Man from Frisco

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Man from Frisco is a 1944 American spy and war film from Republic Pictures directed by Robert Florey. It stars Michael O'Shea as Matt Braddock, a civil engineer with new ideas for building ships during World War II, and Anne Shirley as his ally. Braddock wants to set up yards on the West Coast to produce prefabricated ships, but he is blocked by Joel Kennedy, the former shipyard superintendent. A failed message about welds causes the collapse of a new ship’s superstructure and the death of a boy, illustrating the dangers of wartime engineering. The film carries wartime propaganda and the lead character is said to be based on real shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser, with the story set in the Kaiser Shipyards. It even includes actual radio reports about negotiations with Japan before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The movie runs 91 minutes, was released on June 15, 1944, and had a budget of about $750,000.