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Brief Synopsis
A bellboy masquerades as a spy and lands behind enemy lines during the Civil War.
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Synopsis
At the Palmer Hotel in St. Louis in 1865, the bumbling bell boy Aubrey Filmore dreams of catching Confederate spies. He asks the head of the Union Secret Service, Colonel Clifford M. Baker, if he can join his elite group, but Baker once again refuses. Soon after, Baker tells his men to post notices warning about a dangerous Confederate spy nicknamed The Grey Spider. The next day, Major Jack Drumman comes to the hotel and when Aubrey discovers that he is really The Grey Spider, he forces Aubrey to change uniforms with him and plans to shoot him, thus making everyone to believe that the spy is dead. Just as Aubrey accidentally knocks out Drumman, Drumman's accomplice, the beautiful Sallyann Weatharby, appears at the door and Aubrey immediately falls in love. Pretending to be Drumman, Aubrey goes along with her to a meeting of the top Confederate spies, tipping off Baker before he leaves the hotel. At the meeting, Aubrey receives the Union battle plans, which he is to deliver to Confederate General Watkins, and is told to meet Sallyann at Morgan's Landing, a hospital at the battlefront. When he returns to the colonel, Baker falsifies the battle plans and reluctantly gives them to Aubrey to take across the enemy lines, still posing as Drumman, and deliver them to a Union spy in the South. Aubrey places the fake battle plans in his jacket and the instructions for the spy in his boot, but seems confused about which is where. At the front, Aubrey tries to escape by walking down the middle of the battle line wearing half of the Confederate uniform and half of the Union uniform, but is attacked by both sides. He is then taken unconscious to Morgan's Landing, where Sallyann waits for him and tells her jealous fiancée, Kurt Devlynn, that she now loves Drumman. After a series of mishaps in the hospital, Aubrey finds the boots and jacket with the information and escapes. Meanwhile, Devlynn tells his cohort, Captain Jed Calbern, to dress his men as Union soldiers, ambush Drumman and steal the plans. Aubrey, thinking that Jed's men are allies, unintentionally confuses them and they run off. At the plantation of Sallyann's father Colonel Weatharby, Aubrey gives Weatharby the spy instructions instead of the battle plans, sparking a long chain of events in which Aubrey, his Union contact Captain Steve Lorford, Devlynn and Jed repeatedly switch and steal the two sets of papers, until finally the battle plans get into General Watkins' hands and Lorford gets the instructions. At a party that night, Lorford tells Aubrey to obtain the Confederate battle plans from Watkins and bring them back them to Colonel Baker, but Aubrey dawdles to court Sallyann, who insists on a quick marriage. Meanwhile, Devlynn knows that a Union spy is in the house and the Confederates set a trap for him, but manage only to capture the true Grey Spider, who has escaped from the Union prison and returned to the plantation to carry out his original mission. Believing that the real Drumman is actually the Yankee spy, Watkins gives the plans to Aubrey, but just then Drumman's father, who has secretly been invited to the wedding by Sallyann, arrives and identifies the real Drumman as his son. With Aubrey's deceit now revealed, he is taken out to be shot, but is rescued by a still-loving Sallyann just as the war is declared over.
James Higgins
A Southern Yankee (1948)
Red Skelton is wonderful, as an undercover spy for the Union army. Some hilarious gags. Good support from Arlene Dahl, ...
More>>
James Higgins
A Southern Yankee (1948)
Red Skelton is wonderful, as an undercover spy for the Union army. Some hilarious gas. Good support from Arlene Dahl, ...
More>>
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