The Hideout (1948), which is also known by its original British title The Small Voice, is a curious film to boast the screen debut of musical star Howard Keel, but that it does. The tense, black-and-white British thriller is about a couple held captive in their home by escaped convicts, one of whom is played by Keel, and it came about for the actor because he was at the time performing in the London stage version of Oklahoma!. (He played the character of "Curly" in that production for a whopping 18 months.)

A British talent agent arranged a screen test, and Keel got the part. At this point the actor, whose birth name was "Harold Leek," was using "Harold Keel" as his stage name; he is billed as such in The Hideout. While the picture was in production, Keel got a call from MGM, informing him that a separate screen test he had made months earlier in Hollywood had now resulted in the studio wanting him for Annie Get Your Gun (1950), opposite Judy Garland. That was indeed Keel's next movie; he was billed for the first time as "Howard Keel" and became an overnight star.

The real star of The Hideout was Valerie Hobson, a British actress entering the peak phase of her career. She had been signed by Universal at age 18, but once she got to Hollywood the studio didn't really know how to use her. After trying her in various films including The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Universal decided not to renew her contract and Hobson returned to England to continue her career there. She also picked up a husband, marrying producer Anthony Havelock-Allan in 1939. In the 1940s, Havelock-Allan formed a production company with David Lean and Ronald Neame, resulting in esteemed productions such as Brief Encounter (1945) and Great Expectations (1946), which co-starred Hobson. After Great Expectations, Havelock-Allan left the company and independently produced The Hideout, which was followed by several more collaborations between the husband-and-wife team.

In 1952, however, the couple divorced. Hobson later married John Profumo, a British politician who famously resigned his cabinet post in 1963 after a sex scandal with a woman who had also been seeing a Soviet official. (That story was dramatized in the 1989 film Scandal.)

Based on a novel by Robert Westerby, The Hideout was co-written by Derek Neame, brother of the famous cinematographer/director Ronald Neame, and directed by Fergus McDonell, an Oscar®-winning editor (Odd Man Out, 1947) making his directorial debut. McDonell would continue directing and editing throughout the 1950s, after which he concentrated solely on editing.

Producer: Anthony Havelock-Allan
Director: Fergus McDonell
Screenplay: George Barraud, Derek Neame, Julian Orde; Robert Westerby (novel "The Small Voice")
Cinematography: Stanley Pavey
Art Direction: Andrew Mazzei
Music: Stanley Black
Film Editing: Manuel del Campo
Cast: Valerie Hobson (Eleanor Byrne), James Donald (Murray Byrne), Howard Keel (Boke), David Greene (Jim), Michael Balfour (Frankie), Joan Young (Potter, the housekeeper), Angela Foulos (Jenny Moss), Glyn Dearman (Ken), Norman Claridge (superintendent), Edward Evans (Ken Moss, as boy).
BW-85m.

by Jeremy Arnold