Thunder in the City Reviews

Robinson is an American publicist and salesman whose employers find his high-pressure techniques a little too intense. He is sent to London to watch the more sedate way of doing business there. He meets some titled distant relatives, Wontner and Esmond, who invite him to their estate for the weekend. There he meets another aristocratic pair, Bruce and Collier, and their daughter, Deste. Also spending the weekend is Richardson, a successful stockbroker. Bruce and Collier have lost most of their fortune and their only asset of any value is an unexploited mine in Rhodesia containing "Magnelite." Richardson offers to help them develop the mine in return for Deste's hand in marriage. Robinson steps in and--using his American methods--sets up a company with Bruce as chairman. He sells enough stock to provide capital to begin working the mine. Richardson doesn't give up easily, though; he takes over patents on the only process by which the metal can be refined. Robinson is forced by this maneuver to surrender his shares in the company to Richardson. Dejected, he prepares for a flight back to the US. At the airport, a crowd of friends thank him and see him off. Deste rejects Richardson and flies to US with Robinson. Robinson was loaned out by Warner Bros. for this film and he went willingly, happy to be away from the socially significant material that was Warner's stock-in-trade. When he arrived in London and saw the script, he told the producers what he thought of it, namely that it was "obvious, predictable, on the nose, flat, frequently silly." He was surprised when they agreed. A few days later Robinson was wandering about London when he spotted an old friend, co-author of the story and playwright Robert Sherwood. Over tea the actor persuaded Sherwood to write the script, and the writer turned it into a fairly witty satire. But the Sherwood script and a good cast were not enough, and the film died at the box office. It was not a total loss, though, as it was during Robinson's stay in London that he began building the art collection that was to become his great passion.