Strange Bargain

What's neat about 1949's Strange Bargain is that on an episode of Murder, She Wrote, some of the cast returned for a sequel, during which Jessica tries to get to the bottom of the case. The film solved the case, but for the Murder, She Wrote episode, "The Days Dwindle Down," they added another twist to what we saw.

Anyway, it was a good idea because the film was used in flashbacks. The returning stars were Martha Scott, Jeffrey Lynn (who had long ago left show business and made a fortune in real estate) and Harry Morgan.

In the film Strange Bargain, Jeffrey Lynn plays Sam Wilson, an assistant bookkeeper at a company that is going under. He and his wife, Georgia (Scott) are having trouble making ends meet. With the encouragement of his wife, Sam goes in to ask for a raise and learns then that he's fired. Later on, as he's leaving, his boss, Mr. Jarvis (Richard Gaines) asks him to have a drink.

Jarvis admits that he's gone through the $500,000 his father left him (the equivalent of about 4 million today), and he is basically broke. He plans on killing himself and making it look like murder so his wife (Katherine Emery) can collect his $250,000 insurance policy; with double indemnity, that makes $500,000. He's going to set it up as a robbery. He will call Sam and give him a signal, and he wants Sam to come to his home then and remove the gun and dump it in the river. For that, he'll leave Sam $10,000 in the open safe.

Sam refuses to help him and attempts to talk Jarvis out of it, but he won't be swayed. Sam still refuses to help.

However, Jarvis calls him and gives the signal. Sam pleads with him to wait until he can get there and talk to him, but he's too late. He removes the gun and the money.

The police (Harry Morgan and Walter Sande) start an investigation and hone in on Jarvis' partner, Timothy Hearne (Henry O'Neill). Sam insists that Hearne couldn't have done it, but he's afraid that the man will be arrested.

This is a pretty good film. Lynn's career never recovered after World War II - he was a pleasant enough actor, and still made occasional TV appearances even after he left. Katherine Emery always reminds me of Mercedes McCambridge.

Watch it with the Murder She Wrote episode which you can stream.

Don't mistake brevity and low budget for lack of quality. This movie is very well scripted and conceived. Harry Morgan gives a terrific performance as the policeman and Jeffrey Lynn is appropriately perplexed as the devoted husband who suddenly finds himself holding the bag when he is tricked by his boss into an ill-fated endeavor. Martha Scott is marvelous as his well-grounded wife. Strange Bargain is well-paced and well-acted throughout.

Interestingly, this later served as a basis for a Murder She Wrote episode with Jeffrey Lynn, Martha Scott, and Harry Morgan recreating their roles. It actually makes for a fascinating "sequel."

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.

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?!

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!