The New Pictures, Aug. 7, 1950

• Share

Mystery Street (MGM) is a low-budget melodrama without box-office stars or advance ballyhoo. It does not pretend to do much more than tell a straightaway, logical story of scientific crime detection. Within such modest limits, Director John Sturges* and Scripters Sydney Boehm and Richard Brooks have treated the picture with such taste and craftsmanship that it is just about perfect.

The audience soon knows the identity of Mystery Street's murderer, but the police have only one clue: the victim's skeleton on a Cape Cod beach. In absorbing, plausible detail, the movie shows how a policeman (Ricardo Montalban) works exhaustively to follow up the findings of a Harvard medical specialist (Bruce Bennett). After poking among the bones, the doctor deduces the victim's age, sex, occupation, the date and cause of death and —by matching a set of photographs with the skull—even a name and address.

All the performers seem to be working on the theory that there should be no difference in quality between a B picture and its budgetary betters. Montalban is natural and likable as an eager small-town detective on his first big case; Sally Forrest plays the role of the wrong suspect's wife for all it is worth, and Elsa Lanchester is a delight as a snooping, gin-drinking landlady with genteel airs.

Our Very Own (Samuel Goldwyn; RKO Radio), coming out foursquare in favor of the U.S. home and family, sets up what may be the most piercing din of twanging heartstrings since Stella Dallas.

In telling the story of the Macaulays, "a typical U.S. family," Producer Sam Goldwyn has spared nothing to make them typical of Hollywood: a home out of Rouse Beautiful, two cars, a servant and elegant wardrobes. To keep his teen-aged heroine (Ann Blyth) and her younger sisters (Joan Evans and Natalie Wood) just as true to type, Goldwyn got the scripting services of F. Hugh (Kiss and Tell) Herbert, the Boswell of the suburban bobbysoxer.

Heroine Ann, happy, secure and in love with her boy friend (Farley Granger), is looking forward to her high-school graduation and a summer job. Then everything seems to crumble as Sister Joan, in a fit of envy, lets slip the guarded news that Ann is an adopted child. Her parents (Donald Cook and Jane Wyatt) had never got around to telling her. Ann rejects them, her sisters and her beau, sulks and suffers until a disillusioning meeting with her real mother (Ann Dvorak) helps her to realize her adopted family's true worth.

Much the best thing in the picture is the anguish and suspense of the sequence in which the girl goes to the wrong side of the tracks to see her mother for the first time. As the mother, curious and eager to see her child but desperately anxious to keep the girl's existence a secret from her husband, veteran Actress Dvorak gives a sure, touching performance. Apart from these scenes, the movie is as slick, sugary and shallow as cake icing.