23 Paces to Baker Street | Blu-Ray Review

Director Henry Hathaway is perhaps best remembered for his late period Westerns (namely some iconic John Wayne oaters, like True Grit and The Sons of Katie Elder). But in his five decades as a director, ranging 1932 to 1974, Hathaway worked with a number of Hollywood luminaries across a variety of genres. During the 1940s, he was responsible for a number of notable film noir titles, including the infamous Richard Widmark starrer Kiss of Death (1947) and the more obscure Lucille Ball headliner The Dark Corner (1946). In the 1950s, Hathaway would return to these noir narratives and was one of the few to successfully re-fashion their energy into vibrant color palettes, including what’s perhaps the most vivid Technicolor noir ever made, Niagara (1953). Less well remembered is his London set 1956 title 23 Paces to Baker Street, an unlikely scenario featuring Van Johnson as a blind American playwright who overhears a kidnapping plot and ruthlessly investigates despite the disinterest of the police.

Despite having authored a stage hit currently playing in London’s West End, American ex-pat Phillip Hannon (Van Johnson) spends his time re-tooling his already celebrated material rather than move on to something else. Having sunk into a morose emotional stupor since losing his eyesight, he is only further reminded of his current state when his ex-secretary and love interest Jean Lennox (Vera Miles) suddenly appears at his door. Fleeing from her, he takes refuge at a pub and overhears a conversation which he believes to be a kidnapping plot. Alerting the police, his assumptions are dismissed, and so he is forced to depend on Jean and his live-in aide Bob (Cecil Parker) to investigate himself. Eventually, the criminals become aware of Hannon’s meddling, making him and those close to him targets for potential violence.

A project which came to fruition because 20th Century Fox was forced to utilize frozen funds the studio had earned in England by spending it there, 23 Paces to Baker Street is an adaptation of a Philip MacDonald novel (courtesy of screenwriter Nigel Balchin), a noted British writer whose father was the famed Scottish novelist George MacDonald (who penned such exemplary children’s classics as The Princess and the Goblin and At the Back of the North Wind). The younger MacDonald would make his own mark on cinema by adapting works for the screen by Daphne du Maurier (Hitchcock’s Rebecca) and Robert Louis Stevenson (Robert Wise’s The Body Snatcher). Hathaway’s film, (which, based on the title, is clearly trying to capitalize on the essence of Sherlock Holmes), clips along efficiently, and even borrows a subplot involving one of the antagonists from his 1945 film The House on 92nd Street. However, the overtly familiar scenario outlined in 23 Paces to Baker Street was already better utilized by earlier directors.

Van Johnson’s blind, bitter playwright has much in common with the bedridden Barbara Stanwyck character in Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), a woman who overhears a murder plot by accident on the phone. Likewise, the gender reversal of an incapacitated, vulnerable male lead was also already used to similar effect by Hitchcock in Rear Window (1954), in which James Stewart also completely ignores the beautiful woman attending to his every whim. Saddled with this thankless role, Vera Miles (also an alum of Hitchcock, famously in Psycho, as well as The Wrong Man) appears in one of her most non-descript roles as Johnson’s indefatigable ex-love interest, who basically is assigned the exact same function as his live-in employee played by Cecil Parker (The Lady Vanishes). Like many of these pulpy nail biters of the period, the film neglects its greatest assets, the peripheral villains. One only has to taste the intoxicating energy of Patricia Laffan in her solo on-screen appearance to realize what folly it is for Hathaway to waste so much time on the stilted romance outfitted for the sterile, underwritten character for Miles, a secretary/love interest similar to the Lucille Ball role in his earlier The Dark Corner.

Disc Review:

Kino Lorber releases 23 Paces to Baker Street under their Studio Classics label, presenting the title in 2.35:1. Picture and sound quality are superb, especially with this transfer’s 4K restoration, which cleans up beautifully, especially with some first-rate color cinematography by Milton R. Krasner. Film historian Kent Jones provides an audio commentary track.

Final Thoughts:

Completists of Hathaway may appreciate this 1950s thriller, which doesn’t have the same bite as Sorry, Wrong Number, but plays along the lines as another Barbara Stanwyck title, Witness to Murder (1954).

Film Review: ★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
Disc Review: ★★★/☆☆☆☆☆