Stubs - Lady on a Train

Lady on a Train (1945) Starring Deanna Durbin, Ralph Bellamy, David Bruce, George Coulouris, Allen Jenkins, Dan Duryea, Edward Everett Horton. Directed by Charles David, Screenplay by Edmund Beloin, Robert O'Brien. Produced by Felix Jackson. Run time: 105 minutes. USA Black and White. Mystery, Christmas.

The definition of a Christmas movie has changed somewhat over time. The story of the birth of Christ, the source of the holiday, has given way to a wide variety of films that either emphasize the meaning of the holiday or take place around it. One such film is Lady on a Train, which, while taking place around and on Christmas, really never touches on the holiday, or the true meaning of it, except for a very brief scene with gift-giving.

The star of the film, Deanna Durbin, only 24 at the time, was trying to change her screen image. She had made her first screen appearance in the short Every Sunday (1936) with another teenager, Judy Garland. Signed by Universal, Durbin would be credited with saving that studio from bankruptcy.  Known for her singing, as Durbin matured, she was finding herself cast in the girl-next-door roles, but was dissatisfied. Looking for sophisticated roles, she appeared in Christmas Holiday (1944), a film-noir opposite Gene Kelly, and followed it up a year later with Lady on a Train.

Nicki Collins (Deanna Durbin) is an avid fan of murder mystery novels.

The film opens during the Christmas season. San Francisco debutante Nicki Collins (Deanna Durbin) is on the train to New York to spend the holiday with her aunt. A reader of mysteries, Nicki favors books by Wayne Morgan, which she is reading when the film opens. When the train comes to a stop, she looks out the window and witnesses what she believes to be a murder.

Two men are arguing in a room, one young and one older. The younger man grabs a crowbar and when the older man picks up the phone, the younger man pulls down the shades. In the silhouette, she sees the younger one hit the older with the crowbar.

So taken by what she’s witnessed, she doesn't pay attention to Train Porter (Ernest Anderson) when he asks about her luggage. Instead, she draws him into the mystery and he and a passenger are still engrossed in it when she departs the train.

Mr. Haskell (Edward Everett Horton) from the New York office has been assigned by Nicki’s father to shepherd the girl while she’s in New York. He has a photo of her and is waiting at Grand Central Station for her, but she almost slips by him. He has arranged for a hotel room for her, but she doesn’t want to go there, rather the police. She manages to lose Mr. Haskell by pointing to a radio he thinks is hers, which turns out to belong to another passenger.

She goes to the nearest police station but the Sergeant on duty, Desk Sgt. Brennan (William Frawley) wants her to go away. She does manage to get his attention, but when he sees she’s reading a murder mystery and thinks the murder is made up, he sends her away.

Mr. Haskell (Edward Everett Horton) sports a black eye.

Meanwhile, Mr. Haskell is talking to her father when she strolls into the hotel room. Haskell is now sporting a black eye he received in his effort to retain the radio, which Nicki now tells him isn’t hers.

Nicki seeks out writer Wayne Morgan (David Bruce) to help her.

Meanwhile, Wayne Morgan (David Bruce) is dictating his next novel to his secretary, Miss Fletcher (Jacqueline DeWitt), when Nicki manages to get in to see him. Knowing he’s a murder mystery writer, she thinks he would be able to help her solve this one. The presence of a pretty girl doesn’t sit well with his fiancée Joyce Williams (Patricia Morison).

Nicki walks on the railroad tracks looking for the scene of the murder.

Determined to get his help, Nicki goes on her own to see if she can find the location, which she can’t find, even walking the tracks. She returns in time to see Wayne and Jessica leave for the newsreel theater. Undeterred by her surroundings, Nicki tries to get Wayne’s attention, but she is shooed away.

On her way out, she looks at the screen when they relate a story about the "accidental" death of shipping magnate Josiah Waring (Thurston Hall), whom she recognizes as the older man she saw being murdered.

She decides to sneak into the Waring estate, where she is met by Arnold Waring (Dan Duryea), who mistakes her for Waring’s mistress, Margo Martin (Maria Palmer). The family, which includes Arnold’s brother Jonathan Waring (Ralph Bellamy) and their aunt Charlotte Waring (Elizabeth Patterson), has gathered for a reading of the will, with Margo receiving the bulk of the estate, much to Aunt Charlotte’s dismay.

Nicki is there to snoop around the house looking for clues to Josiah’s murder. She happens upon a pair of bloody slippers that disprove the story of an accident. Two conspirators in the murder try but fail to stop her: Saunders (George Coulouris), who turns out to be the nightclub's manager and another heir, and the chauffeur Danny (Allen Jenkins). Nicki manages to throw them out the window and they land on Arnold’s car’s roof. When he offers to take her home, she accepts and manages to pull the slippers into the car.

Arnold drives her home, back to the hotel. Haskell is there waiting for her. He’s on the phone with Nicki’s father, apologizing for not knowing where she is, when she walks in. When he asks about the men’s slippers, she makes up an old saying as if to cover why she brought them back after finding them on the street. Haskell is still thinking about that when he leaves. Seeing a pair of men’s shoes, he leans down to pick them up, only to be knocked out by the owner of the shoes, Danny, who has been sent by Saunders to retrieve the shoes.

Nicki doesn't know how close to reality her fake call to Wayne is.

Nicki calls Morgan at home. He is in his pajamas opening gifts with Joyce and the ever-present Miss Fletcher. She makes up a story about a man being in her hotel room with a gun, not knowing that Danny is there with a gun if necessary.

Wayne is already in his pajamas when Nicki calls on Christmas Eve.
His fiancee Joyce Williams (Patricia Morison) is there along with
Miss Fletcher (Jacqueline DeWitt) opening presents.

Danny waits for the right moment to take them and waits while Nicki sings two verses of “Silent Night” before he does. But that has been enough time for Morgan to put on an overcoat and to hurry over to the hotel.

Nicki sings "Silent Night" long-distance to her father.

As Danny is sneaking out, Morgan tries to stop him, pretending his pipe is a gun. But Danny knows a pipe from a gun and knocks Morgan out, stealing his overcoat as well.

Nicki has changed to go the Circus Club and tries to convince
 these two that they knocked each other out.

Nicki, meanwhile, has changed and is heading out to the Circus nightclub, where Margo Martin is a singer. It also happens to be her last night to appear at the club. She is not the only one going to the club, so is Arnold and later Jonathan and Aunt Charlotte. They are later joined by Mr. Wiggam (Samuel S. Hinds), the lawyer who read the will to the family.

Nicki goes backstage to speak to Margo and becomes suspicious of what she knows about the murder. Nicki locks Margo in a closet, goes on stage, and sings in her place.

Morgan and Joyce arrive at the nightclub but when Nicki sings "Give Me a Little Kiss" to Morgan, Joyce walks out on him.

When freed, Margo tells Saunders she was never interested in the plot and stalks off. Margo is later murdered.

While in the club, both Arnold and Jonathan make passes at Nicki, but Saunders has her called backstage. There, he and Danny admit their involvement with Josiah Waring’s murder and threaten her. Morgan arrives with his fiancée and manages to free her. Nicki manages to take the slippers back and hides them behind the cushions in the booth she’s sharing with the Waring family.

Nicki sings "Night and Day" by Cole Porter.

There are a series of fights backstage, but Nicki manages to escape and even goes back out and sings another song, Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.”

Morgan figures that one of the men she’s sitting with – Arnold, Jonathan, Wiggam – is the murderer and warns her by calling her from the payphone and having the phone brought to her booth.

Danny ends up shooting Saunders and Nicki and Morgan escape with the slippers.

The next morning, Christmas, Mr. Haskell comes to Morgan’s apartment thinking, rightfully, that Nicki is there. She and Morgan have slept in separate rooms. Miss Fletcher tries to help and pretends for Haskell that she is the one who has spent the night.

Nicki enjoys the attention of the press when she gets bailed out.

But the police arrive and Morgan and Nicki are arrested for the murder at the club and taken to jail. Nicki tries to convince Morgan to plead guilty so she can be released and find the true killer, but she gets bailed out so he doesn’t have to. While Mr. Haskell has come to bail her out, Arnold actually beats him to it and she leaves with him when he says the family wants to meet her. Jonathan comes by later to bail her out, too, but she’s already gone.

As they drive, Arnold admits that he had a motive to kill Josiah, but didn’t. However, Nicki starts to think he is the younger man she saw that night. When they get to the building and go up in an automobile elevator, she escapes from him.

She finds Jonathan in the building and tells him that Arnold is the murderer and he helps her elude Arnold and they end up hiding in a room. Nicki starts to realize that it is the same room she saw from the train, down to the crowbar on the table and the same pull on the blinds.

Jonathan confesses to the murder and tells her his plan is to kill her, frame Arnold and kill Arnold under the guise he was trying to save Nicki. But before he can, Arnold sneaks into the room and takes the gun away.

Morgan arrives and, misreading the situation, disarms Arnold and gives the gun back to Jonathan, who holds the gun on him. Morgan starts to tell Jonathan that he didn’t come alone, but Jonathan doesn’t believe him. When he says the police had followed him, Jonathan still thinks he’s lying until the police do arrive and arrest him.

Nicki and Wayne end up together but she almost rather read his book than be with him.

The film ends with Morgan and Nicki on their honeymoon as newlyweds. When the porter comes to turn down their bed, Nicki tells him to come back, as she’s too engrossed with Morgan’s latest book. In order to get things moving, Morgan tells her how the book ends and the porter is summoned.

Lady on a Train was not as well received by the public as Durbin’s earlier romantic musicals and comedies had been. Durbin would only make five more films before leaving Hollywood forever. Marrying this film’s director, Charles David, Durbin and David would move to a farmhouse near Paris. Despite invitations to return to film, she never made another film and only granted one interview before she died in 2013 at the age of 91.

If this film was supposed to change her screen image, the film sort of relies on her talents as a singer, not only when she takes the place of a nightclub singer, but also when she sings “Silent Night” to her father. One can only imagine how expensive that song would have been at the time. And the film literally comes to a stop when she sings that song. It doesn’t really feel necessary to the plot and seems only to be included to feature Durbin’s singing. At least there is an attempt to make her nightclub numbers more organic to the story.

Ralph Bellamy plays the psychotic Jonathan Waring.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen Ralph Bellamy play the heavy, as in his first film The Secret Six (1931), but it is still a bit of a surprise, given his better-known screen persona is more genteel. In the role of Jonathan Waring, he is practically psychotic and gets to show his range as an actor. Interestingly, this would be his last film for 10 years.

Also playing against type is Dan Duryea, an actor best known for his vast range of roles as villains. In Lady on a Train, he is not above suspicion, but he is not guilty of any crime, either. Again, this shows some range in his acting, even though the character seems a bit superfluous. His character is sort of left high and dry and unresolved.

David Bruce in Lady on a Train.

David Bruce is fine as the writer Wayne Morgan, but his is not a strong or memorable performance. Bruce had a sort of middling Hollywood career; a close friend of Errol Flynn, he would never come close to achieving the heights his friend did.

Carrying the white cat makes Saunders (George Coulouris) look as evil as he is.

George Coulouris gets to play evil in this film. It is interesting, but that fact seems to be driven home by his carrying of a white cat with him pretty much wherever he goes throughout the film. He almost comes off as an early take on a Bond villain. It’s too bad the film’s script isn’t as good as he is capable of being.

The film features some great character actors, including Allen Jenkins and William Frawley, but the one who steals the show is Edward Everett Horton. Every time Horton’s on screen, you know something funny is just about to happen. He brings something to the role of flunky Haskell that few others could have. I have yet to see Horton in a film where I didn’t enjoy his performance and that’s no different here.

The story leaves much to be desired. There are too many loose ends for me. I've already mentioned the superfluous nature of the Arnold character. He basically plays Uber driver, taking Nicki places. Other than that, he seems to have no real function.

That a woman would seek out a writer to solve a murder unrelated to him or his writings seems like a far-fetched premise. Oh, we're supposed to believe Nicki is starry-eyed but it's lucky for her he lives in New York City or who else would she turn to? The fact he would let himself get involved in the first place also is hard to believe. Nicki is pretty, yes, but Wayne seems too self-absorbed in his own life and writing to pay her notice as anything more than a nuisance.

There are other holes, as in no one in the family had ever laid eyes on Margo Martin before? It's not like she's been in hiding. You'd think they would be curious enough to want to see what the competition for their inheritance looked like.

Then there is Arnold’s story that the family wants to meet with Nicki. I hate to say it, but they've been none too nice to her for her to be so willing to go. And what is she supposed to think when the building he's taken her to meet them in is virtually empty? Is it any wonder Nicki would feel suspicious of him?

And how is it that Wayne would know where she is at the end of the film? Even she didn’t know where she was going, so how did he? Does his writing include Deus ex Machina to solve the crimes?

Finally, Christmas Eve seems to last too long to be believable. A lot of action happens on this one magical night. It starts with Nicki breaking into the Long Island mansion in time for the reading of the will. Come to think of it, Christmas Eve seems like an odd time to be doing that as well. It's already night when that happens. After that, Nicki is driven back by Arnold and followed back to her hotel room by Danny; Mr. Haskell gets knocked out, so is Wayne. Nicki sings to her father before going to the Circus nightclub to confront Margo. She sings, there are fights and a couple of murders, all before the end of the night. I think there are too many hours in this day.

Lady on a Train doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be: a vehicle for Durbin or a murder mystery. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to excel at either. This one won’t make it to my list of perennial holiday classics.