Rich and Strange (1931)/The 39 Steps (1935)

  Or its alternate title:  East of Shanghai.

I have not seen the new movie Hitchcock, with Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, yet but thanks to reading about it I know that Hitch's wife was Alma Reville.  Now I've started looking for that in the credits of his movies. 

The title here comes from a quote from The Tempest and the story is from a novel by Dale Collins. 

Fred Hill (Henry Kendall) is bored with his life of drudgery and longs for adventure on the high seas.  Miraculously, a rich relative decides to give Fred and his wife Emily (Joan Berry) an early inheritance by sending them on a trip around the world.  This is basically the equivalent of a monkey's paw.  Fred is immediately laid low by seasickness, leaving Emily in the company of dashing Commander Gordon (Percy Marmont).  Finally feeling better by the time they hit Egypt, Fred rejoins his wife...for about a minute.  Long enough to get hit in the eye by a Frisbee on deck.  But it's a Frisbee thrown by a princess (Betty Amann), so there's that. 

This rivals some of the National Lampoon vacations for sheer travel hell. 

  This is one of his more famous films.  It's been remade several times, in fact, on the basis that you can never have too much of a good thing.

Canadian Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) is at a music hall in London when he meets a mysterious and beautiful woman (Lucie Mannheim) who tells him that she is a secret agent.  There are men who have stolen state secrets, preparing to move them out of the country.  She has a contact in Scotland who is to help her, but she is killed the same night.  Hannay decides to carry out her mission for her, not incidentally because he is being blamed for her murder.  Chased across the moors as a wanted man, Hannay runs across lovely but unsympathetic Pamela (Madeline Carroll), who doesn't believe a word of his claims that a foreign agent missing the last digit of his pinky (Godfrey Teale) will stop at nothing to see those secrets out of England.

It runs a bit long, especially when compared to modern spy films, but is still an excellent thriller.