Overview

This exciting and intelligent melodrama with Lee Tracy in the leading role opened to thunderous acclaim at the Forty-eighth Street Theatre, New York. The title figure of THE TRAITOR is a thoughtful and earnest atomic scientist who has no regard for communism, but who sincerely believes that the only way to prevent the catastrophe of a final world war is to surrender the secret of the atomic bomb to Russia. As he reasons, the sharing of an open secret would bring an end to hysteria and arms races. His fiancee receives in his school study an old friend of hers, a Lieutenant in Naval Intelligence. He proceeds cautiously, gathering evidence. Then, in the scientist's absence, a naval crew suddenly descends upon the study to make a sweeping examination and to wire it for sound. This scene is a breathtaking moment that Broadway has never forgotten. It precipitates the crisis in which the scientist finally understands his treachery. He lends himself heroically in the gun-battle climax when a high-ranking Russian secret agent appears.