The President's Mystery

(1936)

50 minutes.

Film / Drama / Crime

Directed by Phil Rosen

Cast: Henry Wilcoxon, Betty Furness and Sidney Blackmer
 
Industrialist James Blake has messed up his personal life and he wants to start over in a new identity, but he doesn't want to lose the fortune he's already compiled.  He hits upon a very clever plan.  Blake locates a crooked investment firm run by two con men.  Claiming to have enough evidence to put the crooks in prison, Blake bullies them into abandoning their investment firm without dismantling it.  Blake then secretly takes over the brokerage without any paperwork to document the transfer.  Operating in the open, he then proceeds to invest his own fortune in the crooked brokerage house, thus neatly robbing himself!  Because Blake is publicly perceived to lose his fortune, nobody is surprised when he vanishes, an apparent suicide.  He establishes a new identity with plausible ease, and it looks like he's accomplished his goal, but then something goes wrong.