Mystery Street **** (1950, Ricardo Montalban, Sally Forrest, Elsa Lanchester, Bruce Bennett, Marshall Thompson, Jan Sterling, Edmon Ryan, Betsy Blair) – Classic Movie Review 8146

Director John Sturges’s 1950 Mystery Street is a well-plotted, fascinating police procedural film noir crime thriller, with Ricardo Montalban, Sally Forrest, Elsa Lanchester, Bruce Bennett, Marshall Thompson, Jan Sterling, Edmon Ryan and Betsy Blair starring.

The tense atmosphere, Boston local colour, strong cast (especially Montalban and Ryan) and Sturges’s brisk, capable handling combine to keep it thoroughly gripping and involving. Among its attractions, it offers a convincing, realistic look at the advances made at the time in pathology and their importance in catching criminals.

[Spoiler alert] In the story by Leonard Spigelgass, married, upper-class bounder James Joshua Harkley (Ryan) shoots dead his pregnant girlfriend Vivian Heldon (Sterling), discards the naked body in the sea and her stolen car in a lake. When the car owner Henry Shanway (Thompson) is arrested, canny police lieutenant Peter Moralas (Montalban) and Harvard doctor Dr McAdoo (Bennett) set out to investigate.

Also in the cast are Wally Maher, Ralph Dumke, Willard Waterman, Walter Burke and Don Shelton.

Leonard Spigelgass was Oscar nominated for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story. The screenplay is by Sydney Boehm and Richard Brooks.

There may be local colour but there obviously isn’t actual colour. John Alton shoots in striking black and white.

Mystery Street is directed by John Sturges, runs 93 minutes, is made and released by MGM, is written by Sydney Boehm and Richard Brooks, is shot in black and white by John Alton, is produced by Frank E Taylor and is scored by Rudolph Kopp.

It is said to be the first mainstream movie mostly shot on location in Boston. Other locations are Harvard Medical School in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and Harvard University in nearby Cambridge, as well as Cape Cod. 

Despite its low budget of $730,000, it lost $284,000 for MGM.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8146

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