Trem de Surpresas

... that could have benefited from the leads having more chemistry, as did the mismatched crime-solving pair of the thirties, Hildegard Withers and Oscar Piper of the Penguin Pool Murder series. Mrs. O'Malley (Marjorie Main) owns/runs a boarding house in Montana and wins a radio contest by recognizing an obscure song, one her late drunken husband apparently sang after he jumped off a roof believing he could fly - thus his status as deceased. Part of her prize is a trip to New York.

Meanwhile, John Malone (James Whitmore) is a big city lawyer that makes good money but whose dissolute lifestyle has his business on the ropes. He gambles, drinks, and womanizes with wild abandon and only with his long-unpaid secretary getting ready to walk and the lights about to be turned off does he suddenly pay attention to his financial house. He thinks he's found a solution though. Steve Keppler, a man jailed for embezzlement whose parole Malone negotiated is getting out of jail and Malone is expecting a 10K fee from him. Also note that Steve Keppler has never given up the 100K that he stole, that he has supposedly hidden the money from his other partner(s) in the heist, and that he has a greedy ex-wife. Keppler skips town without paying off Malone or anybody else, supposedly with the 100K in tow. The police know Keppler's taken a train to New York, and they're aboard as is everyone else who's looking for him. Did I fail to mention Mrs. O'Malley is on this train too, in the compartment next to Mr. Malone? What follows is a murder on board the train with Malone looking like he's been framed and Mrs. O'Malley helping Malone try to solve the mystery before the police can nail him for the crime. Ms. Main holds up her end marvelously with her famous brand of rough verbal and physical comedy, and Mr. Whitmore does well too but for one annoying habit. His character ogles and sophomorically hits on every attractive woman he sees often before the last woman he hit on is two feet away. Mr. Malone needs more Bogart in his routine with women and less Harpo Marx, who is frankly who he reminds me of during these particular scenes.

Overall, this film is more humor than it is mystery, and it is pretty fast-paced. The introductory musical score sounds like something from 50's TV, which is what B features like this were competing with in 1950 with the "attack of the small screens" already eating into studio profits. I recommend this one for an amusing 70 minutes or so of fun.

Marjorie Main and James Whitmore are a delightfully offbeat team in this often riotous farce about a radio-contest winner who travels by train from Montana to New York as part of her prize, getting involved in a murder while riding the rails and attempting to solve it with help from a rumpled lawyer. Some of Main's exasperated one-liners are a hoot, and Whitmore's quick-witted panache provides the perfect counterbalance to Marjorie's brashness. They both shine, even though the plot itself isn't much and it does run a little long. Still, the slapstick is amusing, as are Main's caustic jibes. Worth finding. **1/2 from ****

The script lags at times but it is full of fun lines. Despite its flaws there are a quite a few laugh out loud moments - mostly thanks to the cast.

It is an all star cast full of some comedic talents as well as some very lovely ingenues. James Whitmore is a fine actor but I don't think he was a master of comedy.

The real shame is Ann Dvorak isn't givem much to do. She was a fun comedienne at the height of her talent at this point.

If you enjoy silly old fashioned fun and quirky characters I think you will enjoy this. If you ignore some of the script's flaws you can enjoy this as an undiscovered jewel.

The original story that inspired this film -- "Loco Motive" -- was a collaboration between Craig Rice and Stuart Palmer, featuring her alcoholic Chicago lawyer detective, John J. Malone, and his New York old-maid schoolteacher sleuth, Hildegarde Withers; it was the first of several stories (collected as "The People vs, Withers and Malone") teaming the two, generally in ways calculated to enrage and/or frustrate Malone's Chicago nemesis, Captain von Flanagan or Hildie's long-suffering New York Homicide detective, Inspector Oscar Piper.

Presumably because of rights issues -- money, perhaps, though this could have been during the time that Palmer (due to a divorce settlement) was intentionally making as little money as possible -- The Miss Withers part was rewritten to eliminate her.

It wasn't till some time later that an attempt was made to bring Hildie to the screen on TV, embodied in the formidable person of Eve Arden.

Other than disappointing fans of Miss Withers or of the original story in and of itself, this is a decent enough film of it.

MARJORIE MAIN and JAMES WHITMORE are the title characters in this comedy/mystery from Craig Rice that moves along at a brisk pace and gives both leads a fun time solving a crime.

The audience may not have as much fun, depending on how witty you may or may not think the proceedings are because the accent is on the comedy angle and many of the one-liners aren't loaded with enough ammunition. Fans of Marjorie Main will probably be delighted with her brass characterization but Whitmore gets a little tiresome in his over-confident manner, never at a loss for a flippant remark.

For what really is an MGM B-picture, the cast isn't bad at all. We have PHYLLIS KIRK, ANN DVORAK, DOUGLAS FOWLEY, FRED CLARK and DON PORTER rounding out a good supporting cast, although Kirk has only a brief role at the beginning. All of them handle the mystery/comedy material with professional ease in a story that has Main and Whitmore discovering two dead bodies while a train is enroute from Montana to New York and trying to solve the murder while eluding the efforts of detective Clark to get to the bottom of the matter. Much of the humor depends on their struggle to get a dead body back and forth into different compartments.

It's a breezy sort of B-film that passes the time pleasantly, nothing more, and at a brief running time of one hour and nine minutes probably played the lower half of double bills in '50.

Trivia note: The scene where Marjorie Main sings with a band is painfully funny (with the pain outdoing the laughter). Not for every taste.