Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone

Some time back TCM did a prime-time spotlight on some of the films of Marjorie Main. One that I had seen quite a few years back, but did not blog about at the time -- it might even have been before I started blogging -- was Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone. So with that in mind I recorded it and eventually got around to watching it so that I could do this post on it.

Marjorie Main plays Mrs. Hattie O'Malley, a widow living in Proudfoot, MT and running some sort of boarding house; the Montana setting at the start is basically an excuse for Main to do a version of the rustic Ma Kettle character. She gets a sudden call from a radio program in New York which plays her a mystery song for a chance to win a cash and prize package of $50,000, which is a pretty darn big sum for 1950 when the movie was released. She's able to recognize the song, and she's invited on an all-expenses paid trip to New York to receive her winnings.

Cut to Chicago, where John J. Malone (James Whitmore) lives. He's a struggling lawyer, who owes a bunch of money largely because his big client, Steve Kepplar (Douglas Fowley), owes him. Malone had defended Kepplar on an embezzlement charge where Kepplar stole $100K from the firm run by Myron Brynk (Don Porter). Kepplar was convicted, but is about to be paroled now, and Malone would like the money he's owed for his services defending Kepplar. But Malone needs to get in line: Kepplar has an ex-wife Connie (Ann Dvorak) who wants alimony. And, besides, that $100K was never returned to the Brynk business. Still, Brynk offers Kepplar his old job back and to celebrate, they'll go to the same hotel lounge where Mrs. O'Malley is staying on a stopover in Chicago. This, as you can guess, is how the two title characters meet.

Kepplar is a no-show at the big reunion, and the natural suspicion is that he's fleeing the jurisdiction, and absconding with the $100K. His probation officer, Marino (Fred Clark), has good reason to believe that Kepplar is on the train to New York, so he gets on the same train that Mrs. O'Malley will be taking. Malone also gets on the train because he wants his $10,000, even though he should know that the money Kepplar embezzled can't be touched. The ex-Mrs. Kepplar shows up too.

Sure enough, Kepplar is on the train, disguised as a sailor and hiding in the compartment of his girlfriend Lola (Dorothy Malone). But wouldn't you know it, that night Malone returns to his compartment, which conveniently enough for the plot happens to be right next to Mrs. O'Malley's. In that compartment he finds... the undressed body of Steve Kepplar, who has been stabbed to death! Who would want to stab him, and why would the murderer want to remove his clothes? All Mr. Malone knows is that since the body was found in his compartment he's going to be the prime suspect. Mrs. O'Malley sees Malone and the body, and is willing to help in a murder mystery.

Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone is another of those movies where it's easy to see why the people involved in it would want to make it; the premise of another comic murder mystery is one that has obvious appeal. Unfortunately, this one comes across as a bit too manic. Worse, Mr. Malone is just too dishonest to be a sympathetic character, as opposed to a charming person like Nick Charles. I also think it doesn't help that 1950, when the movie was released, was just about the time when stories like this would have started moving to television. So Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone was underwhelming at best.