Tell No Tales

Tell No Tales is a 1939 American crime film directed by Leslie Fenton, written by Lionel Houser, and starring Melvyn Douglas, Louise Platt, Gene Lockhart and Douglass Dumbrille. Fenton's feature-film directorial debut, it was released on May 12, 1939, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Plot Michael Cassidy runs The Evening Guardian newspaper. However, publisher Matt Cooper sends Cassidy a telegram on its 75th birthday, informing him that he is shutting it down that very night. Cooper also owns The Record, a more lurid, scandal-filled paper, and he bought The Guardian solely to get rid of the competition. Cooper offers him any job he wants on The Record, but Cassidy turns him down. He abhors The Record, citing its shameful treatment of schoolteacher Ellen Frazier, a witness in a current kidnapping case. When Cassidy pays his bar tab, the bartender notices his $100 bill is part of the kidnapping ransom money, the first bill to surface and the first clue in the case. Cassidy got the bill when the bartender cashed his check the night before. The bartender recalls getting it from jewelry store proprietor Charlie Daggett. Cassidy goes to Cooper and begs him to keep publishing The Guardian, offering him a story that will sell many newspapers for weeks. Cooper insists he print it in The Record or else he will turn him over to the police for withholding information. Cassidy flees. Cassidy decides to track down the kidnappers. He sneaks in past a protective police cordon to see Ellen Frazier and, posing as a lawyer, persuades her to leave with him and identify the crooks if she can. She does not recognize Daggett, but he tells Cassidy who gave him the $100: a Mrs. Lovelake. Mrs. Lovelake's husband, a doctor, recalls receiving the bill from a patient with a knife wound, a black boxer named James Alley.