Virginia Grey

(On Cable TV, September 2021) Oh, what a fun film Grand Central Murder is. The 1930s, and to a lesser extent, the early 1940s (before film noir took over) were big on short silly murder mysteries, usually featuring amateur sleuths taking on investigations in cozy locations. Grand Central Murder is not quite like that, but it’s very much in this lineage. It begins with the murder of a gold-digging actress in a train car inside Grand Central Station, and the film is quick to round up the usual suspects in a small police office, including a private investigator who starts matching wits with the assigned detective. Van Heflin is in fine form as the protagonist, playing a role equally comic and quick-witted. There’s an amusing number of fisticuffs, structural quirks, twists, railroad operational details, snappy dialogue and characterization in the film’s breezy 73 minutes — thanks to director Sylvan Simon, it’s seldom boring. It’s impressive how many characters the script is able to sketch in a few moments, with some credit going to the actors — including the young Betty Wells, whose handful of credited roles doesn’t stop her from doing a great job as “Baby” Delroy. Patricia Dane is quite good as the antagonistic victim (mostly seen in flashbacks), while the ever-beautiful Virginia Grey is largely there for comic relief as the protagonist’s wife looking askance at his flirtatious detecting. The script is more interesting than usual, as the murder investigation takes place in flashbacks, including a flashback immediately contradicted by another character — not quite Rashomon, but more ambitious than many other films. The dialogue is often very funny, and the rapport between the two male leads (Heflin and Tom Conway) is interesting: at one point, they even crack themselves up right before a quick cut. Short and satisfying, Grand Central Murder is the kind of nice little surprise that pops up ever so often on TCM — echoes of a Hollywood system that cranked out hundreds of films per year, with many of them actually being quite entertaining.