Code of the Secret Service

External video

Original Trailer for Code of the Secret Service

Code of the Secret Service is a 1939 film directed by Noel M. Smith and starring Ronald Reagan. It is the second of four films in the U.S. Secret Service Agent Brass Bancroft series, having been preceded by Secret Service of the Air (1939) and followed by Smashing the Money Ring (1939) and Murder in the Air (1940).

The series was part of a late 1930s effort by Warner Bros. to produce films depicting law enforcement in a positive light under pressure from Homer Stille Cummings (Franklin D. Roosevelt's Attorney General) and Will H. Hays (creator of the Motion Picture Production Code, the movie industry's censorship guidelines), due to the studio's part in producing early 1930s films glamorizing gangsters.

The series also enabled Warner Bros. to create Reagan's screen persona, with Reagan even showing up to the set of Code of the Secret Service and asking director Noel M. Smith, "When do I fight and whom?"

United States Secret Service Lieutenant Brass Bancroft (Ronald Reagan) and his partner, Gabby Watters (Eddie Foy, Jr., producer Bryan Foy's brother), seek engraving plates stolen from the U.S. Treasury Department, and the investigation leads Bancroft and Watters to pursue a counterfeiting ring in Mexico. Along the way, Bancroft is falsely blamed for the death of a fellow Secret Service agent, escapes from jail, captures the leader of the counterfeiting ring, and wins the heart of his love interest, Elaine (Rosella Towne).