Never Too Late

Detective Dick Manning must recover a valuable pearl necklace and break up a gang of jewel thieves led by the notorious Morris Lavalle. The quick-witted investigator gets the drop on Lavalle's henchmen but encounters unexpected opposition from pretty young Helen Lloyd. She begs Manning to help her get the necklace back before an embarrassing sexual indiscretion involving her sister becomes a public scandal. He agrees to assist Helen without getting the police involved - which only makes their task more difficult and dangerous.

A Swiss-born acrobat who toured with his brothers in the Barnum & Bailey circus for many years, Richard Talmadge broke into movies during the silent era, when he occasionally doubled Douglas Fairbanks before becoming a star of modestly-budgeted action films. Fast-moving Never Too Late was the fourth of six breezy "B" melodramas he made in the mid-1930s for Reliable Pictures before entering a career as second-unit director.

Not to be confused with the prominent British film NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND, which was released in the U.S. in 1937 as NEVER TOO LATE, this minor action-adventure from low-budget Reliable Pictures Corp. starred former silent-era stunt man Richard Talmadge and vaudeville performer Thelma White. Talmadge plays a detective on the trail of a gang of jewel thieves headed by the swarthy Paul Ellis. White, meanwhile, gets caught up in the crime, but is in reality only trying to protect her sister (Mildred Harris), the indiscreet wife of the local police commissioner (Robert Frazer). The jewels change hands several times, but the bad guys are finally caught after an exciting rooftop chase.