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 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, travelling around together!" "Oh no," says Bari, "Travelling 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. Hughes eventually feels comfortable enough to share her slow, detailed backstory of why she is on the train. After dozing, I discover he is abandoning his family to "find himself" by himself in South America. He proposes they get away together so she will 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. Under his cabin door, Bari slips a note suggesting Hughes needs to see him immediately. Noting the distinct handwriting, he knows who wrote it. He leads Bari on. She finds him in the train's drawing room, where he is assumed to be hiding Hughes. He says she may be looking for a woman he saw with "fuller brush eyelashes." Their clichéd 

Banter does provide Nolan with some zingers, but Bari tries to make the scene funnier than written. 

Known for his comedic chops, Edward Brophy (above with cup) adds periodic 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 a wrinkled brow when he feels his appearance or character is subtly being insulted. He is having difficulty discovering who he is assigned to follow. To add embarrassment, he receives a telegram near the end of the film stating that the agency accidentally booked him on the wrong train. 

In a shocking, unexpected scene, the passenger train hits a scale model fuel truck, igniting its fuel inside the cab, killing the engineer, and disabling the locomotive. Nolan needs a vehicle or someone to take him to Ogden. Character actor George Chandler is your man. He brags about his Ford Model-T, open-air automobile, in great mechanical detail. But Nolan just needs to get going. Bari overhears their conversation. Nolan momentarily steps away, and she, Hughes, and Heydt are now Chandler's passengers, leaving Nolan to fend for himself. By himself. The home of a kindly Eastern European lady provides the trio with shelter because Chandler's beloved car has stalled. He cannot understand how this could happen. Nolan arrives in time to tell the whole truth about Hughes, and Bari's underhanded kindness is just for headlines. Hughes convinces Heydt to return to his family, and they "forever-do-part."

The film ends on a happy note at a diner where Hughes is now a waitress. Bari broke her engagement with her duplicitous, self-serving fiancė somewhere through Nevada. Nolan wants to rekindle his romance with Bari and vows to put a ring on her finger again. Putting him at bay, she orders a sandwich with lots of onions, and he protests multiple times. Relenting, she changes the order. Garlic instead. The sandwich killed 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 laughs 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 nine or ten thousand dollars, then quickly says, "Get behind me, Satan, and tie my hands!" He embellishes the amount to another porter, Mantan Moreland, who then raises the amount. In the end, the last porter raises the amount to five hundred grand!

ABANDONED (1949)

When I began my selected movie reviews in 2015, I never imagined I would comment on eight films starring the same actor. A record. Dennis O'Keefe had an authentic acting style and a knack for delivering charm and witty quips like few others. Using a few pseudonyms, he was also an under-the-radar screenwriter. From my perspective, O'Keefe hits all the right buttons in my B-movie world.

Distributed by Universal Pictures, this seventy-nine-minute film is a police versus crime melodrama like many others. But the subject matter sets this film apart. William Daniels' cinematography raises the bar, as does Joseph Newman's rapid pace directing. As per the era, camera filters transform daylight into nighttime. The film stars Dennis O'Keefe, Gale Storm and Jeff Chandler. O'Keefe appears to extend his character from the film Cover Up, of the same year, with his oft-used charming, witty characters. I would have liked more of a balance between this and his previous T-Men role. One of my earliest posts. Storm restrains her typical bubbly light performances, while Chandler's periodic appearance as a no-nonsense police chief fits him. He also provides opening and periodic voice-over narration for a pseudo-documentary style as if ripped from actual cases. 

Storm inquires about her lost sister at the missing person's bureau at the city hall. Happening upon the scene is crack news reporter, O'Keefe, who overhears the conversation and charmingly offers his services to help her locate her sister, sensing a headline story or maybe hoping for a date. William Bowers' snappy dialogue has several characters delivering witty quips, but none more often or naturally than O'Keefe. He and Storm team up—after a fashion—and he is compelled to test some witty quips out on her. Expect an eventual "get to know each other" moment with small talk as they stake out a residence inside his sedan. Oh yeah...they like each other. 

Someone is tracking them and it sets up another set of clever dialogue. Raymond Burr is yanked from behind and the reporter lifts a revolver from Burr's coat and sarcastically states, "I know. You couldn't sleep so you just decided to take your gun out for a walk." The private eye's client has him also trying to find the sister's whereabouts. The three head for the city morgue and discover the sister is no longer missing, an assumed suicide victim. The sister's out-of-wedlock baby establishes the controversial crux of the film, a baby black market of illegal adoptions. Burr's client is society matron, Marjorie Rambeau, the despicable ring leader of a criminal crew, led by the menacing Will Kuluva. 

Under assumed names as a married couple, O'Keefe and Storm arrange the adoption of her niece with the two-faced Rambeau—suddenly all sweetness. She spends her off-hours distributing Bibles as cover for her operation. The anticipation of leaving the racket and a large payoff, Burr intercepts the transfer and Storm is given the baby and instructed to wait at the house until further notice. Burr is now up to his neck in Kuluva. Not being a very stealthy private detective, he is apprehended by the gangster and undergoes matchbook armpit torture to extract facts. A first (and last?) in film torture to my knowledge. Burr quickly becomes useless to Rambeau. With a knock at the room's door, Storm just opens it without asking who it is, assuming it is O'Keefe. Thus begins the climax, the only tense action in the film, with an implausible car crash and Universal International's gunshot sound effects. Narration closes the story with, "...This did happen in the city which may be your home."

Note: Some who discover this film more recently tend to be cynical about the production, impatiently finding it boring. Interestingly, the reviews closer to the release date are generally more favorable. Though mid-century film aspects are dated today, the acting and character development can stand the test of time. One should understand the historical era to give a fair assessment.