Well here's a John Wayne film you probably never heard of and it actually turned out fairly entertaining in my estimation. For old time movie fans there are a wealth of references to other pictures but you have to be paying attention. My summary quote was spoken by the picture's understated heavy Tom Cameron (Edward Ellis),and it immediately brought to mind the 1936 film "Bullets or Ballots" starring Edward G. Robinson with an assist from Humphrey Bogart. Cameron's right hand man, portrayed by Ward Bond, seemed to be modeled on Lon Chaney's Lennie character in "Of Mice and Men", another film preceding this one by a couple of years. I was a little baffled by that in as much as Cameron seemed to be running a pretty tight political machine and Floyd the Spider (Bond) seemed like a loose cannon most of the time.

There was another cool scene right after Lynn Hollister's (Wayne) impromptu radio pitch for the Cameron political organization which he did with feigned sincerity. Outside the station, a waiting doorman proclaimed to Hollister and Sabra Cameron (Frances Dee) that "It was pretty good, but I still prefer Gene Autry". Autry was going great guns for Republic Pictures at the time, so it made a lot of sense for them to plug one of their main stars. Interestingly, while Wayne's character manhandled his female co-star by placing a checkered tablecloth over her head and popping her over his shoulder, Autry put a leading lady over his knee for a spanking in at least a couple of his Westerns.

Another reason I can chalk up for enjoying this picture had to do with the place names. There really is a Spring Valley located about thirty miles north of New York City, that being Hollister's home town. Not far from Tarrytown actually, mentioned by Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront", a place he didn't like because the crickets made him nervous. Both locations today are a far cry from being small country towns, much like Newburgh, where the editor of The Globe was about ready to retire to and grow the biggest asters. Newburgh was actually named America's best small town in 1960, but you wouldn't know that today either.

Played with about equal parts drama and light humor, I see the movie doesn't resonate a whole lot with other viewers here so I guess I'm a little outside the mainstream on this one. But like I say, it was some of the little things that kept me focused on the story besides the main idea of election tampering that eventually brought down the corrupt politicians with Hollister's help and Boss Cameron's sudden change of heart and mind.

**SPOILERS** Small-time country boy lawyer Lynn Hollister takes on the big city political machine and ends up hitched to the corrupt city boss' daughter in this really weird combination of a screw-ball comedy and murder/suspense movie.

Johnny Smith who had just help his Spring Valley college basketball team win the big game staggers out of the red-light district Club Inferno, in a driving rainstorm. Johnny almost gets hit by a car leans against a lamppost which then gets hit by a bolt of lighting and plops to the ground dead. At the hospital it's found out that Johnny was actually shot in the Inferno Club, which caused him to stagger around the streets like a drunk, and that was the real reason for his death, in short he was murdered.

In no time at all Johnny's friend, who he was more like a brother to, Lynn Hollister's in town trying to get to the bottom of what happened to Johnny and who killed him. The coroner for some strange reason had declared Johnny's death to be suicide which was obviously done to cover up the real reason for his murder. He had a fight with the Club Inferno's manager Amato over him being cheated in cards and was gunned down, with the loud music causing nobody to hear the shot, by one of Amato's henchmen the bird-brained and not too bright Floyd.

Lynn is directed to Big Boss Tom Cameron's mansion to get the low-down to what happened to Johnny but, after belting the butler, falls for Tom's pretty daughter Sabra. It's then the film that at first look like a murder/suspense/mystery turns into a light romantic screwball comedy.

Lynn and Sabra hit it off right away and for almost half of the film you, as well as the cast, completely forgot that Lynn was here to find out what really happened to Johnny? We get as far as learning that Johnny and Sabra were in love with each other but it wasn't until late in the movie that it's found out that it was Sabra's dad the Big Boss who was in some way, if not all the way, responsible for her boyfriends murder.

Boss Cameron himself gets royally screwed by his under, as well as upper, links when after rigging the election for them to get into office they drop him like a hot potato and leave him out in the cold as they celebrate the stolen political victory that he engineered for them; now that's what I call gratitude.

In he meantime Lynn, between smooching sessions with Sabra, got the goods on both Boss Cameron and his crew by first attempting to beat the truth out of Flyod who was shot by one of Amato's gunmen before he could finish telling it. Then Lynn going and finding in a law library textbook that rigging elections is illegal, lawyer Lynn didn't know this on his own? With this amazing revelation discovered by Lynn the election results are thrown out and those who rigged it, the Cameron/Amoto Mob,arrested and held without bail.

Big Boss Tom Cameron disgusted at what he did, and what was done to him in return by his boys, comes clean after a tender heart-to-heart talk with Sabra and then spills the beans, to the D.A's office, with the entire crooked bunch of politicians and mobsters thrown behind bars together with him; I hope for his sake he asked to be put into protective custody.

Lynn with his job in town now over, in solving Johnny Smith's murder and putting those responsible behind bars, rides off in a limousine into the sunset together with Sabra to sleepy quiet and friendly Spring Valley with a squad of local police motorcycle men as escorts.

The movie is just too silly to take seriously and John Wayne as Lynn Hollister is not at all believable as a lawyer or a lawman or even a Cary Grant impersonator. Frances Dee as Boss Cameron's pretty daughter Sabra is both naive and unfeeling. Sabra at first doesn't have a clue to what her father is, the city's big machine boss, and later doesn't as much as shed a tear as he's put behind bars for what may well be the rest of his life! I don't even think that she even planned to visit him as she happily took off with Lynn together with a half dozen motorized policemen provided by her disgraced and imprisoned dad! Even behind bars he could pull all this off?

Alexande Granach as the sleazy Club Inferno manager Amato played it a bit too much for laughs and Ward Bond as the nimble brained Floyd did his best to act punch-drunk even when he didn't take one, or two or three, to the head. In fact the only time Floyd acted as if he were in full control of his mental faculties was after he was punched out by Lynn only to get shot and killed for his new found intelligence.

Lawyer John Wayne's friend, a high school basketball star from his town, is shot down and then run over by a car. The death is declared a suicide by the local coroner. Wayne goes to the big city to investigate.

Wayne's directed to see Edward Ellis who is the local political boss and of course the Duke falls big time for Ellis's daughter Frances Dee. Never mind he's got a job to do, even if it costs him Dee.

This was John Wayne's one and only attempt at playing a crusader type, a scaled down version of Jefferson Smith. Ellis is a combination of the characters played by Edward Arnold and Claude Rains in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Dee combines both Jean Arthur and Astrid Allwyn. I'd say the results were mixed. Perhaps with a better script at a larger studio with more production values, Wayne might have done more with the part.

As it is there are some nice John Wayne style fight scenes in A Man Betrayed, a couple with Ward Bond, and a king sized brawl outside a polling place where Ellis is bringing in repeaters from his sponsored soup kitchens. Machine politics, American style. Hopefully none of those countries where we're crusading for democracy ever sees this film.

Ward Bond plays the moronic brother of Alexander Granach, owner of the red light district club where Wayne's friend was killed in. His performance while good, was a carbon copy of Lon Chaney, Jr.'s from Of Mice and Men. I expected him to ask Granach about the bunny rabbits any minute.

At this phase of Wayne's career, Republic was casting him in a variety of parts to broaden his casting potential in the wake of his success with Stagecoach. Herbert J. Yates of Republic films was making almost as much money loaning Wayne out as in his own films and he was trying to make him more marketable. He didn't succeed with A Man Betrayed, but it wasn't the Duke's fault by any means.