Grand Central Murder

Van Heflin never got the fairest of shakes from Hollywood, perhaps due to a studio system that judged his unprepossessing everyman mien to outweigh his obvious and considerable talent in dictating whether he was worthy of major stardom. After he landed the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for limning the self-loathing, alcoholic criminal lawyer in Johnny Eager (1942), MGM began experimenting with Heflin as a "B" lead. Representative of this phase of his career is Grand Central Murder (1942), a crisply and quickly made little whodunit that holds up surprisingly well, due to the efforts of Heflin as well as those of the eclectic array of character players that comprises the suspect pool. The victim of the titular crime was the gorgeous and obviously well-kept cabaret star Mida King (Patricia Dane), and the exact scene was a private railroad car, alone in its Grand Central Station siding with no obvious way in or out. The dyspeptic Inspector Gunther (Sam Levene) and his slow-witted second Doolin (Millard Mitchell) have no shortage of persons of interest in the matter. There's Mida's ex-boyfriend, the hood Turk (Stephen McNally), who had used a brief escape from police custody to make the death threat that drove her into the car for hiding. There's the polished gangster Frankie Ciro (Tom Conway), who backed Mida's show-business rise, and conspired with her on the frame-up that took Turk out of the picture. There's the private car's owner, David Henderson (Mark Daniels), the ha... more