... and this little obscure piece of cinema history takes a book written about the FBI and turns it into two well told interwoven stories. One is the story of the life of one of the first FBI agents, the fictional John Hardesty (James Stewart) and his personal life through about 35 years as he marries and raises a family. The other is the story of the FBI from its infancy, told through the eyes and narration of Hardesty himself, covering several cases through the years including the Klan in the 20s, gangsters in the 30s, wartime espionage in the 40s, and then Communist espionage in the 50s. Vera Miles plays Hardesty's wife who does have her limits as the family is moved all over the country as Hardesty's assignments change.
One of the most interesting scenes to me is inside the Washington Bureau where dozens of women are in a big windowless concrete room filing stacks of correspondence by hand. That had to be mind numbing work.
I was surprised when I discovered the director was Mervyn LeRoy, because, although he directed some good ones over the years, he had a couple of bad habits. One was taking every single adapted play he directed and making it look like a play. In 1932 he actually changed scenes in one such film by having a curtain fall and then rise on another scene. The other bad habit was taking adapted books and have them play out like somebody is reading you the book - books on tape on film so to speak. This film, however, was done very well. But then I learned he and J. Edgar Hoover were friends, so maybe he had an extra incentive to have this one turn out well.
Agent Hardesty was certainly at the center of some big operations. The great irony of that being that J. Edgar was such a jealous guy that Hardesty would have spent a large part of his career in exile if he had been a real person with such a record of success. But then we would have no movie. So I found the secret to enjoying this film is to just forget about some of the actual truth that this film whitewashes over and enjoy it as an action/crime film of the time.
It can get a bit heavy handed and corny at times, but it holds up well due to the bigger than life talent of every man James Stewart.
