Mystery Street

Mystery Street is a 1950 black-and-white film noir directed by John Sturges with cinematography by cinematographer John Alton. The film features Ricardo Montalban, Sally Forrest, Bruce Bennett, Elsa Lanchester, and Marshall Thompson.

The MGM film was shot on location in Boston and Cape Cod; according to one critic, it was "the first commercial feature to be predominantly shot" on location in Boston. Also featured are Harvard Medical School in Roxbury, Massachusetts and Harvard University in nearby Cambridge. The film's story earned Leonard Spigelgass a nomination as Best Story for the 23rd Academy Awards.

Plot
Blonde B-girl Vivian (played by Jan Sterling) is pregnant and tries to contact the father to seek financial help. He refuses to meet and stops taking her calls. She goes to "The Grass Skirt" bar in Boston where she works and picks up a drunk (Marshall Thompson) so she can use his car to drive to Cape Cod, where she can confront the father face to face.

Vivian drives with the car's owner drunk by her side. When the man realizes he's miles from Boston, he demands to be taken back. Instead, she ditches him and steals the car. But the father of the child, James Harkley, kills Vivian rather than pay up or risk exposure of the affair to his wife and family.  He buries Vivian's body and sinks the car in a pond.

A day later, the drunk reports the car stolen to his insurance but neglects to mention the blonde, not wanting to get in trouble with his wife (Sally Forrest), who had been hospitalized  suffering from the loss of a pregnancy. Months later, the B-girl's skeleton is found half-buried on a beach.  State Police Lt. Peter Moralas (Montalban), assigned to the District Attorney's Office in Barnstable,  teams up with Boston police and uses forensics with the help of Dr. McAdoo, a Harvard doctor (Bennett), to figure out who the woman is.

Moralas wants to know how she died. Vivian's nosy landlady (Lanchester) attempts to blackmail Harkley, the man Vivian had been calling from her boarding house, going so far as to visit the wealthy married man and steal his gun. Moralas tracks down the stolen car from police records and questions Henry Shanway, the drunk Vivian was with the night she disappeared. Moralas eventually finds Shanway's car and he's identified in a police lineup. The innocent man is arrested and charged with the murder.

Dr. McAdoo discovers a bullet stuck in the car. Moralas then finds that the landlady has the gun, but not before she tries to blackmail Harkley for $20,000, has been knocked over the head and died. Moralas chases but loses the killer. He comes across a hidden baggage check in the landlady's bird cage, which sends Moralas racing to catch the killer before the murder weapon can be disposed of. At the train station, he apprehends Harkley and takes him into custody. Shanway gets to be set free.

Cast
 Ricardo Montalban as Lieutenant Peter Moralas 
 Sally Forrest as Grace Shanway 
 Bruce Bennett as Dr. McAdoo, of Harvard Medical School 
 Elsa Lanchester as Mrs. Smerrling, the landlady 
 Marshall Thompson as Henry Shanway, Grace's husband
 Jan Sterling as Vivian Heldon, bar-girl and murder victim
 Edmon Ryan as James Joshua Harkley
 Betsy Blair as Jackie Elcott
 Wally Maher as Tim Sharkey
 Ralph Dumke as A Tattooist
 Willard Waterman as A Mortician
 Walter Burke as An Ornithologist
 Don Shelton as A District Attorney

Reception
According to MGM records the film earned $429,000 domestically and $346,000 foreign, resulting in a loss of $284,000.

Critical response
Time magazine called it a "low-budget melodrama without box-office stars or advance ballyhoo [that] does not pretend to do much more than tell a straightaway, logical story of scientific crime detection" but notes that "within such modest limits, Director John Sturges and Scripters Sydney Boehm and Richard Brooks have treated the picture with such taste and craftsmanship that it is just about perfect."  The New York Times called it  "an adventure which, despite a low budget, is not low in taste or its attention to technical detail, backgrounds and plausibility" with a performance by Montalban that is "natural and unassuming."

Accolades
Nominated
 Academy Awards: Best Writing, Motion Picture Story, Leonard Spigelgass; 1951.

References

External links
 
 
 
 
 

Category:1950 films
Category:1950s crime drama films
Category:American films
Category:American black-and-white films
Category:American crime drama films
Category:English-language films
Category:Film noir
Category:Films directed by John Sturges
Category:Films set in Boston
Category:Films set in Massachusetts
Category:Films shot in Massachusetts
Category:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films