Wanted By the Police (DVD)

Danny Murphy is a clean-cut young man right out of high school, hoping to become a professional baseball player. Knowing his mother has bills to pay and that his sister is eager to marry her policeman boyfriend, he sets aside his dreams and applies for work at Owens' Garage. On a routine job transporting a car across state lines, he discovers that the automobile is stolen. Realizing that his employers are actually a gang of car thieves, Danny finds himself on the run from the police -- including his future brother-in-law.

Wanted By The Police is the first of a series of youth-oriented melodramas produced by Monogram Pictures starring Frankie Darro. The son of circus aerialists, Darro appeared in numerous silent films as a youngster (including a series of westerns opposite Tom Tyler) and found great success as the lead in William Wellman's Wild Boys of the Road (1933). Eternally youthful, he played teenage roles well into his twenties (at the time of Wanted By The Police's release, he was 21.) He would also provide the voice of Lampwick in Pinocchio (1940) and was Robby the Robot in the sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet (1956). Actress Lillian Elliot, who began her career working in Hal Roach silent comedies with Laurel & Hardy, would continue to play the character of Frankie's Irish mother in future Monogram releases such as Irish Luck (1939) and Chasing Trouble (1940).

• drama