The American Black Chamber

Rendezvous is a 1935 spy film set in World War I, starring William Powell as an American cryptologist who tangles with German spies. The film was based on The American Black Chamber, the controversial memoirs of Herbert Yardley, founder and head of MI8. In 1917, former newspaperman William Gordon ... enlists in the U.S. Army. The day before he is to leave Washington, D.C. for the fighting in Europe, he meets socialite Joel Carter . The couple spend the day together. He tells her that, because he once wrote a book on cryptography under a pen name, the army is searching for him to put him to work behind a desk, but he is eager to fight the Germans. The next day, just before he boards his train, Lieutenant Gordon is ordered to report to John Carter , the Assistant Secretary of War. He reassigns the unhappy Gordon to Major William Brennan to spend the war decoding German transmissions. He learns that Joel had revealed his secret to her uncle, John Carter, in order to keep him around. The U.S. is preparing to send its army across the Atlantic Ocean, but there are grave worries about the U-boat threat.
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