Above Suspicion (1943 film)
| Above Suspicion | |
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1943 US Theatrical Poster
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| Directed by | Richard Thorpe |
| Produced by | Victor Saville |
| Written by |
Keith Winter Melville Baker Patricia Coleman Leonard Lee (uncredited) |
| Based on |
Above Suspicion (1941 novel) by Helen MacInnes |
| Starring |
Joan Crawford Fred MacMurray Basil Rathbone |
| Music by | Bronislau Kaper |
| Cinematography | Robert Planck |
| Edited by | George Hively |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
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Release date
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Running time
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90 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Above Suspicion is a 1943 American spy film distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starring Joan Crawford and Fred MacMurray, and directed by Richard Thorpe. The screenplay was adapted from the novel Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes, which is loosely based on the life experiences of MacInnes and her husband, Gilbert Highet.
The plot follows two newlyweds who spy on the Nazis for the British Secret Service during their honeymoon in Europe.
This film marked the end of Crawford's 18-year career with MGM before signing with Warner Bros, and the last for character actor Conrad Veidt who died of a heart attack a few weeks after shooting ended.
In the spring of 1939 in England, Oxford University Professor Richard Myles (Fred MacMurray) and his new bride Frances (Joan Crawford) decide to honeymoon on the continent. Because they are American tourists and therefore "above suspicion," they find themselves commissioned by the British secret service to find an apparently missing scientist who has developed a countermeasure against a new Nazi secret weapon, a magnetic sea mine. Without knowing his name, what he looks like, or where to find him, the couple look upon the search as adventurous and cross Europe seeking clues from clandestine contacts.
In Paris, Frances is given a hat decorated with a rose as a signal for their first contact, who silently instructs them to go to a café in Montmartre, where an unseen contact plants a tourist guidebook to southern Germany in Richard's coat. The couple notice a series of ink dots on a map in the book that linked together form a musical staff with the opening notes to the song "My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose," which they deduce is their password. Three pinpricks in the same map direct them to the book's seller, A. Werner (Felix Bressart), in Salzburg. Werner informs them they must go to a certain museum where a man named Count Hassert Seidel (Conrad Veidt), calling himself a "guide," suggests that they check into a guest house run by Frau Kleist (Johanna Hofer). She provides them with a book on Franz Liszt with annotations that reveal their next stop should be the village of Pertisau in the Tyrol, where they should inquire about a doctor who collects chess pieces.
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