They Met in the Dark *** (1943, James Mason, Joyce Howard, Tom Walls) – Classic Movie Review 13,744

James Mason and Joyce Howard star in They Met in the Dark (1943) as a cashiered Royal Naval officer and a young Canadian woman who join forces to solve a murder and hunt down a Nazi spy ring.

Czech director Karel Lamač’s 1943 British comedy thriller film They Met in the Dark is loosely based on the novel The Vanishing Corpse by Anthony Gilbert, and stars James Mason, Joyce Howard and Tom Walls, along with Phyllis Stanley, Edward Rigby, Ronald Ward, David Farrar, Karel Stepanek and Betty Warren.

They Met in the Dark is a quirky, pacy and enjoyable wartime propaganda thriller, with sterling performances by James Mason and Tom Walls as adversaries in the spy business. Mason plays Richard Heritage, a Royal Navy commander, who is court martialled and dismissed from service having being found guilty after losing a ship to the enemy and some top secret documents in World War Two. He has merely been following orders but is being framed by Nazi Fifth Column agents.

He sets out to prove his innocence by revisiting people and places from the previous days, including several women, setting off for Blackpool. Planning to meet his girlfriend, manicurist Mary (Patricia Medina), at a remote cottage by night, he finds her dead, and Joyce Howard appears on the scene as Laura Verity, the Canadian young woman Mason meets in the dark. But soon the corpse has vanished…

Walls stars as creepy conniver Christopher Child, the head of a Liverpool dance academy and Child’s Theatrical Agency in London, which is a cover for the spy ring that set up Mason. Eventually Mason and Howard team up to nail the Nazis.

Anatole de Grunwald, Basil Bartlett, Victor MacClure and James Seymour form the odd roster of screenwriters, also including the beloved seminal actor/ writer Miles Malleson, who combine to give this stronger than usual bite and entertainment value. And there is an unusually strong cast to deliver it, with the charming young Mason outstanding, and Tom Walls grabbing the headlines as a suave villain. Phyllis Stanley’s singing of the song ‘Toddle Along’ (Ben Frankel, Moira Heath) and Ronald Chesney’s harmonica playing provide enjoyable diversions.

Cast: James Mason, Joyce Howard, Tom Walls, Phyllis Stanley, Edward Rigby, Ronald Ward, David Farrar, Karel Stepanek, Betty Warren Walter Grisham, George Robey, Ronald Chesney, Peggy Dexter, Finlay Currie, Brefni O’Rorke, Jeanne de Casalis, Patricia Medina, Eric Mason, Anthony Holles, Ian Fleming, Kynaston Reeves, Herbert Lomas, Percy Walsh, Terence De Marney, Elizabeth Flateau, Charles Victor, Robert Samson, Alvar Lidell, Anthony Dawson.

They Met in the Dark is directed by Karel Lamač, runs 104 minutes, is made by Independent Producers and Marcel Hellman Productions [Excelsior Films], is released by General Film Distributors (UK) and English Films (US), is written by Anatole de Grunwald, Miles Malleson, Basil Bartlett, Victor MacClure and James Seymour, based on the novel The Vanishing Corpse by Anthony Gilbert, is shot in black and white by Otto Heller, is produced by Marcel Hellman, is scored by Benjamin Frankel, and is designed by Norman G Arnold.

Filming location: Teddington Studios, Teddington, Middlesex, England.

Release date: 1 November 1943 (UK).

Running time: 104 minutes.

Anthony Gilbert was the pen name of English crime writer Lucy Beatrice Malleson (15 February 1899 – 9 December 1973), a cousin of the actor / screenwriter Miles Malleson.

The Vanishing Corpse (published in the US as She Vanished in the Dawn) is the eighth in her series of novels featuring unscrupulous London solicitor and unorthodox detective Arthur Crook. They Met in the Dark makes many changes to the novel’s plot, including the absence of Arthur Crook.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,744

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com