My wife was an anthropology major in college, with a specific interest in forensics. She worked a couple of digs where human remains were being excavated as part of murder investigations. One of these was on a creekside, where she tripped over the top of a bone. I then pulled it out of the mud and yelled, “I found a big bone!” What had initially appeared to be a human femur was actually part of a deer. I wasn’t there to witness this, but I like to think she held this bone aloft as if it was Excalibur. I was reminded of this anecdote while watching 1950 police procedural Mystery Street.
The investigation begins with a skeleton found buried in the sand of a beach. Ricardo Montalban’s police detective will rope in Harvard forensic experts, a field so new that is was apparently known as “legal medicine” at the time. Given the currently looniness driving changes at the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, I suspect that term will come into vogue again, only it will mean the only services doctors will be allowed to provide are the kinds of things not widely practiced since before the 19th century.
It is odd the movie takes place in Boston, but I guess every movie takes place somewhere. According to an expert on the commentary track, much of the movie was filmed on location on and around the Harvard campus. I was surprised by a screen of text following the opening credits, thanking the faculty and students of that university.
Then the next thing we see is Jan Sterling descending a staircase. She’s wearing surprisingly skimpy lingerie which is barely concealed by the loose robe around her. I was already thinking that, if what we’re seeing is the student body, then fair Harvard, indeed. Then I would feel bad later, because she will be that skeleton which is discovered on the beach.
Among the odd discoveries forensic scientist Bruce Bennett will make is he will observe from the shape of the bones of the toes that she might have been a “toe dancer”. I snarkily asked aloud if that’s what they used to call them fancy shmancy ballet dancers back then, only for Montalban to later find a pair of ballet slippers in her room and that shut me up.
But more integral to the plot is her primary line of work which is, shall we say, not on her feet. When we saw her descending the stairs, it was to get to the phone of the boarding house where she resides, to make another desperate attempt to reach a customer who has put her in a “delicate situation”, to use the language of the time.
It isn’t so surprising she will wind up dead, but it is how she gets there. Hanging around a seedy join called The Grass Skirt Bar (you can imagine the Tiki-ish decor), she overhears drunken Marshall Thompson being told to move his illegally parked car. Spying an opportunity to use that car, she says she’ll help him move it and she will even offer to drive. Thompson is so out of it that he they will be well on their way to the Cape before he wonders aloud where they are going. It could have been worse, as the directional sign indicates they could have gone to some place named Barnstable, which is odd just because of the redundancy inherent in the name, though I kinda wish they had added “manger” to it so it would be even more preposterous.
Anyhoo, they get in an argument and she stops the car saying that maybe he better drive. He gets out and she takes off, where she will meet her destiny on the oceanside, where a man in shadow will shoot her as she sits in the driver’s seat. He will start to get her body out when a couple cruises by slowly, and so he pretends he and Sterling’s corpse are in an embrace. The ruse is successful, and her limp arm falls into the shot. That chilled my blood, but nowhere near as much as her head accidentally banging on the car door.
In such regards, this is an usually cold movie for the time. Even more surprising will some aspects of Bennett’s work. When Montalban and partner Wally Maher first arrive at his Harvard office, they are intrigued by a series of crime scenes photos on a board. While those pics were doubtlessly faked for this production, they are more gruesome than the censors would have allowed at the time, should what we see had been staged as live action. As Bennett explains it, that was a not a homicide, but an accident, and Bennett’s work helped overturn a man’s homicide conviction. There also wax heads of various corpses, such as one with a large vertical opening in his forehead, as result of a fatal, self-inflicted axe blow.
I am not a scientist, let alone a forensic expert, but what we see of the investigation feels like the science that might have been available at the time. Bennett explains how certain bones help determine the victim’s age, and how plants found under the skeleton help determine the time the body was left there, but not necessarily when death occurred. He will show Montalban how hairs under the microscope reveal they were dyed. A particularly unnerving sequence has a projector used to superimpose photos of the skull atop what are basically glamour shots of women who recently went missing. The juxtaposition of studio photography of women at their most beautiful, and the starkness of a bare skull, was more ghoulish than I anticipated.
All of this made for an interesting picture which seems to foretell the present age of endless shows involving forensics. Where this movie really excels is in the easy rapport between the detectives and then between them and Bennett. Consider Montalban’s reaction when Bennett immediately resealed the box of bones he’s brought him, “Got it solved already?” I have been around people in such fields just enough to know that they have to keep things light to prevent the nature of the crimes they’re investigating from getting to them. This is in contrast to most police procedurals of the time, which would have overbearing narration and detectives who are little more than one-note caricatures with no sense of humor. They wouldn’t have an exchange like this one Montalban and Maher when the latter is about to radio dispatch: “Did you see the man?” “No.” “Did you get the license number?” “No.” “Then what are you going to call in?”
Alas, the movie does have a weak stretch late in the second act, when Thompson ends up falsely accused of Sterling’s murder. There are histrionics from wife Sally Forrest in a thankless role. It doesn’t help that Montalban becomes doggedly determined to let Thompson get executed instead of continuing the find the real killer. This is until Bennett tells him, “Suppose the actual murderer goes free.”
That actual murderer is Edmon Ryan, as a wealthy boat designer. An interesting conversation between he and Montalban reveals the man is old Boston, and his subtle racist digs at the detective is the only time the man’s race is addressed.
A more interesting character is Elsa Lanchester, the owner of the boarding house where Sterling lived. She unwisely decides to blackmail Ryan. Her persistence is admirable, as she will even break into his office desk to steal the murder weapon. That this perpetual drunk could get organized enough to do this beggars belief, but her boozy, blousy performance steals every scene in which she appears.
The talent behind the scenes is also very talented. This was an early directorial effort by John Sturges, who would soon graduate to much larger films, such as Bad Day at Black Rock, The Great Escape and, um, Ice Station Zebra. The legendary John Alton was director of photography, and he contributes some awesome noir lighting. Actually, there is a solid team of professionals across the board behind the camera, as this was one of the few noirs produced by MGM, and their considerable financial backing makes for a great looking film without compromising any of its surprisingly gritty realism.
Mystery Street is one solid noir, all the more remarkable before police procedurals tend to be among the most restrictive, and least innovative, of the films in that genre. I liked the characters and even the science was believable. It even shows more compassion for a character like Sterling’s prostitute than most pictures of the time would have done. That heart is revealed in a brief appearance by Ralph Dumke, who plays a tattoo artist who only knew her by their acquaintance through working their trades in the same bad neighborhood: “She was beautiful. She was sweet. Always a nice word for me.” The way this big, tough guy says this line is perfect. In a cold, hard world, the occasional small kindness from her helped to get him through the day.
Dir: John Sturges
Starring Ricardo Montalban, Sally Forrest, Bruce Bennett, Elsa Lanchester, Marshall Thompson, Jan Sterling
Watched on Warner Archive blu-ray