Whirlpool
Carnie owner Buck Rankin marries local girl Helen and plans to go straight, but after a brawl ends up with a twenty-year sentence for manslaughter. When a pregnant Helen vows to wait for him Rankin fo…
Whirlpool
Carnie owner Buck Rankin marries local girl Helen and plans to go straight, but after a brawl ends up with a twenty-year sentence for manslaughter. When a pregnant Helen vows to wait for him Rankin forges a letter from the warden's office informing Helen that Rankin drowned while attempting to escape. Twenty years later Rankin is released from prison, changes his name to "Duke Sheldon", and eventually becomes a nightclub owner with ties to the mob. Helen has remarried - to a local judge - and daughter Sandra has become a reporter. When it's learned that notoriously camera-shy "Duke Sheldon" will be providing a mobster's alibi at a high-profile trial Sandra is sent to write an exposé. She immediately recognizes Rankin from a photo her mother kept, and father and daughter have a tearful reunion. Now Rankin must decide what to do: testify at the trial, revealing his identity and exposing Helen as an unintentional bigamist. Or refuse to testify, protecting Helen and Sandra but angering the mob. —sienel Wealthy nightclub owner Duke Sheldon, a good man beyond being a racketeer, has made an agreement with lawyer Barney Gaige to testify at the trial of his client, fellow racketeer Big Tim Kelly, in New York, Gaige who has centered his defense on the alibi for Kelly to be provided by Sheldon which would exonerate Kelly of the charge. Only Mac, Sheldon's longtime friend and second in charge, knows that Sheldon is really Buck Rankin, who was a less than ethical traveling carnival owner/operator before he was charged and convicted for manslaughter in the death of a man in a brawl for which he spent twenty years in the state penitentiary. Early on in his sentence, Buck was able to get what looked like official notice from the prison warden to Buck's bride, Helen, that he committed suicide by drowning in the river whirlpool adjacent to the prison in an attempted escape - no escapee ever having survived the whirlpool or that the bodies ever recovered - so that Helen, who was pregnant with his baby at the time, would move onto a better life in her refusal to divorce him, hence his new assumed name of Duke Sheldon upon his release from prison. Sandy, a reporter with the Morning Globe newspaper, is following up on the lead that the unknown person set to testify at Kelly's trial is Sheldon. Upon seeing for the first time who she learns is generally media-shy Sheldon, Sandy recognizes him as the man in the photograph in her mother Helen's house: her biological father, Buck Rankin. Able to finagle a secret meeting with Sheldon under false pretenses, Sandy confronts him about his true identity and she being his daughter. Reuniting with the child who he never thought he'd meet, Buck/Sheldon doesn't want to lose her from his life but realizes that coming clean as Buck Rankin to the world would place Helen, long ago remarried to Judge Jim Morrison, in the position of being a bigamist, testifying at the trial which would do so in his life being placed under greater scrutiny. As such, Buck and Sandy decide to spend the week together to get to know each other before Buck leaves her life once again to disappear without testifying. Hot on their tails which may expose their joint secret are: Gaige, who learns of Sheldon reneging on testifying, which if he doesn't do so means Sheldon's life at the hands of Kelly's men; and Sandy's fellow reporter and boyfriend Bob who is following up on the Sheldon story in Sandy seemingly getting cozy with her story subject. —Huggo
Whirlpool
Crime,Drama,Romance
Film Details
Carnie owner Buck Rankin marries local girl Helen and plans to go straight, but after a brawl ends up with a twenty-year sentence for manslaughter. When a pregnant Helen vows to wait for him Rankin forges a letter from the warden's office informing Helen that Rankin drowned while attempting to escape. Twenty years later Rankin is released from prison, changes his name to "Duke Sheldon", and eventually becomes a nightclub owner with ties to the mob.
Helen has remarried - to a local judge - and daughter Sandra has become a reporter. When it's learned that notoriously camera-shy "Duke Sheldon" will be providing a mobster's alibi at a high-profile trial Sandra is sent to write an exposé. She immediately recognizes Rankin from a photo her mother kept, and father and daughter have a tearful reunion.
Now Rankin must decide what to do: testify at the trial, revealing his identity and exposing Helen as an unintentional bigamist. Or refuse to testify, protecting Helen and Sandra but angering the mob. —sienel Wealthy nightclub owner Duke Sheldon, a good man beyond being a racketeer, has made an agreement with lawyer Barney Gaige to testify at the trial of his client, fellow racketeer Big Tim Kelly, in New York, Gaige who has centered his defense on the alibi for Kelly to be provided by Sheldon which would exonerate Kelly of the charge.
Only Mac, Sheldon's longtime friend and second in charge, knows that Sheldon is really Buck Rankin, who was a less than ethical traveling carnival owner/operator before he was charged and convicted for manslaughter in the death of a man in a brawl for which he spent twenty years in the state penitentiary. Early on in his sentence, Buck was able to get what looked like official notice from the prison warden to Buck's bride, Helen, that he committed suicide by drowning in the river whirlpool adjacent to the prison in an attempted escape - no escapee ever having survived the whirlpool or that the bodies ever recovered - so that Helen, who was pregnant with his baby at the time, would move onto a better life in her refusal to divorce him, hence his new assumed name of Duke Sheldon upon his release from prison. Sandy, a reporter with the Morning Globe newspaper, is following up on the lead that the unknown person set to testify at Kelly's trial is Sheldon.
Upon seeing for the first time who she learns is generally media-shy Sheldon, Sandy recognizes him as the man in the photograph in her mother Helen's house: her biological father, Buck Rankin. Able to finagle a secret meeting with Sheldon under false pretenses, Sandy confronts him about his true identity and she being his daughter. Reuniting with the child who he never thought he'd meet, Buck/Sheldon doesn't want to lose her from his life but realizes that coming clean as Buck Rankin to the world would place Helen, long ago remarried to Judge Jim Morrison, in the position of being a bigamist, testifying at the trial which would do so in his life being placed under greater scrutiny.
As such, Buck and Sandy decide to spend the week together to get to know each other before Buck leaves her life once again to disappear without testifying. Hot on their tails which may expose their joint secret are: Gaige, who learns of Sheldon reneging on testifying, which if he doesn't do so means Sheldon's life at the hands of Kelly's men; and Sandy's fellow reporter and boyfriend Bob who is following up on the Sheldon story in Sandy seemingly getting cozy with her story subject. —Huggo.