Train under a lady

One of my recent DVR watches was Lady on a Train, which is available on DVD courtesy of Universal's MOD scheme.

Deanna Durbin plays Nikki Collins, a young lady traveling from San Francisco to New York by train to visit an aunt for Christmas. Just as she's getting into New York, she looks out the window of the train when it stops briefly, into the windows of a building near the tracks. She sees... an old guy getting hit over the head with a crowbar and killed! Unfortunately, the guy doing the hitting has his back to the train, so she wouldn't be able to identify the killer. She can't even identify where it took place.

Still, she wants to do her civic duty, so she goes to the police (William Frawley in a bit part), but since she's not able to explain herself and because she's carrying a murder mystery book, the desk sergeant thinks she's nuts. At that point, Nikki gets the brilliant idea of looking up the author of the murder mystery, Wayne Morgan (David Bruce)! He lives in New York and since he writes mysteries, surely he'd be interested in trying to solve one.

Now this is absolutely ridiculous, but it's also a movie, so you know that Morgan is eventually going to get involved actively. However, his first involvement is more passive, as Nikki keeps pestering him for attention, much to his chagrin since he's got a fiancée in Joyce (Patricia Morison). But Nikki's following Wayne and Joyce around is going to bring a clue. When they all go to the movies, Nikki sees a newsreel talking about the sudden death of reclusive industrialist Josiah Waring (Thurston Hall), who died in a freak accident falling off a ladder while decorating his Christmas tree at his Long Island estate. Nikki realizes that Waring is the man she saw getting murdered!

So Nikki goes off to Waring's estate, as if she's ever going to get in. This being a Hollywood movie, she does, helped by one of Waring's nephews, Arnold (Dan Duryea). Arnold figures that Nikki must be Margo Martin, a nightclub attraction whom the dead Waring was in love with, and whom a lot of the rest of the family had serious problems with despite never having met her. Arnold is there for the reading of the will, and figures that Margo is too. Also there is Aunt Charlotte (Elizabeth Patterson), and Arnold's cousin Jonathan (Ralph Bellamy). Nikki uses the will reading as an opportunity to snoop around the mansion, which is how she gets vital clues that the elder Waring was indeed murdered.

Nikki also overhears stuff involving somebody's henchman Danny (Allen Jenkins) and Danny's boss, so it begins to get pretty clear that Waring was murdered by somebody fairly close to him, either a relative or somebody in his employ. Nikki goes around New York, notably to Margo's club the Circus Club, trying to put all the clues together and figure out who did it, while also figuring out which of the people in the Waring coterie are trying to help or hinder her.

I found Lady on a Train to be a reasonably interesting and fun mystery, although also nothing particularly outstanding. Nobody is really stretching their acting chops here, instead just focusing on professional entertainment, which they deliver. There were a few plot holes, and I don't care much for Durbin's singing, although I know audiences of the day would have gone to her movies specifically to see her sing at least one song (she gets "Silent Night" and "Night and Day" here).

If you want a new-to-you mystery, you could do far worse than to watch Lady on a Train.