Sergeant Madden

Sergeant Madden (1939)

The Father A Cop . . . The Son A Killer

A dedicated police officer is torn between family and duty when his son turns to a life of crime.

Date of release
1939-03-24
TMDB
7.5 / 10 (2)
Runtime
1h 20m
Genres
Crime, Drama
Director
Josef von Sternberg

Casting

Interesting facts

Sergeant Madden is a 1939 film noir forerunner directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Wallace Beery. The supporting cast in this dark police crime drama, noted for its imaginative and evocative cinematography, includes Tom Brown, Laraine Day, Alan Curtis, and Marc Lawrence.

Production

Sternberg would fulfill his movie contract for Metro with a crime drama, Sergeant Madden, with character actor Wallace Beery, a box-office favorite, in the lead role of New York City Patrolman Shawn Madden. The film was already in production when Sternberg arrived on the set.

The Sergeant Madden screenplay, based on a story by William A. Ullman entitled “A Gun in His Hand” was an “over-plotted potboiler paying sentimental tribute to ‘the cop on the beat’...”

Wallace Beery, a “Metro institution”, provided a reliable source of revenue for the corporation, despite his “tiresome screen performance.” When Sternberg attempted to elicit a more disciplined approach from Beery, the studio hierarchy instructed the director to cease his overly “demanding rehearsals.” Despite the Metro's interference “Beery’s performance in Sergeant Madden is one of the least maudlin in his gallery of indistinguishable character…

The film was released on March 24, 1939, and “did quite well.”

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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