The Man Who Wouldn't Talk (1940 film)

The Man Who Wouldn't Talk

Directed by	David Burton
Written by	Clark Andrews Lou Breslow David Burton Robert Ellis Edward Ettinger Owen Francis Holworthy Hall Helen Logan Robert Middlemass Lester Ziffren
Produced by	Sol M. Wurtzel
Starring	Lloyd Nolan Jean Rogers Richard Clarke
Cinematography	Virgil Miller
Edited by	Alex Troffey
Music by	Samuel Kaylin
Production company	Twentieth Century Fox
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox
Release date	January 23, 1940 (1940-01-23)
Running time	74 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Man Who Wouldn't Talk is a 1940 mystery film directed by David Burton and starring Lloyd Nolan, Jean Rogers, and Richard Clarke. It is a remake of the 1929 film The Valiant which had starred Paul Muni,^[1] and was based on a play of the same name. It was Nolan's first film for Twentieth Century Fox, where he went on to be a successful star of B Movie mysteries such as the Michael Shayne series. Nolan's portrayal of the lead character was deliberately more subdued than Muni's had been, and the film was "opened up" with the addition of flashback scenes and other devices to make it less dialogue-based than the original.

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Plot

A man shoots dead a business leader and confesses to the killing, but refuses to say anything more than providing the name Joe Monday, which is obviously an alias. His attorney joins forces with a woman claiming that she is his sister and that he is really a soldier reported missing during World War I. Still, the accused refuses to offer further information. He is tried for murder, with the case seemingly hanging on events from over twenty years earlier when the dead man and the accused had served in the same infantry company in France.