May 1985) 1950, signed a seven-year contract with MGM in 1950. She married Don Vittorio Emanuele Massimo, Prince of Roccasecca, in 1954 and became a princess.

Peter Lawford 7 September 1923 – 24 December 1984) was signed to a long-term contract to MGM in 1943 but the studio let him go in 1953.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,556

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