El expreso del oeste

"Sleepers West" is a very enjoyable Michael Shayne mystery from 1941. Lloyd Nolan is Shayne, of course, and Mary Beth Hughes is the surprise witness he's trying to get to court before anyone can get at her.

He doesn't have a tremendous amount of luck there, as he runs into his ex-fiancé, reporter Kay Bentley, at the train station, and she's going to be on the same train. And Helen Carlson, the witness, isn't very cooperative. After being brought on board on a stretcher in a black wig, she rips off the wig and wants a drink.

Neat and fast-moving story with Shayne working to clear a criminal who, for once, is innocent, while other people have their own agenda for wanting him found guilty.

Nice, energetic film with the likable Nolan and wisecracking Lynn Bari.

In terms of suspense and action, this is one of the weaker entries in the Shayne series. Most of the storyline is confined to a train ride carrying a secret witness to a west coast trial, who Shayne is supposed to protect from those who don't want her to appear. Unfortunately, not much use is made of the confined conditions to build suspense. Then too, we know early on the identity of the witness and who's on board to silence her, so there's not much mystery, either.

Fortunately, there is a sparkling cast, led by the breezy Nolan, along with a brassy Hughes and a bumptious Bari. In fact, Bari and Hughes are natural personality rivals, setting off some delicious undercurrents. Then there's an unheralded threesome of black porters, who contribute humorously to the overall lightweight mood. Look also for Louis Jean Heydt, a familiar face from that era, who does well with a larger than usual role. All in all, it's an entertaining 70-minutes, but not up to the series' trademark mix of suspense plus humor.

This mystery is fun. It is loaded with lots of suspects. Also, some slimy characters. A bright spot is having been Ben Carter and Mantan Moreland which livens up the movie. They should have had more screen time to-gether. It is nice to see Mary Beth Hughes. She was very attractive and had natural talent.

"Sleepers West," originally titled "Sleepers East," is one of the most enjoyable of the seven Michael Shayne detective mysteries from Sol Wurtzel's B-picture unit at Fox. This entry, however, is not based on any of the scores of Shayne pulps written by Brett Halliday, but on a novel by Frederick Nebel, notable as the first star writer of the legendary BLACK MASK magazine in the 1920's. Although Nebel licensed his most famous character, Torchy Blaine, to the movies in the 1930's, he held Hollywood in contempt and avoided adapting any of his material to the screen.

The film's premise has Shayne covertly escorting a secret surprise witness to a high-profile San Francisco trial aboard a cross-country passenger train. While trying to keep her location and identity a secret, he also has to contend with sinister on-board forces that are trying to silence her. The setting of a sleeping car has traditionally been an intriguing background for thrillers from Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes" to Sidney Lumet's "Murder on the Orient Express," and the restrictions of narrow dining cars and narrower sleeping berths, the incessantly repetitive sound of the train's mechanics, and the readily available supply of red herrings add an air of claustrophobic excitement to the proceedings.

If the film's plot of a secret witness threatened by sinister forces sounds familiar, it is because that entire premise was later borrowed without attribution for the highly-acclaimed 1952 Noir thriller, "The Narrow Margin" directed by Richard Fleischer. It was remade in 1990 with Gene Hackman under the same title and credited the '52 film as the source. Despite the fact that "Sleepers West" is largely ignored and forgotten, as is the entire Shayne series, one must wonder why it receives so little attention.

A possible explanation lies with Fox's conception of the Shayne persona. The original Halliday stories were largely ignored by the studio's screenwriters, and the tough, no-nonsense character of Shayne himself was reshaped for the wise-cracking, breezy style of actor Lloyd Nolan, who bears little resemblance to Halliday's hard-boiled gumshoe.

No matter. "Sleepers West" and the other series entries are great escapist fun, filled with sharply witty dialogue and some of Hollywood's most idiosyncratic character actors at their peak, including Mary Beth Hughes, George Chandler, Eddie Brophy, and, in possibly the best role of his lengthy career, Louis Jean Heydt. "Sleepers West" also gives significant screen time to some of best black comedians of Hollywood's Golden Age as Pullman porters. Those of you who remember and appreciate the unsung talents of Mantan Moreland, Ben Carter (Moreland's old nightclub partner), Fred "Snowflake" Toones, and Sam "Deacon" McDaniel are in for an enjoyable 74 minutes.

'Sleepers West' has a complicated pedigree. In the early '30s, pulp-magazine novelist Frederick Nebel wrote a detective story called 'Sleepers EAST'. The Fox studio bought the rights and filmed this in 1934, but the film 'Sleepers East' is spoilt by some boring romantic elements that dilute the mystery plot. In 1941, Fox remade the story ... changing the plot to make this film an appropriate entry in their 'Mike Shayne' series. They also retitled it 'Sleepers WEST'. The directional change is appropriate to a private-eye story, as westward is the most noir-ish direction: the progression towards sunset ... and death. (Compare this with Rodgers and Hart's 'All Points West', in which the main character dies at the end ... or Lucille Fletcher's radio script and Twilight Zone episode 'The Hitch-Hiker', in which Death and his victim are both heading west on the highway.)

'Sleepers West' is a nice taut little B-picture, a splendid example of those second-feature low-budgeters that Hollywood did so well in the great studio era. Even the film's title pleasingly evokes the 1940s, when sleeping-cars ('sleepers') on American railway trains were commonplace. (On a British railway, 'sleepers' are the wooden ties that hold up the rails.) Movies that take place aboard moving railway trains are always enjoyable: the characters are hurtling along at top speed even if the plot goes off the rails.

Lloyd Nolan had a mug that usually cast him as criminals, but here he's perfect as Mike Shayne, the hard-bitten yet incorruptible private eye. Shayne is escorting Helen Carlson from Denver to San Francisco, where she's to testify in court. Helen's testimony will free a man who's been falsely convicted of murder ... but her testimony will also expose a powerful corrupt politician. So, of course the train to Frisco is chock-full of passengers who want to kill Helen. As if Shayne hasn't enough troubles, there's also one of those stereotypical 1940s 'girl reporter' types (well-played by the vivacious Lynn Bari), who keeps getting in Shayne's way at inconvenient moments.

There are lots of those great supporting roles that nostalgic movie-goers expect in 1940s films like this: I especially enjoyed the great Edward Brophy and the underrated (but prolific) character actor Harry Hayden. Unfortunately, another typical trait of 1940s Hollywood movies makes an unwelcome appearance here: the gratuitous Negro stereotype. In the days of Pullman sleeping-cars, there was a well-organised union of Pullman porters: all of them African-American men. It makes perfect sense that a black actor is cast as the porter in 'Sleepers West'. Regrettably, the role is played by Ben Carter: a plump, simpering, pop-eyed, high-pitched, effeminate black man whom I always find painful to watch on screen. Ben Carter's character portrayals were consistently much more annoying (and possibly more racist) than those of the notorious Stepin Fetchit ... though never quite so annoying as those of Edgar Connor, possibly the most offensive Negro actor in the (no pun intended) dark days of Hollywood stereotypes. Couldn't the railway porter in this movie have been depicted as an ordinary human being: a black man just trying to make an honest living, like pretty much everyone else?

Despite that one cavil, I eagerly rate 'Sleepers West' 9 points out of 10. They don't make 'em like this any more!