All language subtitles for The.Argyle.Secrets.1948.1080p.WEBRip.x265-RARBG.eng

- Hello, and welcome

I’m Ben Mankiewicz.

You’ve joined us for
a night of movies

directed by a woefully
underappreciated filmmaker,

Cy Endfield.

And why he’s not as well
known as he ought to be

considering the quality of his
work ought to make you mad.

It makes me angry anyway.

We’ll get there in a bit.

Up first tonight,
the TCM premiere

of a hard-to-find film noir
directed by Endfield in 1948,

"The Argyle Secrets."

I’m in on title alone.

Now, if you’re thinking
this is just another

in a long line of film
noirs about socks,

you’re in for a surprise.

At the core of this story
is the Argyle Album.

That’s a dossier that
holds the names of wealthy

and powerful Nazi collaborators
in the United States.

A newspaper reporter
played by William Gargan

gets his hands on a copy of it,

and soon he’s on the run

pursued by an array
of shady characters.

Running a brisk 64 minutes,

"The Argyle Secrets" is a
paranoid, unconventional,

and shockingly violent
thriller for 1948.

The director, Cy Endfield, the
focus of our lineup tonight,

was born in Scranton,
Pennsylvania,

began his show business career
in the New York theater.

He worked for Orson Welles in
Hollywood in the early 1940s.

Soon after, MGM hired
Endfield to make short films,

including a few
"Our Gang" comedies.

After a stint in the army,

Endfield began directing
low budget features

for independent studios,

and this is where
Endfield’s story

becomes depressingly familiar.

His budding career
was abruptly cut short

by the anti-communist witch
hunt conducted by Congress

in partnership with
the film industry

beginning in the late 1940s.

The painful irony of that
anti-communist witch hunt

was that it was
definitively anti-American.

Courageously, Endfield
refused to name names,

found himself blacklisted

unable to make a
living in Hollywood.

Like a number of others
in his predicament,

that meant having to take
any work he could find.

Endfield moved to England,

wrote some pictures
using a pseudonym

so they could be
released in the States,

and found work
directing there too.

Great Britain, our ally

and obviously much closer in
proximity to the Soviet Union,

didn’t blacklist American or
British writers and directors

because the blacklist had
no relation to security

and was driven
entirely by politics,

awful, fear-mongering politics.

Not surprisingly, Endfield
enjoyed the freedom to work

he found in England,

and he stayed there
the rest of his life,

dying in 1995 at 80.

This film, "The Argyle
Secrets," also stars two women

who’d go onto fame
playing television moms:

Barbara Billingsley from
"Leave It to Beaver"

and Marjorie Lord,
Danny Thomas’s co-star

in the long running series
"Make Room for Daddy."

From 1948, enjoy the
TCM premiere of "The
Argyle Secrets."

The director of
"The Argyle Secrets,"

Cy Endfield, was an incredibly
interesting guy --

he shared a love
of theater and film

with Orson Welles,
but it was a deep passion

for another art that really
brought the two men together:

magic.

Welles and Endfield met at

Bert Wheeler’s
Hollywood Magic Shop

on Hollywood boulevard
in L. A. --

a popular hangout for magicians
and their admirers.

Endfield had some skill
with card tricks,

and his sleight-of-hand
expertise impressed Welles

and led to an apprenticeship
with Welles’s company,

Mercury Productions.

Endfield’s interest in magic
continued throughout his life

and he loved
performing.

"The element that attracted me,"
he once said,

"was the dexterity aspect
of it."

His tricks were compiled into
a three-volume book collection:

"Cy Endfield’s
Entertaining Card Magic."

Ahead tonight, another
low-budget, action-packed,

and violent film noir
directed by Cy Endfield,

a story filled with racial
tension and moral ambiguity.

"The Underworld Story,"
from 1950, is next on TCM.