Non-Stop New York (1937)

Non-Stop New York is a 1937 British murder mystery thriller with much of the action taking place on a new highly advanced transatlantic flying boat.

Jennie Carr (Anna Lee) is an English chorus girl in New York. She’s down on her luck. In fact she’s starving. Then she meets a friendly lawyer. He invites her back to his apartment with the promise of a meal. Surprisingly his intentions seem to be honourable.

We soon find out that he’s a lawyer with some shady associations.

Jennie also encounters a tramp, stealing food from the lawyer’s apartment.

A bunch of rather unpleasant men burst in, it leads to murder and the intruders order Jennie to make herself scarce. The men were of course gangsters.

The chief gangster Hugo Brant later decides it would be unwise to allow a witness to live. Jennie doesn’t know it but she’s marked down to be rubbed out.

Meanwhile the tramp, who is wholly innocent, is arrested and convicted of the murder. He is to be executed.

Lots of complications follow in quick succession. Jennie ends up in prison back in England. She isn’t in for long, but long enough for her not to realise that she is now the missing star witness in a murder trial. And then she finds Scotland Yard Inspector Jim Grant (John Loder) won’t believe her.

All these complications serve to being a motley group of people together on a new luxury airliner capable of flying non-stop to New York. It’s a race against time for all of them. There’s Jennie, there are gangsters who are after her, there’s a blackmailer and a Scotland Yard cop.

It’s all fairly lighthearted and the plot is serviceable rather than brilliant but there are jus enough complications to it to ensure that there is always something happening. The pacing doesn’t falter at any stage in the movie’s modest 69-minute running time.

Mercifully the comic relief is kept to a minimum. It’s mostly provided by a young boy who is a musical prodigy but he is actually quite amusing.

Anna Lee had a very long career but never quite achieved the stardom she deserved. In this movie she’s funny, sweet, charming, sexy and adorable. She has that ability to light up the screen.

Jon Loder is likeable as the Scotland Yard cop. Francis L. Sullivan is deliciously sinister as gangster Hugo Brant and Frank Cellier is fun as sleazy blackmailer Sam Pryor.

The mighty six-engined flying boat looks reasonably impressive and the cool thing about it is that it features a promenade deck - you can step outside for some air mid-flight. It makes a fine setting for a crime thriller and it adds what would have been at the time an ultra-modern feel.

There’s an effective and exciting mid-air action climax.

This is an unassuming but entertaining lightweight thriller with some humour and some romance. It really is good fun. The delightful Anna Lee and the aerial setting are bonuses. Highly recommended.

You have to love the poster - a nude Anna Lee rendered as an aeroplane.

This movie can be found if you’re prepared to do a bit of looking.