Universal-International

Let’s take a ride on the Southern Pacific. Many thanks to reader Tony Roberts for sending me an extra Blu-Ray disc of this movie to watch. Today’s feature is a late 1950’s film noir courtroom drama with about six minutes of railroad footage at the beginning. Apologies for the poor quality of the screen caps in this review. I plead extenuating circumstances.

The Espee was quite cooperative, renting a set of passenger train equipment, a pair of diesel locomotives and two, separate passenger stations for filmmakers to use. Not to mention “track and time”. ;p It looks like most on-board footage was on actual passenger cars with rear screen projection out the windows.

Actress Elaine Stewart, (seen above playing trophy wife Charleen Reston), provides the cheesecake in her “tattered dress” and although she doesn’t appear in any train scenes, she’s bound to show up somewhere in this review. What a Lark!

Hotshot New York lawyer Jim Blane (played by Jeff Chandler) has arrived in town to get a local crook off the murder charge. The townsfolk are not pleased. Note the Southern Pacific sleeping car in the background.

Our train narrative begins at 4:23 minutes into the movie. Establishing shot of an SP passenger train flying past the camera – gyralite spinning. I can just make out the numeral “4” in the locomotive’s number board. That would make this the eastbound SP-Rock Island Golden State train. The locomotives appear to be EMD E7’s painted in a Daylight red-orange paint scheme.

Reporter Ralph Adams (played by Edward Platt) and Jim Blane chat it up over drinks in the observation car. Lawyer Jim is on his way to Desert Valley to defend a client. Ralph is along to keep an eye on him and write a story about the trial.

The lounge car attendant notifies Jimbo that they will be arriving in Springfield in five minutes. As the train pulls in, we get our first view of the head end power: SP #6267, an EMD F7A built in 1949 is leading the train in Espee’s “Black Widow” paint scheme.

Point of order: Southern Pacific generally used the Black Widow scheme on Freight Units whereas diesels pulling passenger trains got the flashier Daylight scheme.

A view of the “Springfield” station. I THINK this might be the ex-SP Glendale, California depot, now a regional station for Amtrak and Metrolink. That is Jim’s long-suffering wife Diane (played by Jeanne Crain) and kids on the platform.

This is our first view of the passenger car exteriors. I believe most of these are Pullmans borrowed from the Southern Pacific’s “Lark” overnight train (San Francisco – Los Angeles). Coincidentally, these cars were painted in two shades of gray, separated by thin white stripes, which would have been a good match for the F7s…and keeping with the black and white “Noir” milieu.

This is just an intermediate stop to see the wife & kinder before he hops back on the train and heads west.

All too soon (it’s a 5 minute stop), Jim must hop back on the Lark equipment to the beseeching eyes of his family. Heavy guilt. Interesting sleeper corridor picture as Ralph/Chief watches from the hallway.

Welp, might as well have dinner. Who is this? Come, hither! The smiling face is actress Ziva Rodann (rahr-RAHR!) as “Woman on Train”. Naturally, she is seated at their table.

Comes the dawn, Jim and Ralph arrive at Bolton. I haven’t been able to identify this depot, but I suspect it was somewhere in the Los Angeles area, possibly on their “Coast Line” to San Francisco.

Exterior filming (non-train scenes) for “Desert Valley”, (where the trial took place), were in Palm Springs, but the old SP depot there looked nothing like the Bolton structure.

I did a screen grab of the F7B unit following SP #6267, but couldn’t get a unit # off the side; view from the vestibule of disgruntled onlookers as the train pulls in.

Ralph and Jim survey the menacing masses; A local from Desert Valley (played by Alexander Lockwood) arrives to chauffer them to their venue; Always tip your Porter!

Now they’ve got to run the gauntlet. This includes a couple of toughs leaning on the getaway car!

Let’s take a closer look at the last two cars of the train. Notice the black, rectangular patch behind the porter. SP carefully painted over the “LARK” script lettering.

I believe the last car is a duplex sleeper. Note the stripes are a little thicker and the tiny little upper and lower windows. It is possible the last car came off the City of San Francisco or SF Overland train.

Now at the 10:33 mark, we conclude the train scenes of the movie. So it’s time for an…

INTERLUDE!

We’ll start out with the vixen, Mrs. Charleen Reston (Elaine Stewart, Yabba Dabba Do!) wearing a blonde wig and tooling around in a fancy sports car (marrying the richest man in town has its perks).

And WHAT a car! My brother tells me she’s driving a 1954 Plymouth Explorer concept car, also called The Belmont. Thank you, MARK!!

Glam shots of the naughty temptress, including a studio still modeling the torn dress YOWZA!

Of course, when Mouthpiece Jim arrives, Mrs. Reston is poolside displaying her wares, like the shameless hussy she is.

Married harlots are not the only feminine pulchritude in this movie. Witness Gail Russell as “Crazy Eyes” Carol Morrow (I shot the sheriff) and notice how Jeanne Crain cleans up nicely (WOOF!) alongside Edward Platt as “Chief”.

Whoa. That was almost too much. Some of these B pictures just take your breath away. One of these days, I’m gonna watch the entire movie. I hear the courtroom scenes are pretty good. ;p

If you’d like to see the feature I reviewed yourself, the link is below:

That is, if it’s still on YouTube.

Here’s what IMDb has to say about The Tattered Dress:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051058/

If you have ANY information about this movie you’d like to share, please contact me at: Lindsay.Korst@gmail.com, or leave a comment.  Thanks and enjoy the blog!

THE END