Rice is perhaps best known for the Malone series, though the character’s fictional career began as a friend of a madcap couple, the handsome but dim press agent Jake Justus and his socially prominent bride-to-be, Helene Brand. Malone’s “Personal File” usually contains a bottle of rye. Despite his seeming irresponsibility, Malone inspired great loyalty among his friends, including the Justuses, Maggie Cassidy, his long-suffering and seldom-paid secretary, and Captain Daniel von Flanagan of the Chicago homicide squad. The series began with Eight Faces at Three in 1939 and ran for a dozen novels.
“Once Upon a Train” begins when a crook for whom Malone got an acquittal fails to show up for the celebratory party as he takes off with $100,000 in cash. He boards a train from Chicago to New York, with Malone in pursuit—and he’s not alone. Naturally, as these things always seem to happen to the old schoolteacher, Miss Withers finds his body.
The story has a charming moment in which a character is identified as Horace Lee Randolph, a nod to one of Rice’s birth names, and another reminds Malone of Miss Hackett—the teacher on whom Palmer largely based Hildegarde Withers.
THE FILM
Title: Mrs. O’Malley and Mr. Malone, 1950
Studio: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Director: Norman Taurog
Screenwriter: William Bowers
Producer: William H. Wright
THE CAST
• Marjorie Main (Harriet “Hattie” O’Malley)
• James Whitmore (John J. Malone)
• Ann Dvorak (Connie Kepplar)
• Phyllis Kirk (Kay)
• Fred Clark (Inspector Tim Marino)
• Dorothy Malone (Lola Gillway)
There is some resemblance between “Once Upon a Train” and Mrs. O’Malley and Mr. Malone, but not much. The action in both takes place on a train, and John J. Malone is aboard with a crook who owes him money.
However, Hildegarde Withers is nowhere to be found in the film, and the central character of the film, Mrs. Hattie O’Malley, does not make even a cameo appearance in the story, and is a total creation of the screenwriter.
Steve Kepplar, a crook, has just been released from jail. The $100,000 from the bank embezzlement that sent him to the slammer has never been recovered and his lawyer, Malone, is chasing him to collect his $10,000 fee. Also on board is Mrs. O’Malley, on her way to New York to collect a $50,000 prize in a radio contest; the recently divorced Connie Kepplar, who wants some of the loot because of alimony she’s owed; Lola Gillway, the girlfriend of Kepplar’s associate, who wouldn’t mind some of the cash; and Tim Marino, a police detective who wants to recoup the swag—all of it. It is not long before Kepplar is murdered, someone is trying to frame Malone, and a plethora of sleuths try to find the murderer: the cop, Malone, and Mrs. O’Malley, who has read too many mystery stories and figures she can solve the case as well as anyone.
This was planned as the first of a series of humorous detective movies starring Marjorie Main and James Whitmore, but it was not a box office success, so the notion of sequels was scuttled.
The working title for the film during production was The Loco Motive, far snappier than its eventual title.
The opening scene shows the radio program that Mrs. O’Malley won. It is hosted by Jack Bailey, who became a famous television personality soon after, when he hosted the hugely popular television series Queen for a Day.
To let audiences know that they were about to see a movie that was more comedy than mystery, a humorous prologue appears in the onscreen credits: “The producers of this picture feel that the attorney depicted herein should be disbarred and strongly suggest that the American Bar Association do something about it.”
ONCE UPON A TRAIN
Stuart Palmer & Craig Rice
“IT WAS NOTHING, REALLY,” said John J. Malone with weary modesty. “After all, I never lost a client yet.”
The party in Chicago’s famed Pump Room was being held to celebrate the miraculous acquittal of Stephen Larsen, a machine politician accused of dipping some thirty thousand dollars out of the municipal till. Malone had proved to the jury and to himself that his client was innocent—at least, innocent of that particular charge.
It was going to be a nice party, the little lawyer kept telling himself. By the way Larsen’s so-called friends were bending their elbows, the tab would be colossal. Malone hoped fervently that his fee for services rendered would be taken care of today, before Larsen’s guests bankrupted him. Because there was the matter of two months’ back office rent….
“Thank you, I will,” Malone said, as the waiter picked up his empty glass. He wondered how he could meet the redhead at the next table, who looked sultry and bored in the midst of a dull family party. As soon as he got his money from Larsen he would start a rescue operation. The quickest way to make friends, he always said, was to break a hundred-dollar bill in a bar, and that applied even to curvaceous redheads in Fath models.
But where was Steve Larsen? Lolly was here, wearing her most angelic expression and a slinky gown which she overflowed considerably at the top. She was hinting that the party also celebrated a reconciliation between herself and Stevie; that the divorce was off. She had hocked her bracelet again, and Malone remembered hearing that her last show had closed after six performances. If she got her hand back into Steve’s pocket, Malone reflected, goodbye to his fee of three grand.
He’d made elaborate plans for that money. They not only included the trip to Bermuda which he’d been promising himself for twenty years, but also the redhead he’d been promising himself for twenty minutes.
Others at the table were worrying too. “Steve is late, even for him!” spoke up Allen Roth suddenly.
Malone glanced at the porcine paving contractor who was rumored to be Larsen’s secret partner, and murmured, “Maybe he got his dates mixed.”
“He’d better show,” Roth said, in a voice as cold as a grave-digger’s shovel.
The little lawyer shivered, and realized that he wasn’t the only guest who had come here to make a collection. But he simply had to have that money. $3,000—$30,000. He wondered, half musing, if he shouldn’t have made his contingent fee, say, $2,995. This way it almost looked like…
“What did you say about ten per cent, counselor?” Bert Glick spoke up wisely.
Malone recovered himself. “You misunderstood me. I merely said, ‘When on pleasure bent, never muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.’ I mean rye.” He turned to look for the waiter, not solely from thirst. The little lawyer would often have been very glad to buy back his introduction to Bert Glick.
True, the City Hall hanger-on had been helpful during the trial. In fact, it had been his testimony as a prosecution witness that had clinched the acquittal, for he had made a surprise switch on several moot points of the indictment. Glick was a private detective turned bail-bondsman, clever at tapping wires and dipping his spoon into any gravy that was being passed.
Glick slapped Malone on the back and said, “If you knew what I know, you wouldn’t be looking at your watch all the time. Because this ain’t a coming out party, it’s a surprise party. And the surprise is that the host ain’t gonna be here!”
Malone went cold—as cold as Allen Roth’s gray eyes across the table. “Keep talking,” he said, adding in a whisper a few facts which Glick might not care to have brought to the attention of the district attorney.
“You don’t need to be so nasty,” Glick said. He rose suddenly to his feet, lifting his glass. “A toast! A toast to good ol’ Stevie, our pal, who’s taking the Super-Century for New York tonight, next stop Paris or Rio. And with him, my fine feathered friends, he’s taking the dough he owes most of us, and a lot more too. Bon voyage!” The man absorbed the contents of his glass and slowly collapsed in his chair.
There was a sudden hullabaloo around the table. Malone closed his eye
s for just five seconds, resigning himself to the certainty that his worst suspicions were true. When he opened his eyes again, the redhead was gone. He looked at his watch. There was still a chance of catching that New York train, with a quick stop at Joe the Angel’s bar to borrow the price of a ticket. Malone rushed out of the place, wasting no time in farewells. Everybody else was leaving too, so that finally Glick was left alone with the waiter and with the check.
As Malone had expected, Joe the Angel took a very dim view of the project, pointing out that it was probably only throwing good money after bad. But he handed over enough for a round trip, plus Pullman. By the time his cab had dumped him at the I.C. station, Malone had decided to settle for one way. He needed spending money for the trip. There were poker games on trains.
Suddenly he saw the redhead! She was jammed in a crowd at the gate, crushed between old ladies, noisy sailors, and a bearded patriarch in the robes of the Greek Orthodox Church. She struggled with a mink coat, a yowling cat in a traveling case, and a caged parrot.
Malone leaped gallantly to her rescue, and for a brief moment was allowed to hold the menagerie, before a Redcap took over. The moment was just long enough for the lawyer to have his hand clawed by the irate cat, and for him and the parrot to develop a lifelong dislike. But he did hear the girl say, “Compartment B in Car 10, please.” And her warm grateful smile sent him racing off in search of the Pullman conductor.
Considerable eloquence, some trifling liberties with the truth, and a ten-dollar bill got him possession of the drawing room next to a certain compartment. That settled, he paused to make a quick deal with a roving Western Union boy, and more money changed hands. When he finally swung aboard the already moving train, he felt fairly confident that the trip would be pleasant and eventful. And lucrative, of course. The minute he got his hands on Steve Larsen…
Once established in the drawing room, Malone studied himself in the mirror, whistling a few bars of “The Wabash Cannonball.” For the moment the primary target could wait. He was glad he was wearing his favorite Finchley suit, and his new green-and-lavender Sulka tie.
“A man of distinction,” he thought. True, his hair was slightly mussed, a few cigar ashes peppered his vest, and the Sulka tie was beginning to creep toward one ear, but the total effect was good. Inspired, he sat down to compose a note to Operation Redhead, in the next compartment. He knew it was the right compartment, for the parrot was already giving out with imitations of a boiler factory, assisted by the cat.
He wrote:
Lovely lady,
Let’s not fight Fate. We were destined to have dinner together. I am holding my breath for your yes.
Your unknown admirer,
J.J.M.
He poked the note under the connecting door, rapped lightly, and waited.
After a long moment the note came back, with an addition in a surprisingly precise hand.
Sir, You have picked the wrong girl. Besides, I had dinner in the Pump Room over an hour ago, and so, I believe, did you.
Undaunted, Malone whistled another bar of the song. Just getting any answer at all was half the battle. So she’d noticed him in the Pump Room! He sat down and wrote swiftly:
Please, an after-dinner liqueur with me, then?
This time the answer was:
My dear sir: MY DEAR SIR!
But the little lawyer thought he heard sounds of feminine laughter, though of course it might have been the parrot. He sat back, lighted a fresh cigar, and waited. They were almost to Gary now, and if the telegram had got through…
It had, and a messenger finally came aboard with an armful of luscious Gruss von Teplitz roses. Malone intercepted him long enough to add a note which really should be the clincher.
To the Rose of Tralee, who makes all other women look like withered dandelions. I’ll be waiting in the club car. Faithfully, John J. Malone.
That was the way, he told himself happily. Don’t give her a chance to say No again.
After a long and somewhat bruising trip through lurching Pullman cars, made longer still because he first headed fore instead of aft, Malone finally sank into a chair in the club-car lounge, facing the door. Of course, she would take time to arrange the roses, make a corsage out of a couple of buds, and probably shift into an even more startling gown. It might be quite a wait. He waved at the bar steward and said, “Rye, please, with a rye chaser.”
“You mean rye with a beer chaser, Mr. Malone?”
“If you know my name, you know enough not to confuse me. I mean beer with a rye chaser!” When the drink arrived Malone put it where it would do the most good, and then for lack of anything better to do fell to staring in awed fascination at the lady who had just settled down across the aisle.
She was a tall, angular person who somehow suggested a fairly well-dressed scarecrow. Her face seemed faintly familiar, and Malone wondered if they’d met before. Then he decided that she reminded him of a three-year-old who had winked at him in the paddock at Washington Park one Saturday and then run out of the money.
Topping the face—as if anything could—was an incredible headpiece consisting of a grass-green crown surrounded by a brim of nodding flowers, wreaths and ivy. All it seemed to need was a nice marble tombstone.
She looked up suddenly from her magazine. “Pardon me, but did you say something about a well-kept grave?” Her voice reminded Malone of a certain Miss Hackett who had talked him out of quitting second-year high school. Somehow he found himself strangely unable to lie to her.
“Madam, do you read minds?”
“Not minds, Mr. Malone. Lips, sometimes.” She smiled. “Are you really the John J. Malone?”
He blinked. “How in the—oh, of course! The magazine! Those fact-detective stories will keep writing up my old cases. Are you a crime-story fan, Mrs. —?”
“Miss. Hildegarde Withers, schoolteacher by profession and meddlesome old snoop by avocation, at least according to the police. Yes, I’ve read about you. You solve crimes and right wrongs, but usually by pure accident while chasing through saloons after some young woman who is no better than she should be. Are you on a case now?”
“Working my way through the second bottle,” he muttered, suddenly desperate. It would never do for the redhead to come in and find him tied up with this character.
“I didn’t mean that kind of a case,” Miss Withers explained. “I gather that even though you’ve never lost a client, you have mislaid one at the moment?”
Malone shivered. The woman had second sight, at least. He decided that it would be better if he went back through the train and met the Rose of Tralee, who must certainly be on her way here by this time. He could also keep an eye open for Steve Larsen. With a hasty apology he got out of the club car, pausing only to purchase a handy pint of rye from the bar steward, and started on a long slow prowl of mile after mile of wobbling, jerking cars. The rye, blending not unpleasantly with the champagne he had taken on earlier, made everything a little hazy and unreal. He kept getting turned around and blundering into the long-deserted diner. Two or three times he bumped into the Greek Orthodox priest with the whiskers, and similarly kept interrupting four sailors shooting craps in a men’s lounge.
But—no redhead. And no Larsen. Finally the train stopped—could it be Toledo already? Malone dashed to the vestibule and hung over the step, to make sure that Steve didn’t disembark. When they were moving again he resumed his pilgrimage, though by this time he had resigned himself to the fact that he was being stood up by the Rose of Tralee. At last, he turned mournfully back toward where his own lonesome cubicle ought to be—and then suddenly found himself back in the club car!
No redheaded Rose. Even The Hat had departed, taking her copy of Official Fact Detective Stories with her. The car was deserted except for a bridge game going on in one corner and a sailor—obviously half-seas over—who
was drowsing in a big chair with a newspaper over his face.
The pint was empty. Malone told the steward to have it buried with full military honors, and to fetch him a cheese on rye. “On second thought, skip the cheese and make it just straight rye, please.”
The drink arrived, and with it a whispered message. There was a lady waiting down the corridor.
Malone emptied his glass and followed the steward, trying to slip him five dollars. It slipped right back. “Thanks, Mr. Malone, but I can’t take money from an old classmate. Remember, we went through the last two years of Kent College of Law together?”
Malone gasped. “Class of ’45. And you’re Homer—no, Horace Lee Randolph. But—”
“What am I doing here? The old story. Didn’t know my place, and got into Chicago Southside politics. Bumped up against the machine, and got disbarred on a phony charge of subornation of perjury. It could have been squared by handing a grand to a certain sharper at City Hall, but I didn’t have the money.” Horace shrugged. “This pays better than law, anyway. For instance, that lady handed me five dollars just to unlock the private lounge and tell you she’s waiting to see you there.”
The little lawyer winced. “She—was she a queer old maid in a hat that looked like she’d made it herself?”
“Oh, no. No hat.”
Malone breathed easier. “Was she young and lovely?”
“My weakness is the numbers game, but I should say the description is accurate.”
Humming “But ’twas not her beauty alone that won me; oh, no, ’twas the truth…” Malone straightened his tie and opened the door.
Lolly Larsen exploded in his face with all the power of a firecracker under a tin can. She grabbed his lapels and yelped: “Well, where is the dirty ——?”
“Be more specific. Which dirty ——?” Malone said, pulling himself loose.
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 77