Harry Mitchell (William Gargan) is your typical hardboiled noir newspaper columnist, eager for a front-page scoop and willing to do anything to get it. When he gets a hot tip from a rival about “The Argyle Album,” Mitchell risks life and limb to find it, tangling with a rag-tag band of nefarious treasure hunters determined to steal the book and the scandalous secrets it contains. Clearly intended as a tongue-in-cheek parody of The Maltese Falcon, the politically astute Cy Endfield hit a few hot buttons as well, particularly the suggestion that some American industrialists were happy to welcome a fascist regime in the United States had America lost WWII. Borne of a wordy radio play, about three films-worth of plot is stuffed into a brisk 64 minutes, with well-wrought set pieces played in a whirlwind of hardboiled dialogue. The Argyle Secrets shows fledgling writer-director Cy Endfield playfully exploring all sorts of cinematic chicanery.

Presented in 35mm courtesy of the Film Noir Foundation and UCLA Film & Television Archive.