The following essay is Thrilling Days of Yesteryear’s
contribution to the Planes, Trains and Automobiles Blogathon—
a Fall 2015 event
hosted by the member blogs in the Classic Movie Blog Association.
For a complete list of the participants and
the movies/topics discussed, click here.
New York City police sergeant John Kennedy (Dick Powell) is
a man on a mission: he has obtained information that Abraham Lincoln, who’s
just been elected as the sixteenth President of the United States, is to be
assassinated during a speech in Baltimore, MD on his way to his Washington, DC
inauguration.
Kennedy has contacted both
the Secretary of War and the newly elected Lincoln about what he’s learned…but
his superior on the police force, Simon Stroud (Tom Powers), dismisses his
concerns.
Unable to persuade either
Stroud or militia colonel Caleb Jeffers (Adolphe Menjou) of the danger Honest
Abe is facing, Kennedy resigns from the police force, determined to go it
alone.
Kennedy’s throwing down of his badge in disgust is probably
not the smartest move he could have made in this situation. Since he’s no longer a cop, he technically
has little authority in his intention to arrest the conspirator(s) involved in
the plot. Furthermore, a confederate in
the form of Tim Riley (Regis Toomey), who was enlisted to secure Kennedy a
ticket on the “Midnight Flyer” to Baltimore, has disappeared. As the Flyer pulls out of the station toward
its destination, Kennedy locates Riley…he’s been murdered. And when Kennedy returns to his seat on the
train, it’s now occupied by a stranger (Leif Erickson) who’s co-opted Kennedy’s
identity and credentials.
By the 1950s, director Anthony Mann was starting to embark
on his successful career in movie westerns; Mann would borrow elements from the
series of gritty film noirs he had previously directed to use in these oaters…but
he hadn’t completely abandoned noir at this time.
He helmed 1950’s
Side Street, a taut little suspenser that featured the stars of
They Live by Night (1948)—Farley Granger
and Cathy O’Donnell—and a year later rode herd on an interesting vehicle that
introduced elements of noir and suspense in a period piece:
The Tall Target (1951).
(Mann had performed the same task two years
earlier with
Reign of Terror [1949—a.k.a.
The Black Book], an offbeat entry
that features the background of the French Revolution as a film noir.)
The idea for Target
was inspired by an incident known as “the Baltimore Plot”—Allan Pinkerton, the
founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency (“We never sleep”) purportedly
learned of an attempt on Lincoln’s life as Abe traveled to D.C. for his first
inauguration in 1861. Scholars to this
day argue as to the validity of the plot—and even Lincoln felt sheepish about “sneaking”
into the Nation’s capital; his line about attending his inauguration “like a
thief in the night” is present in Target—but
whether or not the details are true, you can’t deny that it makes for a
crackerjack movie plot…particularly in light of that whole unpleasantness at Ford’s
Theatre four years later. (The movie’s
title, The Tall Target, comes from a
line in the film spoken by one of the conspirators: “Mr. Lincoln’s a tall target…there’ll be another day.”)
The story for Target
was concocted by George Worthing Yates and Geoffrey Homes; Homes, who also went
by “Daniel Mainwaring,” is famous for writing the quintessential film noir Out of the Past (1947). Yates, who
would wind up writing Target’s
screenplay with Art Cohn, had a movie resume that included the original 1938
serial of The Lone Ranger and
vehicles like Sinbad, the Sailor
(1947) and This Woman is Dangerous (1952). (Both men would gravitate to science
fiction-themed flicks as the fifties wore on: Homes wrote the screenplay for Invasion of the Body Snatchers [1956]
and Yates’ sci-fi contributions include Them!
[1954] and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
[1956].) The two scribes do an admirable
job of embellishing on the details of “the Baltimore Plot,” turning the
proceedings into a first-rate thriller.
The star of
The Tall
Target is Dick Powell, an actor whose fortunes in the movies changed
overnight when he was cast as Raymond Chandler’s literary sleuth Philip Marlowe
in RKO’s
Murder. My Sweet
(1944).
In the 1930s, Dick was Warner
Brothers’ resident chorus boy, appearing in scads of that studio’s sprightly
musicals…usually alongside Ruby Keeler.
Powell eventually tired of doing what he called “the same stupid story”
(the Warner musicals also lost a lot of their zip once the Production Code went
into effect) but a job change to Paramount by the 1940s didn’t satisfy him,
either.
With the Marlowe role in
Murder, Powell refashioned himself as a
tough guy in movies like
Cornered (1945)
and
Johnny O’Clock (1947); the actor
even showed off his new image on radio, headlining series like
Rogue’s
Gallery and
Richard Diamond, Private Detective.
By the 1950s, Powell would starting to cut back on his
appearances in front of the camera (I blame The Reformer and the Redhead [1950], which he made with wife June
Allyson) to tackle assignments behind the device, directing movies like Split Second (1953) and The Enemy Below (1957). (Powell also embraced that newfangled upstart
called television, joining with three of his other Hollywood pals to form Four
Star Productions while later hosting the successful Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater.) So I’ve always thought it interesting that
the actor explored the parameters of his tough guy persona in 1951; first by
starring in this interesting thriller and later appearing in You Never Can Tell, a fantasy comedy in
which Dick is the human form of a dog returned from the Great Beyond to solve
the mystery of his murder.
Powell’s role in
Target
is one of my favorites…and to be honest, I think it’s one of his best.
His John Kennedy (yes, don’t think that hasn’t
caused an eye or two to bug out among those who watch the film for the first
time) is an intelligent, resourceful cop who’s not above resorting to
fisticuffs when his life is threatened.
Modern day moviemakers could learn a lot from
Target in that while the protagonist is frequently placed in tight
situations they’re never the kind that induce eye-rolling and cries of “Oh,
come on!” like any number of Bruce Willis vehicles I won’t sully this blog by
naming.
Kennedy is able to extricate
himself from peril several times in the film because he manages to stay one step
ahead of his adversaries (though admittedly, luck plays a part in one of his
escapes—but not of the implausible kind).
Kennedy’s intense interest in protecting the President stems
not from politics, but simply a personal one: Kennedy had been appointed as
Lincoln’s bodyguard while Abe campaigned in New York, and after only two days
of being in Lincoln’s company, Kennedy walked away believing “I was never so
taken with a human man.” One aspect of The Tall Target that fascinates me is that the politics in the film
isn’t the usual cut-and-dried “North good, South bad” dichotomy that permeates
movies of this type. There is spirited
discussion, pro and con, on the eve of Lincoln’s inauguration and the events
that will result in the War Between the States; one of my favorite minor characters
in the movie is played by OTR veteran Will Wright, a Hartford, CT building
supplies bidnessman named Thomas Ogden who’s no fan of Lincoln because Ogden’s
sussed out his company stands to lose a lot of money if there’s a war.
Wright’s character, along with many others, serves as a red
herring because as in any good suspense thriller, Kennedy’s adversaries are
often difficult to spot.
Throughout
Target, individuals believed to be
allies will turn on the hero, just as those people who are hostile or
indifferent to his plight later come through in the clutch.
At the risk of spoiling any of the events in the
movie, the one clear villain is the mysterious stranger (Leif Erickson) who
tries to pass himself off as Kennedy by appropriating John’s hat and coat
(containing his credentials and other personal effects—like his gun).
The character who gives Kennedy a much-needed
assist in his investigation is a slave maid named Rachel, played by the amazing
Ruby Dee in one of her earliest film roles.
Rachel is not some uncomfortable Butterfly-McQueen-in-
Gone-with-the-Wind stereotype, but a
three-dimensional individual who admittedly is torn between helping out Kennedy
and her loyalty to the mistress she serves, a Southern belle named Ginny
Beaufort (Paula Raymond).
Ginny and
Rachel are on their way back to their plantation, “Tall Trees,” with Ginny’s
brother Lance (Marshall Thompson)—a West Point grad—in tow.
Moviemakers learned early on (beginning with 1903’s The Great Train Robbery) that setting dramatic
conflicts against the background of a moving train was a surefire way to generate
suspense and excitement. In Target, there are many nods to one of
the granddaddies (or is it grandmammas?) of the genre, The Lady Vanishes (1938), in that the events in the beginning of
Target resemble the missing-person plot of Lady
(just where did Riley get to?) and later in Target, a vital clue in the assassination plot is scrawled in the soot
residue that’s collected on a train window.
Target also acts as a warm-up
for The Narrow Margin, released the
following year; the claustrophobic atmosphere of Target (thanks to the striking black-and-white cinematography of
Paul C. Vogel) is quite reminiscent of that memorable Chicago-to-L.A. train
excursion featuring TDOY faves
Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor.
 |
| The real reason why you watch The Tall Target: that's noir icon Percy Helton in the bottom-right corner as a minor character named "Beamish." |
Save for a snatch of
The
Battle Hymn of the Republic at the closing credits of
The Tall Target, there is no music score in the film—something I’m
sure was rather innovative at the time, as the soundtrack features nothing but
the sounds of the train and the various bells and whistles that accompany such
locomotives.
Target does, however, feature a plethora of beloved character
actors that’s become a hallmark of this blog: Florence Bates and Katherine
Warren are quite good in their roles, and Will Geer and Victor Kilian provide
comic relief as the train conductor and engineer, respectively—they’re not all
that concerned about rumors of assassination, they just want to make sure the
train runs on time.
That’s future
Leave
it to Beaver mom Barbara Billingsley as the mother of the little brat
who makes himself a nuisance on the train, and you’ll also spot the likes of
Robert Easton, Jonathan Hale, Frank Sully, and Emmett Lynn.
(I like how the indestructible Regis Toomey
continues the tradition of appearing in his pal Powell’s movies, by the way—in this
one, he plays the doomed Riley.)
One
actor who’s difficult to spot (he appears in the early scene where Powell’s
Kennedy is making his case to investigate the assassination rumors) is Ken
Christy—but that unmistakable voice gives him away every time.
And yes, Honest Abe even makes an appearance…in
the form of actor Leslie Kimmell.
