The Limping Man ** (1953, Lloyd Bridges, Moira Lister) – Classic Movie Review 13,541

‘What strange secret walked side by side with… The Limping Man.’ Cy Endfield’s 1953 British second feature crime thriller film The Limping Man is based on the story Death on the Tideway by Anthony Verney, and stars Lloyd Bridges and Moira Lister.

‘What strange secret walked side by side with… The Limping Man.’

Director Cy Endfield’s 1953 British second feature crime thriller film The Limping Man is based on the story Death on the Tideway by Anthony Verney, and stars Lloyd Bridges and Moira Lister, along with Helene Cordet, Bruce Beeby, Alan Wheatley, Leslie Phillips, Rachel Roberts, Jean Marsh, Lionel Blair, and Robert Harbin. A must-see cast makes it a must-see film.

An American ex-GI visitor to London, Frank Prior (Lloyd Bridges), sees a limping man shoot a fellow passenger he was talking to at Heathrow airport in a reasonably so-so thriller rather spoiled by an annoying conclusion.

Lloyd Bridges defies the orders of police Inspector Braddock (Alan Wheatley), who is investigating the crime, by following the trail of the limping man, a crook involved in smuggling and blackmail. Suspicion falls on Bridges’s old wartime actress flame, Pauline French (Moira Lister), who has somehow got mixed up with a dangerous spy ring. Helene Cordet plays the part of the singer, Helene Castle.

The involvingly premised, suitably convoluted and complex mystery eventually runs out of steam, and finally limps to the finishing post. But the movie is still quite fun, Bridges and Lister are more than competent, and this is what dancer Lionel Blair, Leslie Phillips, Rachel Roberts, Jean Marsh and British TV magician Robert Harbin looked like 70 years ago.

Cy Endfield directed it under the pseudonym of Charles de Lautour because of his blacklisting in Hollywood. Lloyd Bridges was also blacklisted briefly in the 1950s after he admitted to the House Un-American Activities Committee that he had once been a member of the Actors’ Laboratory Theatre, a group found to have had links to the Communist Party USA. But he returned to acting after recanting his membership and serving as a co-operative witness.

The film was made at Merton Park Studios but location shooting took place around London including The Mayflower pub in Rotherhithe.

The screenplay is written by Ian Stuart Black and Reginald Long.

The two young children caught staying up late by Bridges and Lister are played byLouise Boisot and Max Boisot, the children of Helene Cordet who plays Helene Castle.

The cast are Lloyd Bridges, Moira Lister, Helene Cordet, Bruce Beeby, Alan Wheatley, Leslie Phillips, Rachel Roberts, Jean Marsh, Lionel Blair, Robert Harbin, Tom Gill, Verne Morgan, André Van Gyseghem, Marjorie Hume, Irissa Cooper, Raymond Rollett, Maxwell Gardner, Jon Evans, Olive Lucius, Louise Boisot, Max Boisot, Charles Bottrill, Kay Callard, and Stephen Boyd as Airport Traveller (uncredited).

It is the film debut of Jean Marsh and Kay Callard.

Robert Harbin, who plays the stage magician in the theatre-set sequences in the film, was the first person to practice magic tricks on British TV in the late 1930s. He became a post-war TV fixture, showing illusions of his own invention. As an expert practitioner, he introduced the word ‘origami’ into the English language.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,541

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