Murder in the Private Car

Back in July, I think, TCM ran a spotlight on B movies. I recorded a whole bunch of them, not having seen a lot of their selections. Another one that was new to me despite it being an MGM movie was Murder in the Private Car. Having recorded it, I finally got around to watching it and now I can do the review on it here.

May Carlisle plays Ruth Raymond, who works the switchboard at a stock brokerage in Los Angeles, in the days when it wasn't easy for people to buy stocks, especially if they weren't in New York. No electronc trading or mutual funds. She works with her best friend Georgia (Una Merkel), and has a boyfriend John who loves her. One day, a strange guy walks into the office where the switchboard operators work. Not long after that, Ruth is called into her boss' office.

It turns out that she's not in trouble at all. In fact, Ruth is now at the heart of a mystery. Luke Carson (Berton Churchill) is a railway magnate who many years ago lost his daughter when she was kidnapped by his brother (ie. the young girl's uncle). Ruth always thought she was an orphan after her dad died young, but somehow an old fingerprint of the little girl who was kidnapped survived, and Ruth's fingerprint matches that one. Ruth being confirmed as the biological daughter of a titan of business, she's in line to become a very wealthy woman.

However, a lot of people know that she's set to become wealthy. Indeed, some of them have plans to kidnap her again, although we don't know who's behind it. Indeed, she's picked up by a car that's trying to kidnap her, but that car is followed by a taxi, and who is the passenger in the taxi but one Godfrey Scott (Charles Ruggles). We already saw Godfrey, in that opening scene when he was talking to Ruth and Georgia. Godfrey is a detective, but not one who solves crime; instead, he focuses on preventing crime from happening in the first place, and he's the one who foiled the first kidnapping attempt on Ruth.

We then get a scene of the telegraph agency receiving a telegraph for Ruth from her biological father, saying he'll be coming to Los Angeles to get her. But somebody intercepts that telegram, and replaces it with one saying that Mr. Carson will be putting a special car, the private car of the title, on a train from Los Angeles bound for New York. So we already know that something is going to happen on that train, although of course Ruth and her friends don't.

Sure enough, the lights go out and a murder takes place, along with a bunch of other mysterious happenings of the sort you'd see in the old Scooby-Doo cartoons. Who's causing them, and why? Will Ruth get to meet her father and inherit the money? Will she and John be able to live happily ever after?

This being a B movie, Murder in the Private Car is breezy and extremely fast-paced. Sure, it's not completely well developed, but these B movies generally weren't since they had to be finished quickly. It is, however, quite a bit of fun, and definitely worth watching if you get the chance to see it.