Genial small town lawyer (John Wayne) comes to the big city to investigate the murder of his friend and begins to suspect a crooked political boss (Edward Ellis) while dating the boss's daughter (Frances Dee). Curious role for Wayne in this oddball B crime picture from Republic. The script does him no favors. I swear every other line of his seems to begin "back home..." followed by a less-than-funny anecdote about some bumpkin. There's country and then there's an urbanite's impersonation of country. This feels like the latter. Ellis is good as the political boss with a soft spot for his daughter. Frances Dee is fine but has no real chemistry with Duke. Harold Huber is amusing as the arrogant candidate Ellis is pushing. Ward Bond has one of his most embarrassing roles as a simple-minded goon with a pickpocketing habit. He goes full Lenny here. He and Duke have a fight scene among that old Hollywood favorite: stacks of empty cardboard boxes. Wallace Ford is wasted in a small part. It's a strange picture, with an awkward mix of comedy and drama, and a bizarre ending that almost defies the production code as the lawbreaking villain isn't really punished. One final, completely irrelevant (to anyone but me) note: Joseph Crehan plays a newspaper editor with a few scenes. In his final scene, he's gushing over this new farming gadget he's bought. It's a nifty little thing that looks like a child's wagon with some junk added on. I wonder if that was a real device or a prop created for the film?

After a young man supposedly commits suicide after leaving a nightclub in New York, a rural lawyer named "Lynn Hollister" (John Wayne) travels from the same hometown as the victim and goes to the Big Apple to investigate. When he gets there he finds that clues leading to the truth are hard to come by and eventually they lead to a corrupt politician named "Tom Cameron" (Edward Ellis) who knows more than he admits. But rather than simply give up he decides to continue his investigation with the help of the politician's daughter "Sabra Cameron" (Frances Dee). What he doesn't know is that Sabra may not have the same intention of finding the killer as he does. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a typical John Wayne film which benefited from a good plot and a decent script. I was especially impressed with the scenes involving the nightclub called "the Inferno" which could have easily come from a movie filmed 20 or 30 years later. On the other hand, the one thing I didn't care for was the rather jumbled ending which I thought should have been more fully developed. Likewise, I would have preferred a bit more drama as well. Even so, it was a fairly decent movie for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

Lynn Hollister, a small-town lawyer, travels to the nearby big city on business connected with the death of his friend Johnny. (Yes, Lynn is a man despite the feminine-sounding Christian name. Were the scriptwriters trying to make a snide reference to the fact that John Wayne's birth name was "Marion"?) Hollister at first believes Johnny's death to have been an accident, but soon realises that Johnny was murdered. Further investigations reveal a web of corruption, criminality and election rigging connected to Boss Cameron, the leading light in city 's political machine.That sounds like the plot of a gritty crime thriller, possibly made in the film noir style which was starting to become popular in 1941. It isn't. "A Man Betrayed", despite its theme, is more like a light romantic comedy than a crime drama. Hollister falls in love with Cameron's attractive daughter Sabra, and the film then concentrates as much on their resulting romance as on the suspense elements.This film might just have worked if it had been made as a straightforward serious drama. One reviewer states that John Wayne is not at all believable as a lawyer, but he couldn't play a cowboy in every movie, and a tough crusading lawyer taking on the forces of organised crime would probably have been well within his compass. Where I do agree with that reviewer is when he says that Wayne was no Cary Grant impersonator. Romantic comedy just wasn't up his street. One of the weaknesses of the studio system is that actors could be required to play any part their bosses demanded of them, regardless of whether it was up their street or not, and as Wayne was one of the few major stars working for Republic Pictures they doubtless wanted to get as much mileage out of him as they could.That said, not even Cary Grant himself could have made "A Man Betrayed" work as a comedy. That's not a reflection on his comic talents; it's a reflection on the total lack of amusing material in this film. I doubt if anyone, no matter how well developed their sense of humour might be, could find anything to laugh at in it. The film's light-hearted tone doesn't make it a successful comedy; it just prevents it from being taken seriously as anything else. This is one of those films that are neither fish nor flesh nor fowl nor good red herring. 3/10

**SPOILERS** Small-time country boy lawyer Lynn Hollister takes on the big city political machine and ends up hitched to the corrupt city boss' daughter in this really weird combination of a screw-ball comedy and murder/suspense movie. Johnny Smith who had just help his Spring Valley college basketball team win the big game staggers out of the red-light district Club Inferno, in a driving rainstorm. Johnny almost gets hit by a car leans against a lamppost which then gets hit by a bolt of lighting and plops to the ground dead. At the hospital it's found out that Johnny was actually shot in the Inferno Club, which caused him to stagger around the streets like a drunk, and that was the real reason for his death, in short he was murdered. In no time at all Johnny's friend, who he was more like a brother to, Lynn Hollister's in town trying to get to the bottom of what happened to Johnny and who killed him. The coroner for some strange reason had declared Johnny's death to be suicide which was obviously done to cover up the real reason for his murder. He had a fight with the Club Inferno's manager Amato over him being cheated in cards and was gunned down, with the loud music causing nobody to hear the shot, by one of Amato's henchmen the bird-brained and not too bright Floyd.Lynn is directed to Big Boss Tom Cameron's mansion to get the low-down to what happened to Johnny but, after belting the butler, falls for Tom's pretty daughter Sabra. It's then the film that at first look like a murder/suspense/mystery turns into a light romantic screwball comedy. Lynn and Sabra hit it off right away and for almost half of the film you, as well as the cast, completely forgot that Lynn was here to find out what really happened to Johnny? We get as far as learning that Johnny and Sabra were in love with each other but it wasn't until late in the movie that it's found out that it was Sabra's dad the Big Boss who was in some way, if not all the way, responsible for her boyfriends murder. Boss Cameron himself gets royally screwed by his under, as well as upper, links when after rigging the election for them to get into office they drop him like a hot potato and leave him out in the cold as they celebrate the stolen political victory that he engineered for them; now that's what I call gratitude. In he meantime Lynn, between smooching sessions with Sabra, got the goods on both Boss Cameron and his crew by first attempting to beat the truth out of Flyod who was shot by one of Amato's gunmen before he could finish telling it. Then Lynn going and finding in a law library textbook that rigging elections is illegal, lawyer Lynn didn't know this on his own? With this amazing revelation discovered by Lynn the election results are thrown out and those who rigged it, the Cameron/Amoto Mob,arrested and held without bail. Big Boss Tom Cameron disgusted at what he did, and what was done to him in return by his boys, comes clean after a tender heart-to-heart talk with Sabra and then spills the beans, to the D.A's office, with the entire crooked bunch of politicians and mobsters thrown behind bars together with him; I hope for his sake he asked to be put into protective custody.Lynn with his job in town now over, in solving Johnny Smith's murder and putting those responsible behind bars, rides off in a limousine into the sunset together with Sabra to sleepy quiet and friendly Spring Valley with a squad of local police motorcycle men as escorts. The movie is just too silly to take seriously and John Wayne as Lynn Hollister is not at all believable as a lawyer or a lawman or even a Cary Grant impersonator. Frances Dee as Boss Cameron's pretty daughter Sabra is both naive and unfeeling. Sabra at first doesn't have a clue to what her father is, the city's big machine boss, and later doesn't as much as shed a tear as he's put behind bars for what may well be the rest of his life! I don't even think that she even planned to visit him as she happily took off with Lynn together with a half dozen motorized policemen provided by her disgraced and imprisoned dad! Even behind bars he could pull all this off? Alexande Granach as the sleazy Club Inferno manager Amato played it a bit too much for laughs and Ward Bond as the nimble brained Floyd did his best to act punch-drunk even when he didn't take one, or two or three, to the head. In fact the only time Floyd acted as if he were in full control of his mental faculties was after he was punched out by Lynn only to get shot and killed for his new found intelligence.