Overlooked (or Forgotten) Film Tuesday: LADY ON A TRAIN starring Deanna Durbin and David Bruce

This is my Tuesday entry in the weekly meme hosted by Todd Mason at his blog, SWEET FREEDOM. Don't forget to check in and see what other overlooked (or forgotten) films and/or audio visuals other bloggers are talking about today. Todd has all the pertinent links (and even some impertinent ones).

For those of you who may not know, I LOVE train movies. Probably because I've never actually traveled by train except for the NYC subway and once on a short trip from London to Oxford. Those hardly count. So, therefore, I've romanticized the whole thing from all the various trips I've taken by proxy at the movies.

I am definitely not Deanna Durbin's biggest fan, but LADY ON A TRAIN is a lot of fun. Totally improbable - parts of it make little sense - but still worth a look if you happen to be in the mood for a good comedy/mystery with a terrific cast. Not bad for a holiday movie either. I'll have to remember to queue it up in December. (I did and I do.)


The plot:

Young and impressionable Nikki Collins (Deanna Durbin) has traveled cross country from San Francisco to New York to spend the Christmas holidays with her aunt (whom we never see in the movie). As the train slows down on its approach to Grand Central, Nikki is comfortably reading a murder mystery. She looks up and is able to see from her compartment into the windows of a passing office building. She spots a murder taking place - an old man bludgeoned with a crow-bar by an anonymous figure. By the way, an incident similar to the one in Agatha Christie's 'What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw'.

Only this time out, it's not a woman being strangled, but an old man beaten to death.

Of course, once the train arrives at the station, Nikki goes straight to the police, but she tells such a confusing story that the cop at the desk (played with his usual irascibility by William Frawley) eventually tells her to get lost. (He's busy trimming a little Christmas tree.) And really, you can hardly blame him. Nikki is not the most coherent story-teller. Though you'd think the cop would be taken by Nikki's utter cuteness and fetching outfit.

Oh, meant to mention that the always wonderful Edward Everett Horton shows up as the utterly hapless Mr. Haskell (from the New York office - Niki's father is an important business mogul) sent to keep an eye on Nikki. Needless to say, she runs rings around Haskell and totally ignores his precautionary squeaks and protestations. In effect he is basically a chihuahua nipping and barking at a plucky pit bull of the female persuasion. I hate to compare Nikki to a pit bull but...yeah, she kind of is. A pit bull with lipstick. Hmmm, where have I heard that before?

But a pit bull who can sing a tune at the drop of a hat and does so in the movie - three times. The fact that this is a murder mystery doesn't mean no singing. She even gets to croon two stanzas of Silent Night, Holy Night over the phone to her daddy who calls her on a snowy Christmas Eve.

There are plenty of close-ups (Durbin later married the film's director, Charles David), and many MANY wardrobe changes - sometimes from scene to scene with no explanation of how it was accomplished. Not to mention, a variety of hairstyles all done, apparently, at the flip of a comb. I mean, my head was spinning.

Okay, so what is a heroine with tons of gumption to do when the cops prove useless and she is the only one who knows that a man has been murdered?

Nikki Collins and mystery writer Wayne Morgan meet cute. You must help me solve the murder even if you're only a writer and we've never met before.

Why, what else? She phones Wayne Morgan (David Bruce), the author of the mystery novel she'd been reading on the train and insists on seeing him. She assumes that a mystery author MUST know something about murder and who better to help her? The fact that she doesn't know Morgan and is calling him out of the blue on Christmas Eve doesn't daunt her in the least. In fact, she is taken aback when Morgan at first refuses to see or help her. No one says 'no' to Nikki Collins.

David Bruce plays Wayne Morgan and is totally wonderful, I've always liked him. I wish he'd had a bigger career. He has such a humorous screen presence in this film - he actually appears to be enjoying himself, even when he's getting beaten up by thugs. 

Do those braids come with the hat? Dorian is right, this is Nikki's Pippi Longstocking moment.

Wayne 's fiancee Joyce, the stiff-necked Patricia Morison is totally wrong for him - in fact, she reminds me of Cary Grant's fiancee in BRINGING UP BABY. So wrong for him. Oh, so wrong. There a point in the movie when Wayne is relieved that Joyce has broken up with him yet again - he's free! He's no dope. The look on his face is priceless.

Well, long story short, after making a nuisance and spectacle of herself in a crowded movie theater trying to get Wayne Morgan's attention - he has gone there with his fiancee to watch a film in peace - silly man. Nikki spots the murder victim's face in a newsreel. He is Josiah Waring, a moneyed business tycoon who has, apparently, died in an accidental fall from a ladder while trimming a Christmas tree at his home in Long Island. But Nikki knows better.

Ralph Bellamy apparently bewildered by Nikki's hat. She doesn't look too happy about it either.

Off she goes to the Long Island mansion of the reclusive dead man. Wearing a hideous coat made of two-toned cow skin, (and after outmaneuvering two LARGE dogs on the grounds of the estate), she waltzes into the house mistaken for the old man's mistress, nightclub chanteuse, Margo Martin.

Conveniently the family is gathered for the reading of the will and Nikki gets to meet the two creepy Waring nephews, Jonathan (Ralph Bellamy) and Arnold (Dan Duryea playing against type which is nice for a change).

Jonathan is under the thumb of snippy (and equally creepy as we later find out) Aunt Charlotte. She is played by the redoubtable Elizabeth Patterson who, I think, got to play every one's aunt in every movie ever made. (Yeah, I'm exaggerating. But she was almost as ubiquitous as Charles Lane who I looked for in this movie but this was one he apparently skipped.) I do like Dan Duryea, he can't help being stylishly sniveling and sleazy no matter what part he's playing. As Arnold he appears to be the black sheep of the Waring family. Certainly he gets the best comic lines.

At the mansion, Nikki also meets up with two strange Waring employees lurking about in the shadows, one holding a cat. The two are the always ominous George Coulouris (he's the cat man) and the always reliably thuggish Allen Jenkins. What they are doing in the mansion (besides lurking) is not explained.

Nikki conveniently finds the bloody slippers the old man was wearing when he was killed. Apparently it didn't occur to the killer to throw them away at the actual murder scene or toss them out of the moving car while transporting the body to Long Island to set up the false crime scene.

I'm not so sure that bloody slippers = proof of murder, but Nikki makes off with them anyway. Yuck!

From then on, everyone is after the slippers. This makes as little sense as just about anything else in this movie, but why quibble.

Well, it turns out that Waring has left all his millions to his mistress Margo who, one suspects, does not have long to live. Anyway, back we go to the city (the fact that it's a snowy night and the drive from L.I. to the city would naturally take hours doesn't faze anyone, least of all, Nikki).

She goes back to her hotel, changes her clothes yet again and off she goes to the Circus Nightclub (it's still Christmas Eve) where Margo Martin works. For whatever reason the singer/paramour never showed at the mansion though she knew she was the main heir - she wasn't bonking the old man for nothing.

At the club, still impersonating Margo, Nikki gets to sing (changing clothes again) and beguile everyone. The orchestra doesn't seem to think it strange that Margo has apparently disappeared and neither does anyone else. Very odd. Actually, Margo is locked in a closet - put there by Nikki.

More murders ensue, more running around and mis-direction, Wayne Morgan (David Bruce) shows up outside Nikki's hotel room in his pajamas (wearing an overcoat which is stolen when he's knocked on the head by Allen Jenkins) and is found lying on the floor in front of Nikki's door - okay, I laughed. David Bruce is so perfect for this sort of thing.

Later they both get arrested for murder and when Nikki is sprung from jail by Mr. Haskell, she's off and running to catch a murderer leaving Wayne behind bars.

Nikki in yet another outfit complete with hideous chapeau. Dan Duryea driving, obviously wondering why women wear the things they do.

Near the end, Nikki plays right into the mad killer's plans and is trapped in the same room where the old man originally died while the killer explains his modus operendi. (As all good killers should.)

But not to worry, suffice to say, that in the last shot we spy Wayne and Nikki in a train compartment on their way west, having apparently just gotten married. Fast work, Miss Collins...uh, Mrs. Morgan.

 A Deanna Durbin doll that looks nothing like her. Actually, it's kind of creepy.

Apologies yet again for the wonky spacing and google blogger's refusal to allow me to place the photos exactly where I want them and also refusing to allow me to center comments when necessary except when it feels like it. I've been working on this thing all morning trying to get it to look presentable and this is the best I can do. GAK!