SLEEPERS WEST (1941)

Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox, this seventy-four-minute mystery sets a brisk pace with an energetic, Irish-tinted opening theme by Cyril Mockridge. It is adapted from the novel, Sleepers East (1933), and the 1934 film, about a ten-hour train trip from the Midwest to New York, not to be confused with Sleepers, Awake a Lutheran hymn by Philipp Nicolai, made famous by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1731. But I digress. The screenplay is full of dialogue: suspenseful, sometimes tedious, and amusing. Although the climax speeds things up, there is only an attempt at action for this entry.

Lloyd Nolan plays Michael Shayne, the fictional private detective created in the late 1930s by Brett Halliday. He rolls along as a cool, confident detective with a witty delivery in his occasional New England accent. Nolan is certainly likeable in the role. A character who would prefer to calm things down before things get violent. This is the second of seven Shayne mysteries for Nolan and overall, perhaps the most enjoyable.

Before boarding The Comanche from Denver to San Francisco, Nolan bumps into his ex-fiancė, Denver newspaper reporter, Lynn Bari. Their repartee and zingers are fun. Discovering that she will be on the same train, he gets excited, "It'll be like old times, traveling around together!" "Oh no," says Bari, " Traveling with you, I always wound up alone." The fun ends when both recall who left who at the altar. His assignment is to protect a surprise trial witness, Mary Beth Hughes, who sneaks aboard as a medical patient and serves as his cue to reestablish contact.

Hughes' testimony will free an innocent man accused of murder and throttle the chances of an unethical politician's advancement. The screenplay initiates an inconsequential subplot between her and Jean Louis Heydt. He is abandoning his family. Nice guy. Hughes eventually feels comfortable enough to share her slow, detailed backstory of why she is on the train. Once awake, I discover he proposes they get away to South America with his ten grand. She will be safe and not need to testify.

Bari's unethical fiancė, a lawyer and associate of the crooked politician, suggests she might have a big scoop if she locates the witness by using Nolan. She snoops around to find him in the train's drawing room, where he is lying low. He says she may be looking for a woman he saw with "fuller brush eyelashes." Their banter is clichéd and stretches out way too long, both trying to make the screenplay funny.

Known for his comedic chops, Edward Brophy adds comic relief as a railroad detective, dashing at the last moment to get on board. Self-conscious, he does his classic puzzled double-takes with wrinkled brow when he feels his appearance or character is subtly being insulted. To add embarrassment, he receives a telegram near the end of the film stating that the railroad accidentally sent him in pursuit of the wrong person.

Bari broke off her engagement to her duplicitous, self-serving fiancė somewhere through Nevada. The film ends on a happy note at a diner where Hughes is now a waitress. Nolan wants to rekindle his romance with Bari and vows to put a ring on her finger again. Putting him at bay, she ordered a sandwich with lots of onions and he protests multiple times. Relenting, she changes the order from onions to garlic. The sandwich clinched their future. She never reprised her role in the series. Hughes, on the other hand, returned, each time as a different character.

Note: Ben Carter provides some humor as a porter welcoming Heydt aboard the train. Carter mathematically explains how long it will take to arrive at the next town, with eyes looking upward in thought and a confusing mixture of addition and subtraction. Heydt had transferred his cash to his suitcase. Carter later enters his cabin to straighten things, but he accidentally drops the suitcase to reveal the contents. He is dazzled by the amount of cash, then quickly says, "Get behind me, Satan, and tie my hands!"