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Larceny on the Air
USA 1937
produced by Nat Levine for Republic
directed by Irving Pichel
starring Robert Livingston, Grace Bradley, Willard Robertson, Pierre Watkin, Smiley Burnette, Granville Bates, William Newell, Byron Foulger, Wilbur Mack, Matty Fain, Josephine Whittell, Charles Timblin, Billy Griffith, William Hopper, Frank Du Frane, Florence Gill
story by Richard English, screenplay by Richard English, Endre Bohem
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Baxter (Robert Livingston) is a good guy daughter and radio personality
crusading against pharmaceutical companies flooding the market with phony
or even dangerous medicine, especially radium-enriched medicine. Because
of this though, Baxter is fired from his radio station - only to be soon
employed by a medical magazine run by professor Sterling (Granville
Bates), who finances him a show on anoter network. But Sterling runs a
crooked racket, blackmailing the companies Baxter is crusading against to
run ads in his magazine in exchange for Baxter's silence. Sterling's
daughter Jean (Grace Bradley) soon falls in love with Baxter, and
especially after he introduces her to a man dying from radiation
poisoning, Pete (Byron Foulger), she comes to the realisation how wrong
her dad's business methods were in all those years. By that time though
Baxter has found out about Sterling's racket, and after Baxter's arch
enemy, pharmaceutical manufacturer Kennedy (Pierre Watkin) has Pete
kidnapped, he decides to use Sterling to get to Kennedy - and
successfully, too, as Kennedy soon enough seems to be eating out of
Baxter's hand ... much to Jean's dismay of course who thinks Baxter has
gone rogue. Baxter convinces Kennedy that he will develop a radium-based
cold remedy, but when the man delivering the radium is busted by the
police, it doesn't take Kennedy long to figure out who was behind this,
and he has Baxter and Jean tied up nice and proper ... but Baxter tricks
one of Kennedy's men (William Newell) into freeing them and leading them
to the place where kidnapped Pete is hidden - where Baxter has his final
shootout with Kennedy, who is then arrested by the police Baxter has long
slipped a message ... Smiley Burnette gives a rather straight
performance as Sterling's right-hand-man. Rather weak medical
thriller, short on action, filled with too much pointless dialogue, and
totally devoid of humour to freshen its dry story up a bit. And the film's
hero is a bit too much of the clean-cut, goody two-shoes variety to really
spark much interest, which is not helped by a bland performance by Robert
Livingston either.
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