While London Sleeps

While London Sleeps is a 1926 Warner Bros. film about a police-dog, Rinty, who helps Scotland Yard defeat a dangerous criminal organisation known as the Mediterranean Brotherhood that operates out of the Limehouse district of London. Walter Morosco wrote the screenplay. It was the first of many films directed by Howard Bretherton, and one of several created for Rin Tin Tin, a German Shepherd dog used in films during the 1920s and 1930s. The film was also released with a Vitaphone sound-on-disc soundtrack with a music score and sound effects.

Plot

Inspector Burke of Scotland Yard concentrates all his forces on the capture of London Letter, a notorious criminal leader in the Limehouse district who possesses both Rinty, a splendid dog, and a man-beast monster that ravages and kills at his master's command. Burke almost apprehends the gang in the midst of an attempted theft, but Rinty's uncanny perceptions foil Burke's coup, and Foster is killed for betraying the gang. When Rinty loses in a fight against another dog, Burke's daughter, Dale, rescues Rinty from London Letter's abuse, and he becomes devoted to his new mistress. At the criminal's order, the monster kidnaps Dale and imprisons her. Burke and his men wound London Letter while on his trail, and Rinty finds him dying. In a ferocious battle Rinty kills the monster.

Cast

Rin Tin Tin as Rinty

Helene Costello as Dale Burke

Walter Merrill as Thomas Hallard

John Patrick as Foster

Otto Matieson as London Letter

George Kotsonaros as The Monk

De Witt Jennings as Inspector Burke

Carl Stockdale as Stokes

Les Bates as Long Tom

Preservation status

No prints of this film are known to survive suggesting it is lost. It is on the Lost Film Files list for missing Warner Bros., but the soundtrack survives intact on Vitaphone disks in the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

References

While London Sleeps Wikipedia

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