Classic movie site with rare images, original ads, and behind-the-scenes photos, with informative and insightful commentary. We like to have fun with movies!
Archive and Links
grbrpix@aol.com
Search Index Here




Monday, June 24, 2024

Lawdog McGraw Hampered By One of His Own?

 


Favorites List --- The Narrow Margin


I’ve a fundamental beef with Marie Windsor’s character in The Narrow Margin. As shown above, she turns out to be a policewoman gone undercover on behalf of the “Internal Affairs Division” to root out cops receiving “graft and payoffs.” Her function then is to fink out fellow law enforcement officers in event they coddle criminals. Posing as the widow of a murdered kingpin, she will be escorted cross-country by detective sergeant Walter Brown (Charles McGraw) and work partner of six years, Det. Sgt. Gus Forbes (Don Beddoe), “Mrs. Frankie Neall” slated to testify against Mob interests, except Mrs. Neall is really “Sarah Meggs” who is planted for purpose of “testing” Brown and Forbes in event they choose to play ball with baddies. Gus is shot down as the pair attempt to escort their phony witness down shabby apartment stairs, after which faux Mrs. Neall disparages the late Forbes for having “got himself killed.” Brown understandably hates her and we are encouraged to do likewise. Here’s the thing: I disapprove of Ms. Neall/Sarah Meggs much the more on realizing she not only brought about Forbes’ death but will devote herself to making the now-solo Brown’s mission a miserable one, being non-stop rude toward the detective who blames himself for Gus’s death. She is determined also to corrupt clean-record Brown by proposing they both prosper on thirty-thousand so far offered by assassins who have boarded Chicago-to-L.A. train with intent to kill. “Why did they stick me with a decoy?” asks Brown once put right re the scheme and indeed we might pose the same question. Would less lives have been lost had “Mrs. Neall” confided her true identity to lighten Brown’s considerable load? Consider carnage she caused to possibly entrap what we know to be an upright cop. My sympathy over her fate went right out a window upon unmasking of this Internal Affairs plant. Does response derive from repeated seventies-eighties movie incident of venality within IA ranks? Harry Callahan got pains a-plenty from them, and often as not, IA personnel were themselves on the take. Maybe I’m muddled for years of slip-slide ethics as practiced by movies. Is it too late to bring back simple white hats and black hats?




The Narrow Margin
wasn’t meant to ponder beyond 71-minute runtime but note that like with comedy or any preset genre, characters are expected to behave as viewership might, given a same set of circumstance, this assuming we root with such characters. I on one hand might admire the policewoman's sacrifice and risk she took, but meaningful is fact the film does not address this nor refer to Officer Meggs after her death. Was recognition passed over to keep focus on Margin's witness/potential victim switch? To explore result of Meggs' conduct might muddy an already crowded third act. Fleet-paced programmers had not time or inclination to iron wrinkles in narrative, and even if they did, would a 1952 audience sit patient for it? Tis not for me to complain of how The Narrow Margin resolves, but might detective Brown reflect once smoke clears and he’s back on a daily beat? Having reviewed events at greater leisure with fixed income colleagues who have their own beef with higher-ups, might Brown protest, take the argument upstairs, bawl out the Commissioner even (but what if latter is dirty and previous object of Officer Meggs investigation?). Like Harry Callahan later on, Brown might toss his badge in the drink and opt henceforth for private work, or maybe like McGraw on other screen occasions, investigate insurance fraud (Roadblock), perhaps switch sides and knock over an armored car (William Talman could have used McGraw brains for that Robbery gone ultimately wrong).




Readership might someday tell me to shut up and enjoy these old pictures for what they are. Trouble is complexity within best of them crying out for alternate reads which I doggedly apply. Remember My Man Godfrey, Holiday, Suspicion? This is getting to be a habit. Is there such thing as Classic Era Rehab? The Narrow Margin was seen as special right from belated start, being finished two years before but for Howard Hughes as head of RKO dithering over release. He in fact wanted to scrap a whole thing and begin again as an A project with Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell, HH nuts enough to take the loss and have things his peculiar way. His Kind of Woman was said to have been a very different show before being virtually remade in Hughes image. Remember juggling of The Window before it finally got into theatres? As with The Narrow Margin, huzzahs called that 1949 thriller a sleeper. RKO was odd sort of address where miracles could happen. Merchandising however shrank from sleeper label because no, The Narrow Margin was wide awake and sure enough to be a mainstream hit, ads going offbeat direction to let patrons know this was no ordinary suspense ride, nor arty beyond their grasp. I sense Terry Turner behind this campaign and why not? He was live wire for Snow White’s reissue, ditto King Kong, and Sudden Fear, all selling 1952 tickets by bushels. The “Fat Man with a Gun” gag was something new. Did it remind watchers of Hitchcock's profile as assist to his output? Canadian venues compared The Narrow Margin with “Classic Tradition” of Hitchcock and Carol Reed. TIME magazine evoked The Lady Vanishes and Night Train (to Munich), reputations of these heady since long before. “A new school of ad styling” said the Motion Picture Herald, and yes, for something without stars, The Narrow Margin offered a memorable night out, if placed on lower level of bills.



Opinions weren’t uniform, the Catholic Film Society (London) figuring The Narrow Margin best suited to “normal male adolescents.” 1952 appealed to such for clear majority of showgoing, as in aim toward youth or go hungry. We like noir but for then-reviewers, they were common as dirt, including diamonds amidst much ruffage. The Exhibitor called Margin “a mishmash … the twists become ludicrous.” And here we are writing how inventive those twists are. A crowded marketplace barely saw difference between ordinary genre product and ones above fray mostly frayed. Still it was news when The Narrow Margin stayed eleven weeks at New York’s Trans-Lux, oft-art address not given to penny candy, anything they’d book amounting to endorsement for the venue’s invitation alone. Management left it for local press and discriminating critics to do the rest. Wider spread cinemas took their own chance, some to thrive, others to thud. “Make sure you sell the streamliner,” said the Motion Picture Herald, “display model railroads in the lobby” if possible, this presupposing you’d book The Narrow Margin for more than a day or two, many if not most situations opting for short hops, Margin its own streamliner rushed through town and on to a next brief stop. Outlying management ID’ed what may have been a central problem: “I would surely like to know who puts the titles to some of these motion pictures. Our business was no good because the title was not understood. Why couldn’t they have named it “The Eastbound Death” or something with a snappy title?” Why indeed? Nostalgia drives this train, even, or especially, for those of us who never knew dining cars, red caps, upper berths, the rest. Confinement speeds tempo. I’d as soon McGraw begin another murder hunt on heels of this one, such is comfort riding beside him. Adjustments? Less of gabby Gordon Gebert, otherwise yes to Photoplay bouquet for “a movie that moves, with a story that clicks!” The Narrow Margin so far eludes on Blu-Ray, but there is a DVD of good quality.

5 Comments:

Blogger Mike Cline said...

Chalk me up as being one of Marie Windsor's biggest fans. I LOVE her in anything. Meeting her in person and having a nice chat cemented my respect for her. She could not have been nicer.

8:18 AM  
Blogger Beowulf said...

I envy you, Mike. I really do. Add Beverly Garland and I'm a happy guy.

12:07 PM  
Blogger Kevin K. said...

It's available on Internet Archive in a decent version, the kind you'd have watched on late night TV. Surprised it hasn't made it to Blu-Ray though.

6:18 PM  
Blogger DBenson said...

Films like "Narrow Margin" convinced Walt Disney to entrust "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" to Richard Fleischer. One wonders what he saw in those tight little noirs.

4:43 PM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Dan Mercer considers varied subtleties of THE NARROW MARGIN:


I appreciate your ambivalence towards the Sarah Meggs character in “The Narrow Margin.” For a good cop like Walter Brown, the realization that his bosses thought that he could be on take was devastating. A man’s reputation is not his own but the possession of other people. However, you should be a little kinder to her. She was just doing her job and a dangerous one at that, in being a decoy for the real Mrs. Frankie Neale, who was on the same train. That raises an interesting conundrum, though, which I had not considered before. We in the audience do not know who Mrs. Frankie Neale is. We would be willing to believe that she could be the tough broad impersonated by Sarah Meggs, someone with a pragmatic take on life who uses her sex as others might loose change. She was a gangster’s moll, wasn’t she? We wouldn’t guess that she might be like that rather pretty, nice young woman on the train with her son, with the good manners and quiet restraint of a middle-class matron. But would the crime lords who sent out the killers to intercept Mrs. Frankie Neale also been unaware of who she is? Would her identity have been so hidden from them that anyone could be labeled “Mrs. Frankie Neale” and they would strike out at her, like a bull charging a matador’s cape? During the course of the movie, Sarah Meggs plays off Walter Brown’s stoic acceptance of what goes with his job, all the better to probe what underlies it and to carry out her impersonation. The nice young woman seems to be there to provide a counterpoint to the harshness of the Meggs character and suggest the possibility of another kind of life for Brown, one where his courage and strength might find a more chivalrous expression. As it turns out, the nice young woman is Mrs. Frankie Neale, hidden in plain sight, so that all attention will be turned upon Sarah Meggs. But could the qualities that make the real Mrs. Frankie Neale so different from the woman played by Sarah Meggs have been unknown to the gang lords? It would seem extraordinary if they were, as though a Botticelli might hang unnoticed in a gallery of avant garde art. Possibly Mrs. Frankie Neale in life was rather like the character portrayed by Sarah Meggs and this impression she gives on the train is itself a disguise, but one that plays upon characteristics that were always there, save for circumstances or bad choices. As a back story, it would make sense. The suggestion of another life offered to Walter Brown in her is no less the life she would want to assume. In any case, I enjoy “The Narrow Margin” for the sense of a world unto itself, created in the confines of a transcontinental train, where human morality is played out in forceful vignettes and suspense found in the choices that are constantly posed. But the thematic hook of truth and falsity or good and evil finds a disturbing ambiguity, when what was hidden should have been known all along, unless the heart with its secrets wears many masks.

8:05 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

grbrpix@aol.com
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • February 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • November 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2019
  • April 2019
  • May 2019
  • June 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2019
  • September 2019
  • October 2019
  • November 2019
  • December 2019
  • January 2020
  • February 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2020
  • August 2020
  • September 2020
  • October 2020
  • November 2020
  • December 2020
  • January 2021
  • February 2021
  • March 2021
  • April 2021
  • May 2021
  • June 2021
  • July 2021
  • August 2021
  • September 2021
  • October 2021
  • November 2021
  • December 2021
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022
  • October 2022
  • November 2022
  • December 2022
  • January 2023
  • February 2023
  • March 2023
  • April 2023
  • May 2023
  • June 2023
  • July 2023
  • August 2023
  • September 2023
  • October 2023
  • November 2023
  • December 2023
  • January 2024
  • February 2024
  • March 2024
  • April 2024
  • May 2024
  • June 2024
  • July 2024
  • August 2024
  • September 2024