Mystery Street (1950)

July 28, 1950, release date

Directed by John Sturges

Screenplay by Sydney Boehm and Richard Brooks

Based on a story by Leonard Spigelgass

Music by Rudolph G. Kopp

Edited by Ferris Webster

Cinematography by John Alton

Ricardo Montalban as Lieutenant Peter Moralas

Sally Forrest as Grace Shanway

Marshall Thompson as Henry Shanway, Grace’s husband

Bruce Bennett as Dr. McAdoo, of Harvard Medical School

Willy Maher as Tim Sharkey

Elsa Lanchester as Mrs. Smerrling, the landlady

Jan Sterling as Vivian Heldon

Edmon Ryan as James Joshua Harkley

Betsy Blair as Jackie Elcott

John Maxwell as Detective Kilrain

Ralph Dumke as the tattoo artist

Willard Waterman as the mortician

Walter Burke as the ornithologist

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

A few things about Mystery Street really popped out at me, beside the fact that it is one of the first films to be shot in Boston and the greater Boston area. First was the use of forensic science. Even though I’m used to watching shows like Law and Order: SVU, I was still intrigued by the state of the art in 1950. Lieutenant Peter Moralas and Dr. McAdoo work together using hair strands, examination of skeletal remains, facial recognition (matching the photos of women known to be missing at about the time of the murder and the dumping of the body), among other forensic techniques. Without computers, the work is painstaking and slow, but it still involves a lot of science, and the magic of cinema compresses the timeline so viewers don’t have to experience the passage of time. I found it fascinating to learn that forensic science has a longer history than modern viewers might imagine.

Another detail that popped out at me was the yellow Ford owned by Henry Shanway and the way that it was dumped in the pond. (By the way, Mystery Street is filmed in black and white, but Shanway’s car is referred to so often in the film as the yellow Ford that it’s almost hard not to imagine the car in color!) I remember a very similar scene in Psycho (1960) when Janet Leigh’s car is dumped in the water by Anthony Perkins. The yellow Ford is pulled out of the water as part of the plot and the investigation in Mystery Street, but in Psycho, as I recall, it’s pulled out behind the closing credits. But the similarities still made me wonder if Hitchcock saw Mystery Street and did a bit of creative borrowing.

Lieutenant Peter Moralas, from the Barnstable (Massachusetts) Police Department, is in charge of the investigation because Vivian Heldon’s skeleton is discovered on the dunes of Cape Cod. (By the time her body is discovered, the skeleton is all that’s left.) Moralas mentions that he works in “the Portuguese district.” I take that to mean southeastern Massachusetts, an area known today as the Southcoast. The Southcoast area of Massachusetts and Rhode Island had, and still has, many Portuguese immigrants and people of Portuguese descent. But a lot of the police investigation and most of the forensic work in Mystery Street take place in Boston and the Boston area because that’s where Vivian lived before she was murdered. Dr. McAdoo works at Harvard and helps Moralas—and Harvard University gets film credit for allowing some on-location filming.

(This blog post about Mystery Street contains spoilers.)

Ricardo Montalban (a Hispanic actor) plays a Hispanic character who likely would have experienced prejudice in 1950s Massachusetts. Moralas, as a minority detective, is the target of some prejudice from Harkley, the principal murder suspect, when Moralas goes to Harkley’s office with a search warrant looking for the murder weapon. Harkley tells Moralas that he is used to respect because his family has been in the country since before there was a United States, and he guesses from Moralas’s accent that Moralas’s family is a more recent arrival. But Moralas holds his ground and tells Harkley that he is used to respect, too, even if his family hasn’t been here for even 100 years.

Mystery Street has some memorable female characters who are integral to the plot, although they are not given top billing. Jackie Elcott is a friend of Vivian Heldon’s; they live in the same rooming house owned by Mrs. Smerrling. Jackie is the one who reports Vivian missing. She collects Vivian’s suitcase from her room after she reports her disappearance, and she makes it plain to Moralas that she didn’t open it: She is a woman of principle. She connects the gun that Mrs. Smerrling shows her with Vivian’s murder after she reads more about the crime in the newspaper, although she doesn’t know how the gun landed in Mrs. Smerrling’s possession.

Elsa Lanchester is great as Mrs. Smerrling, the landlady, but I did wonder what made her think she could get away with blackmailing Harkley. The gun isn’t in Harkley’s office when Moralas goes there to look for it because Mrs. Smerrling steals it when she attempts to blackmail Harkley. And I wondered why she hides the baggage claim ticket in the birdcage. No one wants to pay any attention to the bird, but the ticket is in plain sight in the cage. Without her and her less-than-upstanding intentions, however, the story would not be as interesting and maybe a bit less noir. Mrs. Smerrling steals every scene with Moralas as he tries to ferret out the truth about Heldon’s murder. She adds some humor that even Moralas can appreciate.

Yes, Vivian Heldon is killed near the beginning of the movie, but she is the one who gets the plot going. She demands to see Harkley, and she pays the price for insisting that he meet her. After Harkley shoots her on a deserted Cape Cod road, a car approaches unexpectedly. To hide what he has done, Harkley embraces Heldon’s dead body and pretends to kiss her. When he picks up her body to leave it on the sand dunes, he hits her head on the car door. The scene is rather shocking, even today, although I did find myself a bit distracted wondering what happened to all the blood while he was embracing the body and dumping it afterward. Did Heldon really have time to bleed out while she was still in Shanway’s car?

Henry Shanway is the luckless patsy who is drawn into Vivian’s plan to get to the cape and talk to Harkley. Shanway meets her in Boston, after a night of heavy drinking at The Grass Skirt, where Vivian works as a dancer. He is drinking because his wife just lost their first child in childbirth. Just before Vivian convinces him that she can help him move his car out of a no-parking zone, he says, “I’m always where I shouldn’t be. I’m also not where I ought to be. You know, ever since Adam, man’s been crying ‘Where am I?’ ” He poses a philosophical question, but he has no answers. He succumbs to fate and lets Vivian provide her own answers.

I think that’s the best way to enjoy Mystery Street: Give in and let the plot and the female characters take control. Sure, some details might strain one’s suspension of disbelief a bit, but the story and the murder investigation are still compelling. All the characters ring true, and I can’t remember the last time I saw a film with so many strong female characters. Each one—Vivian Heldon, Jackie Elcott, and Mrs. Smerrling—are very different and clearly defined. They are a lot of fun to watch while they (especially Mrs. Smerrling) keep Lieutenant Moralas and Dr. McAdoo guessing.