Below the Deadline
About Below the Deadline
Gentleman bandit Beau Nash (Frank Leigh) runs a jewel gang from a ramshackle boarding house. After a detective arrests a member named Mike, Mike's sister Claire, known as Lady Byron (Barbara Worth), wants revenge. The gang frames the detective's friend, jewelry clerk Donald Cornwall (Walter Merrill), for robbing his own employer. The detective lets Donald out to find proof. Claire falls in love with him, helps him, and the two tie the robbery to Nash's gang. Nash is killed.
Cast & crew
More about Below the Deadline
J. P. McGowan directed the silent, which uses English intertitles. Lee Authmar and Arthur Hoerl wrote it. Chesterfield both produced and distributed. AFI gives a release date of May 1, 1929, a St. Louis opening the week of June 2, 1929, and a New York opening on June 22, 1929. Wikipedia's January 1, 1929 date matches the placeholder publishers often use.
Themes
Background
Chesterfield put the silent crime picture out in the spring of 1929, the season most independents were switching their slates to sound.
Preservation
The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Database, as cited by AFI, lists the film as extant. It is not a lost title. A file is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Arthur Rankin is billed as Jimmy Byron. McGowan himself plays Taggart. Mike Donlin plays Sandy.
- Virginia Sale plays Mother Biblow, the boarding-house figure. Fred Walton plays Festenberg.
- M. A. Anderson and Jack Jackson are credited as cinematographers. James Sweeney edited.
- AFI's subject list includes a shootout along with the frame-up and the boarding house.
Scenes
- The gang plants the jewelry-store robbery on Donald Cornwall.
- Claire switches sides and helps Donald prove Nash's men did it.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Below the Deadline (1929).webm)
