Strange Bargain

An interesting note about this movie: The TV Series "Murder, She Wrote" produced a "sequel" to it in a 1987 episode, "The Days Dwindle Down," (episode # 3.21). Several actors, including Harry Morgan, reprise their roles. Jessica Fletcher re-solves the original crime by interviewing several of the original characters some 30 years after the fact (actually closer to 40 years!). The episode makes nice use of scenes from the original movie as flashbacks to explain the plot. Imagine the surprise of watching a typical MSW episode about an old murder, and then a 34-year-old Harry Morgan suddenly pops up in B&W interviewing the same (though younger) witnesses about the same murder!

A sedate thriller built upon the insecurities of the newly emergent white-collar class, Strange Bargain offers solid production values and brisk direction. Jeffrey Lynn (who looks like a solution of Ray Milland and Bruce Bennett) is a hard-working family man who earns his keep as an accountant. One morning when the milk bill comes due he screws up his courage to ask for a raise; when he does, his boss tells him that the firm's at the brink of bankruptcy, and lets him go. But wait -- there's more! The boss plans to kill himself but make it look like murder so his wife can collect the insurance; for helping, he offers Lynn $10-grand. Lynn tries to prevent the suicide but arrives too late, finding his boss already dead. Enter a police detective (Harry Morgan) whose instincts tell him all is not as it seems (not only to him, but to us as well). Morgan aside, you're not likely to recognize any of the cast, but the story works itself out neatly and holds your interest. Too polite and middle-class to be true noir, Strange Bargain nontheless delivers what it promises.

Assistant bookkeeper Sam Wilson (Jeffrey Lynn) can't make ends meet for himself, his wife, and two children, so he goes to his boss Mr. Jarvis asking for a raise. Instead of a raise he finds out from Jarvis that he is going to be let go shortly because the firm cannot afford him. It is then that Jarvis tells Wilson that he is broke and that, rather than see his wife and son destitute, he intends to kill himself so that they can collect the insurance money - 250K. But he needs Sam's help to cover up the suicide so that it looks like a murder/robbery so that the insurance will pay off. In return he will give Sam ten thousand dollars. Sam refuses.

The following night Jarvis calls Sam anyways and tells him the password for the suicide he plans to commit. Sam races over to his house to try and stop him, but he is too late. Jarvis is dead on the floor. So, realizing it is too late to stop the suicide, seeing the 10K on the desk, and reading Jarvis' written plea to Sam to help him cover the suicide, he decides that not helping him now will do no good, and so he does make it look like a robbery, takes the 10K, and throws the gun into the bay. What Sam doesn't realize is that everything he has just done not only makes it look like a murder, it makes it look like a murder he could have committed.

Besides the rather clever plot and red herrings thrown all over the place for such a short B feature with no A list stars, this is really a museum piece of post war middle class life and even business values of the time. The USA is headed into HUAC/Red Scare land at this point, so time is taken to show the Wilson family praying before eating, there is talk of going to church like it would ordinarily be a weekly event, and note that even people who had desk jobs worked half a day on Saturday at this point in time. As for business values, Mr. Jarvis knows his employees and they know him. Even down to Sam the assistant bookkeeper for twelve years - Jarvis couldn't have found him THAT valuable to keep him in a lower level position all of that time.

Harry Morgan plays Lt. Webb, a police detective whose only job at this point is to find Jarvis' murderer. He even comes to Jarvis' company and fingerprints all of the employees! I can't believe if someone like workaday cog in the machine Sam had been murdered there would have been much more than a police report. Since Morgan has been playing lots of bad guys and moral cowards up to this point in time, quite a bit of unlikability bleeds into his performance to where I want somebody to drag him away by that cane of his.

Finally I have to give Jeffrey Lynn his due. He carries off being the central character in this film very well, often just telegraphing his feelings by posture and facial expression, particularly when he comes across Jarvis' suicide scene. This is time well spent at just over an hour.

Because it's only 68 minutes and has no Big stars or director, it's a B film, but it's better than many an A film that it shared billing with. The story, though lacking suspense, is engrossing, and Lynn, Scott, and Morgan are superb. The best part of the movie for me was seeing suburban family life in 1949. Lynn and Scott are happily married and have 2 happy children. Scott volunteers at church and Lynn says grace before meals. But their happy home is threatened because Lynn's salary is insufficient to support a wife and 2 school-age children. Scott tells Lynn to ask for a raise, after all, he's been with the company for 12 years (he didn't serve 4 years in WW2?) The option of Scott getting a job occurs to neither of them, but then, this was years before the feminist revolution.

The script is excellent. Dialogue supports characterization so that we 'know' all of these people. I liked Lynn. He's a decent man, one who on the spur of the moment makes the wrong choice. His mistake in judgment ensnares him in a tightening web of trouble. I liked Scott, who exemplifies the perfect mate. I liked Morgan, who always gets his man, but who makes sure that he gets the right one. The ending is a surprise, though once revealed, seems obvious. I liked the director's touch at the finish of having Morgan's cane disarm the murderer just in the nick of time. In fact, I liked everything about this little B film.

Picture Ward Cleaver or the Robert Young character in "Father Knows best" in deep trouble. That's what we're shown here, with always handsome Jeffrey Lynn as the suburban dad.

The title bargain is his boss's asking him to help him make a suicide look like murder so that he (the boss) can leave insurance money for his family.

Hey! This doesn't figure in the softball and charity meetings of this town! Nor does Lynn's having, before this, been laid off by the boss.

Katherine Emory is excellent as the not so very grieving widow. Harry Morgan is just fine as a police detective who walks leaning on a cane. And Martha Scott is superb as Mrs. Jeffrey Lynn: She's most famous for her touching portrayal of Emily in "Our Town." but she had fa greater depth, as shown most notably in her magnificent performance in "So Well Remembered" a couple years before this little charmer came out.

Ah, for the days when local television showed low budget movies like this to fill up time. Now we have to wait fore them to appear out of nowhere on Turnwer Classics or be programmed at places like the Film Forum here in New Yiork. After all: What self-respecting person what want to waste a plasma TV on a black and white movie?!