The Narrow Margin Packs a Wide Wallop
1952 Classic Set on Speeding Train Co-Stars Noir Icon Marie Windsor
Oct 20, 2009
The setup is simple: two Los Angeles cops must ferry a gangster's widow by train from Chicago to L.A., so she can testify before a grand jury about her husband's "payoff list." The detectives know mobsters will be gunning for their charge. But the bad guys don't know what she looks like, so it'll be cat-and-mouse games for 1,500 miles.
Marie Windsor in Suggestive Wardrobe
Nice premise for an inexpensive picture. But the devil is in the details, and just when you think the story is going one way, it throws curves at you -- and not just the ones straining the top of Marie Windsor's tight negligee.
Before the end of the first act, one of the cops is dead, leaving the other to handle the risky assignment solo. And then there are dual cases of mistaken identity which complicate matters and ratchet up the tension.
Such twists and turns would derail a lesser train picture. But The Narrow Margin's surprises, combined with sharply-drawn characters and an almost documentary style, result in a fast, slick train ride through some amazing twists and turns, taking the audience all the way to the end of the line.
Charles McGraw Leads Cast of Mostly Unknowns
The film boasts a typical B-movie cast -- a familiar face or two, but otherwise fairly anonymous people pulled from the pool of contract players and freelance character types.
In the lead is square-jawed Charles McGraw. As Det. Walter Brown, McGraw is a by-the-book tough cop, complete with trench coat and gravelly, cigarette-sanded voice. For years, McGraw specialized in playing cops, military figures or hoods, and had been making movies for a decade when he was cast as the doggedly determined detective.
It's his character that holds the entire story together.
Marie Windsor Unforgettable as Tough Broad
Leading lady Marie Windsor is ferocious as the mobster's widow, Mrs. Frankie Neall. Windsor had made 42 films in 11 years -- often without billing -- before The Narrow Margin put her on the map. She had the perfect look for the role, with high cheekbones, razor-sharp features and a sculptured figure contributing both danger and eroticism to the film.
And Windsor loved making the movie.
"It didn't hurt that the script was terrific," wrote film noir expert Eddie Muller. "(Windsor) got to trade zingers, start to finish, with co-star McGraw, a regular fellow, without a whiff of vanity. Marie's kind of guy: 'I loved working with him.'" (Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir, by Eddie Muller, Regan Books, 2001)
Unfortunately for Windsor, she was so good that after Margin, she was typecast as a tough noir dame.
Jacqueline White Comes Out of Retirement to Play Key Role
The second female lead went to Jacqueline White. Her soft features, warm smile and demure manner were a deliberate contrast to Windsor's brittle bearing. White plays passenger Ann Sinclair, who is traveling with her young son and his nanny. Ann flirts with Det. Brown, then gets caught up in all the danger.
White was a former MGM contract player visiting friends in the studio commissary when she was spotted by Margin producer Stanley Rubin and the film's director/co-scenarist, Richard Fleischer. They quickly offered her the role.
Among supporting players, veteran character Don Beddoe brings a nice touch as McGraw's quietly ironic partner. And Paul Maxey is memorable as a portly passenger who turns out to be a railroad detective.
Noir Dialogue Never Better Than in The Narrow Margin
As in the best noirs, the dialogue sparkles.
For example, early on, Det. Brown assesses the situation with Mrs. Neall:
"So far they haven't spotted you, and they don't know what you look like. But they've seen me. If they start shooting in my direction, I don't want you hit."
"You sure," she responds snidely, "it isn't the other way around?"
And when Windsor's character suggests double-crossing the grand jury and selling out to the villains, his response is quick:
"Mrs. Neall, I'd like to give you the same answer I gave that hood. But it would mean stepping on your face."
RKO's Howard Hughes Nearly Derails Picture
The backstage story of The Narrow Margin has as much intrigue as the movie itself.
Two years after principal photography wrapped in mid-1950, the film languished, unreleased. Marie Windsor kept asking her agent what happened.
It turns out Margin lay in limbo because RKO's owner, Howard Hughes, loved it -- but used the Fleischer picture as leverage to get another picture fixed.
According to author Eddie Muller, Hughes asked Fleischer, one of RKO's contract directors, to fix the third act of His Kind of Woman, a big budget vehicle with Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell.
In exchange, Muller wrote, Hughes would let Fleischer completely re-shoot Margin with Mitchum and Russell. He also promised to quadruple the original's $230,000 budget. It was simple blackmail: Fleischer was being offered a shot at A-pictures if he'd play along. But he was truly proud of Margin and heartsick to think his little noir gem would get buried.
The Narrow Margin a Surprise Hit of 1952
He needn't have worried. Despite the intrigue, Fleischer's original was released after all, in May, 1952, to wide praise and healthy profits for the otherwise troubled studio.
For $230,000, RKO got its money's worth. The evocative noir tones are especially effective in well-executed scenes involving camera trickery.
In some beautifully-composed shots, Fleischer and Director of Photography George E. Diskrant use nighttime window reflections to track a villain's car keeping pace with the speeding train.
The film catapulted Fleischer from B-moviehood to A-picture director. Among his later films were 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Compulsion, Fantastic Voyage, The Boston Strangler and Tora! Tora! Tora!, among others.
Fleischer was a child of Hollywood. His father Max was a pioneering animator perhaps best known for the cartoon character Betty Boop.
The film was remade in 1990 as Narrow Margin, with Gene Hackman and Anne Archer.
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