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Nancy Steele Is Missing!

1937 film by George Marshall

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ20649852 ↗
Source-derived summary

Nancy Steele Is Missing! is a 1937 American drama film directed by George Marshall and Otto Preminger and starring Victor McLaglen, Walter Connolly and Peter Lorre. It was produced and distributed by Twentieth Century Fox. The film's sets were designed by the British art director Hans Peters. It has been described as a precursor to film noir.

Plot

Danny O'Neill works for munitions manufacturer Michael Steele in the days leading up to World War I. O'Neill kidnaps Steele's infant daughter, hoping the drastic act will keep the country out of war. He leaves the baby with his sister and brother-in-law who believe the baby is his daughter. Soon after, O'Neill is arrested for a series of crimes and is sentenced to 20 years in prison. Once released, he returns to find the girl, now named Sheila, who believes O'Neill to be her father. O'Neill runs into Steele, who offers him a job on his estate.

Editorial summary

“Nancy Steele Is Missing!” enters the record as 1937 film by George Marshall. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nancy, Steele and Missing can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1937—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1937. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Nancy, Steele and Missing.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Nancy Steele Is Missing!” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Nancy, Steele and Missing provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20649852. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1937.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Nancy Steele Is Missing!”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Nancy Steele Is Missing! primary sources, Nancy Steele Is Missing! archive and Nancy research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Nancy Steele Is Missing!”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Nancy Steele Is Missing!” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.