The Four Just Men (1939 film)

The Four Just Men
The Four Just Men
	Original Australian trade ad
Directed by	Walter Forde
Written by	Angus MacPhail; Sergei Nolbandov; Roland Pertwee;
Based on	The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace
Produced by	Michael Balcon
Starring	Hugh Sinclair; Griffith Jones; Francis L. Sullivan; Frank Lawton; Anna Lee;
Cinematography	Ronald Neame
Edited by	Stephen Dalby; Charles Saunders;
Music by	Ernest Irving
Production; company	Ealing Studios
Distributed by	ABFD (UK); Monogram Pictures (US);
Release date	7 June 1939;
Running time	85 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

The Four Just Men, also known as The Secret Four, is a 1939 British thriller film directed by Walter Forde and starring Hugh Sinclair, Griffith Jones, Edward Chapman and Frank Lawton.^[1] It is based on the 1905 novel The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace. There was a previous silent film version in 1921.^[2] This version was produced by Ealing Studios,^[3] with sets designed by Wilfred Shingleton.

The Four Just Men was re-released in 1944 with an updated ending featuring newsreel of Winston Churchill and the Allied war effort as a fulfilment of the ideals of the Four. The adviser on the House of Commons of the United Kingdom scenes was Aneurin Bevan.^[4]

Premise

The Four Men are British World War I veterans who unite to work in secret against enemies of the country. They aren't above a spot of murder or sabotage to achieve their ends, but they consider themselves true patriots.

Cast

Hugh Sinclair – Humphrey Mansfield
Griffith Jones – James Brodie
Francis L. Sullivan – Leon Poiccard
Frank Lawton – Terry
Anna Lee – Ann Lodge
Alan Napier – Sir Hamar Ryman M.P.
Basil Sydney – Frank Snell
Lydia Sherwood – Myra Hastings
Edward Chapman- B. J. Burrell
Athole Stewart – Police Commissioner
George Merritt – Inspector Falmouth
Garry Marsh – Bill Grant
Ellaline Terriss – Lady Willoughby
Roland Pertwee – Mr Hastings
Eliot Makeham – Simmons
Frederick Piper – Pickpocket
Henrietta Watson – Mrs Truscott
Jon Pertwee – Rally campaigner
Liam Gaffney – Taxi driver
James Knight – Policeman Outside Parliament
Charles Paton – Platform Speaker
Percy Walsh – Prison Governor
Percy Parsons – American Broadcaster
Bryan Herbert – Taxi driver
Arthur Hambling – Constable Benham

Critical reception

The New York Times reviewer wrote, "Four Just Men, by Edgar Wallace, whatever it might have been, was probably not a work of literature, and therefore, on that charitable assumption, it is gently, rather than harshly, that one must deal with the British-made screen version, now on view at the Globe Theatre. Like all pictures seeping over from England nowadays, it is more than a little infected with the virus propagandistus, but, over and above that common-carrier failing, it is a model of sheer incredibility crossed with what (carrying out the charity idea) we might designate as espionage melodrama".^[5] According to a writer for the Radio Times decades later "it defiantly suggests that Britain could never fall under the sway of a dictator. But in all other respects it's a rollicking boys' own adventure, with some of the most fiendishly comic-book murders you will ever see... hugely entertaining sub-Hitchcockian antics".^[6]