LADY ON A TRAIN: The Singing Detective

My interest in the Christmas-season 1945 comedy-thriller Lady on a Train (LoaT, not to be confused with SoaT, the abbreviation of Strangers on a Train) and its beloved star, singer/actress Deanna Durbin, began with our friend and fellow classic movie blogger Michael Troutman of I Shoot the Pictures. In December 2011, Michael had innocently let it slip that that he wasn’t acquainted with the winsome Miss Durbin’s movies. Three of our awesome fellow bloggers felt strongly that it was time for Michael to become acquainted with Durbin’s work: whistlinggypsy of Distant Voices and Flickering Shadows; Page of My Love of Old Hollywood; and Jessica of Comet Over Hollywood. Together they, shall we say, encouraged Michael, and the result was a delightful six-part series of blog posts titled My Deanna Durbin Punishment (see links at the end of this post).

I’ve always loved comedy-thrillers ranging from Bob Hope in The Ghost Breakers and My Favorite Brunette, to Charade, to Foul Play and so many more, so when I read Michael’s blog post about LoaT, I couldn’t resist tracking it down, and I’m glad I did, because it was great fun!  So I thank Michael—and by extension, whistlinggypsy, Page, and Jessica—for helping me discover another comedy-thriller to add to my collection. I’m delighted to say it was well worth seeing—again and again, at that!

As heroine Nikki Collins, Deanna Durbin
has great pipes and great gams!

LoaT’s script was based on a story by Leslie Charteris of The Saint fame, with a screenplay by Edmund Beloin (My Favorite Brunette; My Favorite Spy; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court; The Great Lover; Donovan’s Reef) and Robert O’Brien (By the Light of the Silvery Moon; Fancy Pants; The Lemon Drop Kid; and many TV series, including The Red Skelton Hour; Here’s Lucy; and The Lucy Show). That’s a fairly long way from the classic 1936 short “Every Sunday” that put both Durbin and Judy Garland on the map (more about that here, at the TCM Web site)!  By 1945, the young girl with the amazingly mature, operatic coloratura singing voice had blossomed into a lovely young woman. To this reader, Durbin proved to have legs in every sense of the term, showcasing her gorgeous gams and her flair for fast-talking comedy in the opening scene on the titular train, where we meet Durbin’s character, San Francisco debutante Nikki Collins. While Nikki waits for her cross-country train to stop at New York City’s Grand Central Station (yay, another comedy-suspense movie set in my hometown!), she’s devouring another page of the juicy mystery novel she’s been reading, The Case of the Headless Bride by best-selling mystery author Wayne Morgan. And what a page-turner it is, as Nikki reads aloud:

"'I killed him. I had to kill him. I thought I’d be safe.’ Over and over, the words droned through her mind. And yet, with a cold, horrible certainty, she knew that death was outside….”

Is there any shadow of a doubt that Nikki saw
a rear window murder? (Note the telltale slippers!)

Yeah, outside the elevated window of another passing train, where Nikki sees two men: an older, white-haired gent, and an apparently younger man in a hat. The men argue, and then Hat Man pulls down the window shade, and *WHAM*, here comes death by crowbar!  Naturally, nobody believes Nikki, especially when she’s toting The Case of the Headless Bride to read while she’s waiting for someone to take her seriously. Nikki’s credibility is apparently often in question since she tends to jump to conclusions, like the time she was sure a buck-toothed gent at the Golden Gate Bridge was in fact a Japanese spy. It’s up to our spunky, adorably sly (if somewhat naïve) heroine to take the initiative, solve the case, and redeem herself!

Wayne Morgan demonstrates the stark realistic
storytelling that keeps thriller readers eager for more!

Nikki is visiting her Aunt Martha in The Big Apple for her Christmas vacation. Her busy but loving dad in San Francisco has provided her with an Assistant in Charge of Keeping Nikki Out of Trouble: the jittery Mr. Haskell from the New York office. Haskell is played by one of Team Bartilucci’s favorite character actors, the ever-delightful and effortlessly funny Edward Everett Horton, whose long career ranged from films such as The Gay Divorcee; Here Comes Mr. Jordan; Arsenic and Old Lace; and even the Fractured Fairy Tales narrator on TV’s animated Rocky and His Friends. Poor Mr. Haskell is always being charmingly and hilariously bamboozled by Nikki, and/or being knocked out by no-goodniks; I hope they pay him well!  Even when poor Haskell gets a little down time, Nikki’s still on the case, dashing around New York and environs, getting mixed up in hairstyles and Howard Greer fashions ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous (one of her hairstyles is a double-bun Princess Leia would have been proud to wear).

Mr. Haskell may feel fresh as a daisy
after being clobbered by bad guys,
but he looks like a black-eyed susan to us!

Amateur detective Nikki attempts to contact mystery author Wayne Morgan for help, and she gets a break when she tracks down the increasingly bewitched, bothered, bewildered  and eventually happily besotted Wayne (David Bruce from A Dispatch from Reuters; The Sea Hawk; Sergeant York; a bit part in The Letter; and the dark holiday noir Christmas Holiday with Durbin). She catches him in a movie theater where she tries to talk about the murder with Wayne, much to the annoyance of the moviegoers—especially Wayne’s fiancée, self-centered fashion model Joyce Williams (Patricia Morison from The Fallen Sparrow; the 1946 Sherlock Holmes mystery Dressed to Kill; Without Love; and ironically, two films you’d think might be musicals but weren’t: Song of the Thin Man and the Oscar-winning The Song of Bernadette), who’s trying to enjoy a newsreel of herself modeling the latest fashions. Nikki’s persistence pays off when she sees a newsreel about the dead man! The deceased is ship magnate Josiah Waring (Thurston Hall of The Great Lie; Theodora Goes Wild; and the role he’s best known for here at Team Bartilucci H.Q.: blustery credit-stealing boss Mr. Pierce in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty). And wouldn’t you know the newsreel mentions the whereabouts of The Willows, where the Waring estate is? (Nowadays, the joint would probably be crawling with armed guards and other kinds of security!)

Did you know Nikki is a master of disguise?
Here she is as an unusually
pensive Pippi Longstocking!

When Nikki trespasses and finagles her way into The Willows, she arrives just in time for the reading of Josiah Waring’s will. We find that Waring was not only a ship magnate, but also a chick magnet when our amateur sleuth Nikki is mistaken for nightclub entertainer Margo Martin, Waring’s beloved mistress. (I was rather touched when we finally met the real Margo Martin, played by Maria Palmer from By the Light of the Silvery Moon. In her scenes, she truly seems to be heartbroken over Waring’s death.)  Samuel S. Hinds, who played Edward G. Robinson’s retired pal in Scarlet Street, appears briefly as the Waring family’s lawyer in the gathering at The Willows. Before Nikki knows it, she’s embroiled in all manner of suspense and zaniness, with incriminating bedroom slippers and two Waring heirs making eyes at her: Arnold (Dan Duryea of Ball of Fire, The Woman in the Window, and Scarlet Street, in a more likable mold), and his brother Jonathan (versatile Ralph Bellamy, best known for never getting the girl but always charming about it in comedies like The Awful Truth and His Girl Friday, as well as thrillers like Rosemary’s Baby, not to mention Team B. fave Trading Places).  As you can see, LoaT is brimming with great character actors, including Elizabeth Patterson (best known by TV fans as babysitter Mrs. Trumbull on TV’s I Love Lucy, but also a memorable character actress in Intruder in the Dust; Hail the Conquering Hero; Miss Tatlock’s Millions; I Married a Witch; Remember the Night, and more) and George Coulouris (Arabesque; Murder on the Orient Express; Citizen Kane, appropriate considering the Citizen Kane shoutouts in LoaT).

Clever Nikki sneaks onto the
Waring estate disguised as a weather vane!

And of course, with Deanna Durbin as the star, you know music will fill the air!  The songs really do fit smoothly into the plot. My favorites among her numbers here include her soulful performance of “Silent Night” sung to her dad—while Waring chauffeur/henchman Danny (Allen Jenkins from Ball of Fire; The Falcon Takes Over; Pillow Talk; TV’s animated Top Cat) waits to strangle her, only to find himself all teary-eyed as Nikki sings. Music soothes the savage beast—at least until Danny knocks out Wayne and Mr. Haskell well after Nikki is safe! Then there’s our heroine’s hot, playfully sexy rendition of “Gimme a Little Kiss, Will Ya, Huh?,” sung to Wayne at The Circus Club, a theme nightclub that’s bigger than a Hollywood soundstage (with equally big doormen, including Lock Martin, Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still). I got a kick out of that dreamy look in Wayne’s eyes! I must confess, however, that I thought Durbin’s torchy rendition of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” could have been more torchy and less operatic; somehow I felt like she needed to cut loose a bit more with her rendition. Speaking of music, as a Miklos Rosza fan, I really enjoyed LoaT’s musical score; its blend of suspenseful notes and comical touches was perfect for the film. And I love that final scene; wonder if it’s where Alfred Hitchcock got the idea in North by Northwest?

Born Edna Mae Durbin on December 4^th, 1921 in Canada (where my dear hubby and Team Bartilucci computer whiz Vinnie was born), in the 1930s and ’40s, wunderkind coloratura Durbin became to Universal what Judy Garland eventually became to MGM: a wholesome, wildly popular singing movie star. Durbin also proved to be a compelling actress in a Screen Guild Players radio version of Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt on CBS.

According to Margarita Landazuri’s TCM article, producer Felix Jackson married Durbin soon after making LoaT, but they divorced in 1948. Durbin retired from movies in 1950 and moved to France with her husband and LoaT director Charles David, who’d also been the production manager on La Chienne, remade in the U.S. as Scarlet Street. Durbin and David reportedly lived happily together until David’s death in 1999 at 92. As of this writing, Durbin is still alive and well and, by her own choice, happily out of the spotlight. Update: She died in her adopted country, France, on April 20th, 2013 at the age of 91.

Santa, baby, hurry down the chimney tonight!
(And bring me a blackjack in case of unexpected visitors, OK?)

Wanna follow Michael Troutman's My Deanna Durbin Punishment series? Here are the links!

Part 1 of Michael Troutman’s My Deanna Durbin Punishment series:
http://ishootthepictures.com/2011/12/15/my-deanna-durbin-punishment-part-i-three-smart-girls-1936-worth-a-look/

Part 2 of Michael Troutman’s My Deanna Durbin Punishment: First Love:
http://ishootthepictures.com/2012/01/20/my-deanna-durbin-punishment-part-ii-first-love-1939-worth-a-look/

Part 3 of Michael Troutman’s My Deanna Durbin Punishment: It Started with Eve
http://ishootthepictures.com/2012/01/23/my-deanna-durbin-punishment-part-iii-it-started-with-eve-1941-approach-with-caution/

Part 4 of Michael Troutman’s My Deanna Durbin Punishment: Can’t Help Singing http://ishootthepictures.com/2012/01/27/my-deanna-durbin-punishment-part-iv-cant-help-singing-1944-not-recommended/

Part 5 of Michael Troutman’s review of Lady on a Train from I Shoot the Pictures: My Deanna Durbin Punishment

http://ishootthepictures.com/2012/02/05/my-deanna-durbin-punishment-part-v-lady-on-a-train-1945-recommended/

Part 6 of Michael Troutman’s My Deanna Durbin Punishment:http://ishootthepictures.com/2012/02/17/my-deanna-durbin-punishment-part-vi-something-in-the-wind-1947-approach-with-caution/

This joint has everything, even free bagels in your hair!

Turn around, Nikki!
There’s a clue in the newsreel!

This time master-of-disguise Nikki goes undercover
as the chair-woman of the board!

Wayne and Nikki don’t care what people say about them
as long as their names are spelled right!

Nikki, I know we’re all economizing these days,
but hold out for the glass slipper instead!