BOMBAY CLIPPER (1941)

In Bombay (current day Mumbai), roaming reporter Jim Montgomery (William Gargan) is excited to get back to the hotel room of his fiancée Frankie (Irene Hervey), but she's pissed off that he has stood her up twice and she's planning on going back to San Francisco by herself. Jim arranges with his boss to take a desk job back in the States in exchange for following one more story: track a package of diamonds belonging to a maharajah that is secretly being taken out of India to Manila on the Bombay Clipper, a passenger plane which is laid out like a train, with overnight compartments and a lounge area. We discover that the jewels are being sent as a gift to Great Britain to be used in the war effort, but there may be spies on the plane (i.e., Nazis) trying to intercept them for their own nefarious use. Among several others on the plane: the Landers, a pleasant married couple; Mrs. MacPherson, a jolly older Scottish lady; Tom Hare, a disgraced pilot accused of cowardice in a newspaper story written by Jim; Capt. Chundra, the possibly sinister radio officer whom we saw earlier attack Jim in his hotel room; a steward named Paul; and George Lewis, the courier with the jewels. The jewels are stolen by an armed man named Lamb, and Paul shoots him dead. For safe keeping, Jim puts the jewels on Lamb's body which, when they land for a stop in Singapore, winds up in a morgue, and negotiates with Lewis for an exclusive story when they get to Manila. The passengers are all questioned by the police and put up for the night in a hotel. Lewis, who has obtained the jewels, drinks poisoned coffee and dies, but manages to slip Jim the jewels. Then it's on to Manila as the bad guys get down to business, with Jim at one point shoved out of the plane and saved by Chundra, who it turns out is an agent for the Indian government. Finally, the bad guys hijack the plane and Jim enlists Tom, the disgraced pilot, to help. At not quite one hour, this little B-spy film is diverting enough, though one might wish for a tighter script—there are loopholes and unexplained bits. The movie's action is limited to a couple of hotels and the fairly spacious plane, giving it the feel of a train movie. Gargan is his usual spunky and irreverent B-hero self, and though Hervey plays second fiddle, she's fine. The good supporting cast includes future star Maria Montez as Mrs. Landers, Mary Gordon (Mrs. Hudson in the Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies) as the Scot, Turhan Bey as Chundra, Phillip Trent as Hare and Lloyd Corrigan as Lewis. The cinematographer, Stanley Cortez, was later nominated for two Oscars. Pictured are Gargan and Trent. [YouTube]