The Mark of the Whistler

The Mark of the Whistler
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	William Castle
Screenplay by	George Bricker
Story by	Cornell Woolrich (short story "Dormant Account")
Based on	The Whistler 1942-55 radio series by J. Donald Wilson
Produced by	Rudolph C. Flothow
Starring	Richard Dix Janis Carter
Narrated by	Otto Forrest
Cinematography	George Meehan
Edited by	Reg Browne
Music by	Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Production company	Larry Darmour Productions
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	October 9, 1944 (1944-10-09) (United States)
Running time	60 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Mark of the Whistler, (aka The Marked Man) is a 1944 American mystery film noir based on the radio drama The Whistler.^[1] Directed by William Castle, the production features Richard Dix, Porter Hall and Janis Carter.^[2] It is the second of Columbia Pictures' eight "Whistler" films produced in the 1940s, all but the last starring Dix.^[3]

A drifter claims the money in a dormant bank account. Later, he becomes the target of men who are the sons of the man's old partner, who is now in prison due to a conflict with him over the money.

• Richard Dix as Lee Selfridge Nugent
• Janis Carter as Patricia Henley
• Porter Hall as Joe Sorsby
• Paul Guilfoyle as 'Limpy' Smith
• John Calvert as Eddie Donnelly
• Matt Willis as Perry Donnelly
• Bill Raisch as the truck driver, best known for playing the One Armed Man in The Fugitive. He lost an arm in World War II between the making of this film and The Fugitive.

Bosley Crowther, the film critic for The New York Times, gave the film a mixed review, writing "The dodges by which a fellow successfully stakes a phony claim to a dormant account in a savings bank and swindles $29,000 lend some fair to middling interest to Columbia's latest Whistler-series film—one called The Mark of the Whistler...In this dubious demonstration, the film does present a criminal case with the patient documentation familiar in crime-and-punishment shorts. But the things that happen to this defrauder after he has got the cash are just the claptrap of cheap melodrama—and they are bluntly presented that way."^[4]

• The Mark of the Whistler at IMDb
• The Mark of the Whistler at the TCM Movie Database
• The Mark of the Whistler at AllMovie
• The Mark of the Whistler at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• The Mark of the Whistler complete film on YouTube
• Review of film at Variety