''Assassin for Hire'' is a 1951 British

crime film Crime film is a film belonging to the crime fiction genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and fiction. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine with many other genres, such as Drama (film and television), dr ...

directed by Michael McCarthy and starring

Sydney Tafler Sydney Tafler (31 July 1916 – 8 November 1979) was an English actor who after having started his career on stage, was best remembered for numerous appearances in films and television from the 1940s to the 1970s. Personal life Tafler was bor ...

, Ronald Howard and Katharine Blake. Its plot follows a

contract killer Contract killing (also known as murder-for-hire) is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or people. It involves an illegal agreement which includes some form of compensation, moneta ...

who becomes stricken with remorse when he is led to believe he has murdered his brother. It was the first

feature film A feature film or feature-length film (often abbreviated to feature), also called a theatrical film, is a film (Film, motion picture, "movie" or simply “picture”) with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole present ...

made by

Anglo-Amalgamated Anglo-Amalgamated Productions was a British film production company, run by Nat Cohen and Stuart Levy, which operated from 1945 until roughly 1971 (after which it was absorbed into EMI Films). Low-budget and second features, often produced at ...

. It was made at Merton Park Studios from a screenplay by Rex Rienits. It was intended as a supporting feature, although it may have been shown as a headline feature in some cinemas.

Plot

Antonio Riccardi, a young British criminal of Italian heritage, works as a professional

in order to pay for his gifted younger brother's

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

lessons so that he can escape from a life of poverty and crime. A series of mistakes lead him to wrongly believe he has killed his brother, and he confesses his crimes to the police.

Cast

as Antonio Riccardi * Ronald Howard as Detective Inspector Carson * Katharine Blake as Maria Riccardi * John Hewer as Giuseppe Riccardi * June Rodney as Helen Garrett *

Gerald Case Thomas Gerald CaseWalford's County Families of the United Kingdom, 1908, p. 188 (26 Jan 1905 – 22 May 1985) was a British stage, film and television character actor, known, amongst others, for his role in the 1976 Wodehouse Playhouse episode, ' ...

as Detective Sergeant Stott * Reginald Dyson as Josef Meyerling *

Sam Kydd Samuel John Kydd (15 February 1915 – 26 March 1982) was a British actor. Most of his film roles were very small but he appeared in more than 290 films, more than any other British actor, including 119 between 1946 and 1952. His best-known ro ...

as Bert * Ian Wallace as Charlie * Martin Benson as Catesby *

Ewen Solon Peter Ewen Solon (7 September 1917 – 7 July 1985) was a New Zealand-born actor, who worked extensively in both the United Kingdom and Australia. At the outbreak of World War II, Solon became a member of the First Echelon, 2nd NZEF that saw ser ...

as Fred

Original Radio Play

Rex Rienits originally wrote the story as a radio play, which aired in Australia in 1944 in a production starring Keith Eden. Another version was produced in 1952.

Television Play

Rienits moved to London in April 1949 and in May 1950 reported he had sold the script to television. It was one of two television scripts he sold, the other being ''The Million Pound Note'' which would be filmed in 1954. The television film ''Assassin for Hire'' was screened by the BBC in September 1950 with Sidney Tafler in the lead.

Film production

In November 1950 Rienits reported that film rights to his story had been purchased by Anglo Amalgamated, run by Nat Cohen. Filming started at Merton Studios on 13 November 1950 with Tafler repeating his television performance. It was the first time Anglo produced a film.

Dallas Bower Dallas Bower (25 July 1907 – 18 October 1999) was a British director and producer active during the early development of mass media communication. Throughout his career Bower's work spanned radio plays, television shows, propaganda shorts, anim ...

who directed the television version claims the movie "more or less started

Nat Cohen Nat Cohen (23 December 1905 – 10 February 1988)William D. Rubinstein, et al (eds.''The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History'' Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p.171 was a British film producer and executive. For over four decades he was one of t ...

off in the film industry because he decided he wanted to make this into a film and indeed he did" and "it made a mint of money." Bower thought ''Assassin for Hire'' might have been "the first occasion when a successful TV production also became a successful film."

Novel

Rienits later turned the story into a novel. It was published along with the Rienits short story ''Wide Boy'' which was later filmed with Sidney Tafler in 1952. The ''Herald'' called the novel ''Assassin for Hire'' "a tightly written, quite exciting report on a professional killer." The ''Advertiser'' called it "An exciting, if not a very convincing, novel. There was also talk the story would be turned into a stage play.

References

Bibliography

* Chibnall, Steve & McFarlane, Brian. ''The British 'B' Film''. Palgrave MacMillan, 2009.

External links

*
Assassin for Hire
at BFI {{Michael McCarthy 1951 films Works by Rex Rienits 1951 crime films Films directed by Michael McCarthy 1950s English-language films British crime films British black-and-white films 1950s British films English-language crime films