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Event
The Informer
The Informer was a big contender at the 8th Academy Awards, competing directly in all six categories they were nominated for (though Mutiny got eight nominations in total, given its three Best Actor nominations). The Informer won four Oscars: Best Director for Ford, Best Actor for McLaglen, Best Writing Screenplay for Nichols, and Best Score.
In Dublin in 1922, Gypo Nolan (Victor McLaglen) has been kicked out of the outlaw Irish Republican Army (IRA) for not executing a Black and Tan who killed an IRA man. He becomes angry when he sees his streetwalker girlfriend Katie Madden (Margot Grahame) trying to pick up a customer. After he throws the man into the street, Katie laments that she does not have £10 for passage to America to start afresh.
Gypo later runs into his friend and IRA comrade Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford), a fugitive with a £20 bounty on his head. Frankie, tired of hiding for six months, is on his way home to visit his mother (Una O'Connor) and sister Mary (Heather Angel) under cover of the foggy night. The slow-witted Gypo decides to turn informer for the £20 reward, enough for passage to America for the both of them. The Black and Tans find Frankie at his house, and Frankie is killed in the ensuing gunfight. The British contemptuously give Gypo his blood money and let him go.
Gypo subsequently buys a bottle of whiskey and tells Katie that he obtained money by beating up an American sailor. He goes to Frankie's wake, and acts suspiciously when coins fall out of his pocket. The men there tell him that they do not suspect Gypo of informing, but he then meets with several of his former IRA comrades, who wonder who informed on Frankie. Gypo claims it was a man named Mulligan (Donald Meek). Though Gypo is drunk and talking nonsense, the others begin to suspect him but do not have enough evidence as yet. Gypo leaves and gives out £1 notes to a blind man (D'Arcy Corrigan) and some bar patrons, but people wonder why he had such a sudden influx of cash. Meanwhile, Mary tells the IRA that the only person Frankie talked to that day was Gypo, and the men decide to hold an inquest into the death.
Gypo goes to an upper-class party to look for Katie, but gets drunk and buys rounds of drinks. Gypo is then taken away by his former IRA comrades when they figure out it was he. He is taken to a kangaroo court, where Mulligan is questioned and is accused once again by Gypo. However, the comrades do not believe Gypo, and give him a detailed accounting of where he spent his entire £20 reward. Gypo then confesses to ratting out Frankie.
Gypo is locked up, but before he can be executed he escapes through a hole in the ceiling. He runs to Katie's apartment, where he tells her that he informed on Frankie. Katie goes to see the commissioner who presided over the trial, Dan Gallagher (Preston Foster), to beg him to leave Gypo alone. The rigid Gallagher says he cannot do anything, and Gypo might turn in the entire organization to the police if he is allowed to live. However, other IRA members, having overheard Katie, go to her apartment and shoot Gypo, much to Katie's horror as she hears the shots. Gypo wanders into a church where Frankie's mother is praying and begs forgiveness as he confesses to her. She does forgive him, telling him that he did not know what he was doing, and the absolved Gypo dies content on the floor of the church after calling out to Frankie with joy.
Cast
Wallace Ford as Frankie McPhillip in The Informer
Victor McLaglen - "Gypo" Nolan
Heather Angel - Mary McPhillip
Preston Foster - Dan Gallagher
Margot Grahame - Katie Madden
Wallace Ford - Frankie McPhillip
Una O'Connor - Mrs McPhillip
J. M. Kerrigan - Terry
Joe Sawyer - Bartly Mulholland
(credited as Joseph Sauers)
Neil Fitzgerald - Tommy Connor
Donald Meek - Peter Mulligan
D'Arcy Corrigan - The Blind Man
Leo McCabe - Donahue
Steve Pendleton - Dennis Daly
(credited as Gaylord Pendleton)
Francis Ford - "Judge" Flynn
May Boley - Madame Betty
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LocationSt. Lawrence Arts (View)
76 Congress Street
Portland, ME 04101
United States
Categories
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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