DVD Review
Railroaded, starring John Ireland, Hugh Beaumont, Shelia Ryan, Eagle-Lion Films, 1947
I am, and I am publically on record on this question, very indulgent toward an off-hand femme fatale in a film noir shooting up a guy, even a guy trying to help her, in order to get what she wants, usually the dough. It is a cruel world out there and a girl has got to do what a girl has to do to keep the wolves from the door. So I had no problem, or maybe just a little problem, when Jane Greer in Out Of The Past shot up her fancy man (Kirk Douglas) and ran off with some of his dough and he, just to keep his manhood intact, hired Robert Mitchum to go get her (and the dough). And, of course like with all guys, guys built for heavy lifting like Mitchum or just wimps like me, once old Mitchum got a look at her, or maybe even caught her scent in the Mexican night air he was a goner. So later when they were on the run and she off-handedly put a bullet or six in some new sleuth hired to find her and him I just charged it off to overhead. And even when things got tough and she needed to go back to her sugar daddy Kirk and things didn’t work out and she had to blast him, and in the end helpful Mitchum I just chalked it up to circumstances. Even with trigger happy junior league femmes like Irene (played by Helen Walker) in the film noir Impact I could see where her being married to some major league Walter Mitty-type would keep her from full attention to her low-rent boyfriend and gave her a pass on her plot to murder the guy. That is just the way I am with cinematic femmes.
But I draw the line with stone-cold killer guys, hard boys kept around to do some heavy lifting for an off-hand mobster lets’ say, like in the film under review, Railroaded. No dice, no way. They had got to get what is coming to them. Especially when said stone killer, here one Duke Martin, framed an innocent guy in the process. Maybe it is just because in real life I was close, way too close, to some junior league hard boys when I was growing up and they were winning their spurs by some ill-designed caper, like a mom and pop store robbery, or holding up a gas station in the days when they were easy to knock off, or maybe a liquor to get some walking around money. Hell, maybe it goes back before that when they would bonk a guy for his school lunch money or just bonk a guy to do it because they could do it. No indulgences, okay, none this side of heaven.
Duke, well, Duke Martin (played by John Ireland), as the story unfold in Railroaded, wouldn’t qualify for indulgences anyway whatever I thought of hard boys, or femmes for that matter. This guy had no manners as he tried to pin a busted bookie joint (his boss’ to boot) robbery on a delivery boy (a guy who did some hard war time service while Duke was probably shooting craps with some “mark”). Worst Duke offs with about as much regret as he would for swapping a fly every person who could, or who might, or maybe who just might think in the deep recesses of his or her mind about turning him in. No, this bad guy had got to fall, and fall hard.
And as is the nature of such film noirs Duke falls due to his own hubris, and his obsessive need to overplay every situation. He gets some help in his downfall by the intrepid work of the deliveryman’s fetching and no-nonsenses sister Rosie (played by Shelia Ryan) and tough but good (of course) cop Mickey (played by Hugh Beaumont) who play on his weaknesses for good-looking women (or rather the next best thing that comes along after he finishes with a dame) and a certain need to try to intimidate everybody around him. So he falls, and good riddance. Now if Rita Hayworth in say The Lady From Shang-hai had been in that fix, well, you know where I stand. Got it.
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