Miss V from Moscow
Director: Boris Ingster
Year: 1942
Rating: 4.0
In previous reviews I have talked about a few films made in Hollywood during
World War II that put Communist Russia in a good light - they were our ally
at the time - and how these films were then scorched after the war by the
House UnAmerican Committe and the writers and filmmakers forced to testify.
Well, somehow they managed to miss this film. Is it too late for HUAC to
bring them forward?
But then I would guess pretty much everyone missed this film made by the
Producers Releasing Corporation. Very much a B film and not even a decent
B film, it tells the story of a female Russian spy (Lola Lane) who is the
perfect likeness of a German spy and so goes to Paris and takes her place.
She seduces a German officer (without having to sleep with him) and he spills
everything to her but Hitler's shoe size. She then passes the information
back to Mother Russia and they save an American convoy! Hip hip hooray. An
American pilot who is shot down gets in the middle of this and amazingly
everyone seems fluent in English, French, German and Russian. Maybe they
taught that in our school system back then. Pretty bad all around but I was
intrigued by the title.
I saw Lola Lane a while back in a one-off appearance as Torchy Blane. So
this time I gave her bio a gander. Interesting. She was born in Indiana as
Dorothy Mullican. She had three sisters - Rosemary, Priscilla and Leota.
They became a singing act with Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians and then
they all changed their name to Lane and went into showbiz. All four of them
starred in a bunch of films but in particular Priscilla made it reasonably
big being in films like Arsenic and Old Lace, The Roaring Twenties and Saboteur.
The sisters or at least most of them appeared in a series of films - titled
Four Daughters, Four Wives and Four Mothers.
