Terrible title, excellent noir. Certain movies just seem to come out perfect.  This mainline noir finds suspense and excitement in a police-lab manhunt that begins with a human skeleton picked clean and nothing else. John Sturges had an early hit, directing Ricardo Montalban in the starring role and shaping memorable parts for Jan Sterling, Elsa Lanchester, Bruce Bennett, Edmon Ryan, Marshall Thompson, Sally Forrest and Betsy Blair. The focus on forensics and autopsy detail may be a first; it’s now required on every TV crime show. Filmed by the master cinematographer John Alton, on location in and around Boston.

Mystery Street
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1950 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 93 min. / Murder at Harvard / Street Date May 27, 2025 / Available at MovieZyng / 24.99
Starring: Ricardo Montalban, Sally Forrest, Grace Shanway, Bruce Bennett, Elsa Lanchester, Marshall Thompson, Jan Sterling, Edmon Ryan, Betsy Blair, Ralph Dumke, Willard Waterman, Walter Burke, John Crawford, King Donovan, Ned Glass, Eula Guy, May McAvoy, Frank Overton, Juanita Quigley.
Cinematography: John Alton
Art Director: Cedric Gibbons, Gabriel Scognamillo
Film Editor: Ferris Webster
Composer: Rudolph G. Kopp
Screenplay by Sydney Boehm, Richard Brooks story by Leonard Spiegelgass
Produced by Frank E. Taylor
Directed by John Sturges

A group of postwar Hollywood directors gained career traction through medium and low-budget films noir: Anthony Mann, Richard Fleischer, Budd Boetticher, Jules Dassin, Edward Dmytryk, Joseph H. Lewis, Joseph Losey, Robert Parrish, Nicholas Ray, Robert Rossen … and former editor John Sturges, who braved tough competition at both Columbia and MGM, doing fine work and distinguishing himself by extracting good performances from his actors. Sturges scored extra points for diplomacy: he was one of the few directors who could secure the full cooperation of the ‘problematic’ star Spencer Tracy.

John Sturges’ biographer Glenn Lovell explains that MGM had reduced its roster of house directors by half. The benefit for Sturges was that he had less competition for the better projects. In his tryout film for Dore Schary, Sturges was given Mann’s cameraman-collaborator John Alton and a budget that could support some distant location shooting in Boston. He appears to have had enthusiastic help from a lively cast, mostly MGM contract players. One of the film’s writers was on the set a lot as well — Richard Brooks was getting ready to direct and wanted to observe. Mystery Street was a big step for Sturges — the first show that he felt he had personally shaped.

Enthusiastic reviewers were a big help too. Critics were impressed by Mystery Street’s focus on forensic detection. Some thought it had introduced police science to film audiences; RKO’s  Tattooed Stranger featured similar police lab scenes a few months earlier. Given only a skeleton to work with, a Harvard professor not only determines that the victim was female, but that she was pregnant as well. Sidney Boehm and Richard Brooks’ tightly plotted script sees the investigation going in the wrong direction. The facts initially point to a young man who got drunk when his wife was in the hospital, and took a car ride with the wrong hot blonde.

As in the previous  Side Street, MGM’s moralizing  ‘Crime Does Not Pay’ attitude harps on the idea that straying from the straight and narrow is an invitation to chaos. But the noir undertow is stronger: the law comes very close to convicting the wrong man, and in 1950 Massachusetts still had capital punishment for first-degree murder.

Mystery Street has a standard pulp opening — the luckless blonde Vivian Heldon (Jan Sterling of Billy Wilder’s  Ace in the Hole) is blasted with a pistol, point blank. A birdwatcher (Walter Burke) finds a skeleton on a lonely beach. Portuguese-American Detective Lt. Peter Moralas (Ricardo Montalban)  ^*  takes it to Harvard, where Dr. McAdoo (Bruce Bennett) uses science to establish facts. He determines that the skeleton belonged to a pregnant woman; a shattered rib indicates the impact of a bullet. A description of a car gives the victim a name and traces her back to Boston’s Henry Shanway (Marshall Thompson), a young married man who doesn’t tell the full truth when questioned. His attempt to conceal some shameful behavior inadvertently lands him a Murder One rap. His distraught wife Grace (Sally Forrest) can’t understand why several witnesses finger her husband. They include the murdered woman’s landlady, Mrs. Smerrling (Elsa Lanchester), who has her own theory of who killed Vivian. Instead of informing Lt. Moralas, Smerrling works on a side deal of her own.

With Henry locked up and a good case against him established, the Shanways think that they have been abandoned. Lt. Moralas shows little sympathy for Henry, yet pursues another loose end that reveals a second possible suspect. The combined effort of several people eventually turns the case upside down, leading to a desperate manhunt.

No, this is still film noir. Screenwriters Sydney Boehm and Richard Brooks are allowed to include sordid details not normally found in 1950 film fare. Two different pregnancies end sadly. Grace has just lost her baby in childbirth, and Vivian may not even have know she was pregnant — scientist McAdoo finds tiny bones along with her skeleton. Lt. Moralas does his best to put up with Mrs. Smirrling’s obvious lies and other witnesses’ ethnic slurs, but he can overreact as well. Confused and under pressure, Moralas accuses Grace Shanway of complicity in her husband’s escape attempt.

We like that the movie doesn’t excuse Henry Shanway as simply unlucky or misunderstood. It also doesn’t claim sainthood for his wife Grace. Thoroughly demoralized, she becomes openly hostile to Lt. Moralas, before bouncing back in support of her husband, in  established noir tradition. Grace is aided by Vivian’s rooming house neighbor Jackie Elcott (Betsy Blair of  Marty), a no-nonsense waitress. Jackie knows her way around automatic pistols because she was once the girlfriend of a Marine.  ↓

On the other side of the law, audiences will find the actual killer easy to spot, but additional amusement comes via a sparkling, eccentric performance from Elsa Lanchester. Her alcoholic landlady dreams of financing a bright future through blackmail. When Montalban asks where her husband is, Lanchester’s eye-roll is worth five lines of funny dialogue.

Boston locations provide the realism that makes Mystery Street stand out. Walter Burke finds the skeleton on a broad beach in a scene that would be repeated almost verbatim in Steven Spielberg’s  Jaws.  We do wonder how that skeleton remained so intact and became so ‘clean’ after only a couple of months. Although we expect that justice will eventually triumph, Sturges gives Mystery Street a believable surface tension. It looks pretty bad for Henry Shanley when his car is pulled from a swamp  Psycho– style, with the murdered woman’s personal effects found inside. But Bruce Bennett’s Harvard man demonstrates that C.S.I.-like science just as often exonerates suspects as proves them guilty.

The film was a big opportunity for actress Sally Forrest, a former dancer who had attracted attention with leading roles in Ida Lupino’s first directing efforts,  Not Wanted and  Never Fear.  Marshall Thompson has the thankless role of the thoughtless husband who chooses the worst night ever to get drunk. Contributing a very strong performance is Ralph Dumke as a tattoo artist who berates the cops for not finding the killer. Favorite Ned Glass goes un-billed as a Harvard lab assistant with a good attitude.  ↙  Not high on the cast list but doing much to make Mystery Street click is the excellent actor Edmon Ryan, following up on his fine work in MGM’s previous Side Street.

The Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray of Mystery Street is yet another B&W feature that doubles in interest due to a sharply improved transfer. John Alton was recognized as a film artist; his precise location cinematography dodges extreme effects while lending realism and character to interiors. Everything is in service to the exciting screenplay. Those Boston streets are fascinating; when rear-projection is used, it is not always easy to detect. Sturges and Alton bring the show to a strong conclusion even without an overstated action climax.

The WAC re-spins two extras from their 2007 DVD. Audio commentators Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward co-edited the original  Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style. They re-teamed to offer observations about the film’s place in the noir cycle, noting the bland title — no particular ‘street’ figures in the storyline. The early title choice Murder at Harvard doesn’t sound very good either. They point out that actress Betsy Blair was blacklisted simply for being a women’s rights activist in the Screen Actors’ Guild; her husband Gene Kelly interceded to help get her a few of her movie roles. The featurette presents testimony from Patricia King Hanson and Richard Schickel, plus archival interview input from cinematographer John Alton.

The disc adds two remastered cartoons to the mix, Little Quacker and Tom and Jerry in the Hollywood Bowl. The original cover art for Mystery Street gives the impression that Montalban and Forrest play screen sweethearts, when their characters are actually bitter adversaries.

We were told that Warners’ DVD release from 18 years ago on a double-feature disc is a candidate for disc rot. The list that is circulating says that Mystery Street still plays but its double-bill co-feature Act of Violence does not. My DVD copy will now not even load up, which makes a believer out of me. To be fair, I tried out two other discs in the set that are cited on the ‘dead’ list. My copies played, at least at all the chapter stops.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Mystery Street
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio commentary by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward
2007 featurette Murder at Harvard
MGM cartoons Little Quacker and Tom and Jerry in the Hollywood Bowl
Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: May 27, 2025
(7334myst)

^*   Spanish speakers will react when they see Ricardo Montalban identified in both the credits and the subtitles as ‘Moralas.’  Portuguese variations are ‘Morais’ and ‘Moraes,’ which leads us to risk the guess that a typo changed the name from the standard ‘Morales,’ maybe as late as when the cast list was typed up. In dialogue, his name sounds like Morales, too.

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