The Unknown Purple by Roland West and Carlyle Moore
Adapted from the stage play by Mr. West and Paul Schofield
The synopsis is fairly lengthy. But, how else to approach this write-up? John Soister's great book "Up From the Vault" covers the film in great and interesting detail already. (It comes Highly Recommended … and I'm not just saying this because Yours Truly is graciously mentioned in the acknowledgements.)
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Buried in the grey walls of a penitentiary were two men who never had seen each other but who nightly argued about . . . women! Bill Hawkins believed there was only one kind . . rotten - - so hated them all! The other prisoner argued that there were good women upon the earth and one of them was his wife, who was waiting for him with their little son. Bill Hawkins laughed and then told him a story of a wife who had betrayed her husband.
Hawkins told of an experience in a little one-horse burg, called Higsby, where years before he had been hired by the lover of a trusted wife to steal a valuable formula from the husband. The husband, an inventor, was at the time perfecting a purple light which would make the human body invisible.
Bill Hawkins after stealing the formula was obliged to hide in the house to escape discovery and saw the unfolding of the drama which sent the husband to prison because he took the blame for the stealing of money from his employer because he thought his wife was guilty of having taken the money to send their child to the country. In reality the lover had stolen the money and urged her to place the blame on the husband so they would be rid of him. Even Bill Hawkins admitted he was fooled by the wife's tearful story to her husband and left the formula which he had stolen because the husband said it would keep him out of prison.
When Bill Hawkins finished the story he passed a newspaper to the other prisoner, in which was a picture of the wife and the lover, now Mr. And Mrs. James Dawson, wealthy from the returns on the inventor's dye formula.
The prisoner looked at the paper and then asked Bill Hawkins what he would do if the woman was his wife. Bill told him he would get her alone in some dark room and choke her and he would pull the man down step by step . . down . . . down.
Then the prisoner said "That is just what I am going to do . . . I am Peter Marchmont . . . the husband!"
Mrs. James Dawson was entertaining at her Long Island home. Her husband was getting into financial difficulties through the mysterious thefts of formulas and other valuables from his office. Dawson was anxious to get in touch with Mr. Cromport, a mysterious financial and diplomatic power from abroad.
Cromport is finally persuaded to come to the dinner party at the Dawsons. In Crompert no one would recognize the former Peter Marchmont, jailbird, inventor and possessor of the mysterious purple ray. At the Dawson house Comport meets his little son, now grown up and Ruth Marsh, Mrs. Dawson's sister, who has always loved Peter Marchmont. A mysterious servant in the house is Hawkins, placed there through the scheming of Cromport and acting as his colleague. Before the dinner a mysterious message is received from the Unknown Purple that at the stroke of midnight Mrs. Dawson's diamond necklace will be stolen. William J. Allison a detective of international fame, with his assistants is there to capture the Unknown Purple, who has been responsible for the thefts at the Dawson office.
At the stroke of midnight a purple haze appears about those seated at dinner, the curtains are thrown back by an unseen hand - a purple ray of light travels about the room and behind Mrs. Dawson a hand issued from the purple ray and snatches the diamond necklace from about her neck.
A month passes - Dawson, broken and desperate - a victim of the Unknown Purple is preparing to steal the securities entrusted to him by one of his friends interested in his company. He is going to leave with Mrs. Dawson. But Cromport has intrigued his former wife - the now Mrs. Dawson - and he learns from her what her husband plans. And so he schemes with her - she is fascinated by this apparent strange foreigner - she agrees to give Dawson the poison which Cromport gives her and also learns where the securities are that her husband plans to steal, forcing her to a agree to take them herself. She and Cromport are to steal away that night.
The fatal hour arrives and then Dawson and his wife learn who Cromport really is. Allison is on hand to catch the Unknown Purple having learned that he will be at the Dawson's that night. Mrs. Dawson has given her husband the poison and before she can steal the securities from the safe they have already been taken by the Unknown Purple - who returns them to their rightful owner.
Cromport - Peter Marchmont - takes his vengeance on the two - tells them that it was not poison he took but only a harmless sleeping powder. Then Cromport leaves - made invisible by his purple ray - laughing at Allison's effort to catch him. With Peter Marchmont go his little son and Ruth, with whom he finds happiness in a foreign land, away from the memories of a former, shattered life.
James and Jewel Dawson are left alone - broken, ruined - together, each hating the other. Peter Marchmont had meted out a greater punishment in this, than he could by separating them - in death, or otherwise.
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written: 10/27/2004