The Silk Express

One can count on one hand, nay, one finger, the number of Hollywood movies that deal with the importation of silk from Asia. This may be the only one and it goes way back to the beginning of talkies. Using this subject as the basis for a fairly good mystery that involves murder aboard a fast-moving train is rare indeed. The cast consists mainly of well known character actors under contract to Warner Brothers. Guy Kibbee plays Railway Detective McDuff who wants to slow the train down. Since the silk traders must get their shipment to New York within a certain time frame, the railway detective must be dealt with by the entrepreneurs. Competitors are also at work trying to sabotage the entire operation to make sure the train does not reach New York on schedule. They will stop at nothing including murder to stop the train so they can corner the market on silk. Kibbee did well when his role was limited to a few lines. When given a large role as in this movie, his loud banter becomes irritating at times rather than amusing. It is good to see the antics of Allen Jenkins toned down. He is actually a fairly decent actor when given the right role as in this film. He too tended to overact outrageously when given the opportunity. The rest of the cast including the two leads are adequate for their parts. The result is an entertaining little whodunit. And you may be surprised at the end unless you pay really close attention to detail.

"The Silk Express" was a pretty exciting movie. I think it adds an element of excitement when a murder mystery occurs on a moving vehicle as opposed to the standard mansion.

Donald Kilgore (Neil Hamilton) and his silk consortium needed to get a silk shipment from Seattle to New York in three days or less. The entire train was at Kilgore's disposal. At the same time an unscrupulous businessman named Wallace Myton (Arthur Hohl) was trying to prevent that train from ever reaching New York. He and his consortium of businessmen purchased all the available silk in the area which gave them a monopoly on the product. Silk clothing manufacturers would have to buy from them at their price or have no silk at all. The only way around Myton was to buy from Japan and have it shipped to New York. Of course, that takes time and ran the risk of Kilgore not fulfilling his contracts which meant financial ruin.

What it came down to was one set of businessmen versus another set of businessmen. Wealthy businessmen are not necessarily the ideal protagonists which is one of the two quibbles I had with this movie. The other had to do with the ending and the feeling that it was unresolved.

As viewers we knew that Myton had a few agents of his on the train to either prevent it from reaching New York or disrupt it so that it didn't reach New York on time. What we didn't know was who the three agents were. Two of them were readily identified while the third, his ace up his sleeve, was unknown.

As things happened (even a murder) it wasn't clear who was causing the disruptions. It could've been any number of people. There was Clark (Arthur Byron), the conductor, Prof. Axel Nyberg (Dudley Digges) who was supposedly suffering from sleeping sickness, Dr. Harold Rolph (Vernon Steele), the professor's doctor, Robert Griffith (Allen Jenkins), the tramp, or Mr. Calhoun (Robert Barrat), the attorney hired by Kilgore. It was hard to know who was working for Myton which made the movie interesting.

Also of note in the movie were Sheila Terry and Guy Kibbee. Sheila Terry played the daughter of the professor and Guy Kibbee played McDuff, a railway detective who was aboard the train to investigate a murder. He was only doing his job, but he was a direct impedance to Kilgore's progress.

I liked this murder mystery because of the added element of the timeline. Sure, there was a murder to solve, but at the same time the train had to reach New York by a certain time to avoid a financial catastrophe.

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... because this is a film about getting silk to the New York mills in time for the latest Paris fashions to hit the market on schedule. In 1933 a quarter of Americans were unemployed, and it's not like the cargo is something vital to life like baby formula or iron lungs. I can't see how you are going to get an audience worked up about a shipment of silk. But I digress.

So think of the silk as a McGuffin. Donald Kilgore (Neil Hamilton) is head of the New York mills protective association. Bad guy Wallace Myton (Arthur Hoyl) has bought up all of the silk he can lay his hands on and is price gouging. Kilgore can get a huge shipment sitting on the docks at Seattle on a train and back to the east coast in three days. Myton says if the association does that he won't sell them silk at any price. They refuse his offer and go with Kilgore's plan. So Myton does everything in his power to sabotage Kilgore's mission and stop that silk from getting to New York, and that includes murder.

Kilgore is aware of this possible threat, and brings on a transportation attorney to help with any legal snags (Robert Barrat as Calhoun). Also on board is a man with a rare form of sleeping sickness who will die in three days if he can't get to New York and the only clinic that can treat him. Accompanying him is his doctor and his grown daughter. Along the way there are two murders. And we already know from the scenes with Myton that he has three men on the train. Two are common criminals, but the third is an elite criminal who never fails. That is the set-up for this transcontinental trip.

The man with sleeping sickness and the urgency of his situation was probably inserted to A. Get a pretty young lady into the cast B. Inject some human interest rather than making this all about silk. It's a taut little film, running at a fast paced 61 minutes. It gives both Allen Jenkins and Guy Kibbee a chance to be something more than just the comic relief for a change, with Kibbee being a railroad officer and Jenkins an erudite boxcar tramp. That's the nice thing about these WB precodes. Each player always played a certain type. For example, you see Arthur Hoyl and you know right away his character is probably a slimy little weasel. You don't have to waste script space showing the audience he is a slimy little weasel.

This was a good little precode era film with nothing precode about it. WB should have used it as a model on how to make comedy in the production code era that would pass the censors but, alas, they did not.

With advance information that all the designers will be using silk for their spring lines, Arthur Hohl corners the commodity. Industry leader Neil Hamilton arranges for a major shipment from Japan. But when it arrives in San Francisco, it still has a train journey to the silk mills in New York. If Hamilton can get through, Hohl will be ruined. If not, Hamilton. Hohl has an agent aboard the train. Hamilton has the train's staff, Dudley Digges, whose scleroderma is turning him to stone, Digges' daughter Sheila Terry, and doctor Vernon Steele, and his lawyer. With railroad detective Guy Kibbee coming aboard to investigate a murder, can the train get through?

It's a highly imaginative set-up for a murder mystery, with the motive apparent from the beginning. It also deals with the motionless of many a mystery by putting it aboard a moving train, ably realized by Ray Enright. He was one of Warners' workhorse directors. He was able to turn out a musical or a war movie on demand. Studio directors like him are not held in such high esteem as 'auteurs', whose styles and themes are instantly recognizable. But directors who worked in a large variety of genres had the advantage of letting the well of creativity fill up a bit between, say westerns, while they worked on a comedy. They might not be possessed of a singular voice, but they turned out solid work and kept the standards of film making high. This improbably plotted movie is a good example of that sort of work.

With Arthur Byron, Allen Jenkins, and Vernon Steele.

Fast paced little mystery yarn features handsome NEIL HAMILTON in the lead as a man anxious to get his shipment of silk safely removed at the train's destination--but hampered in his efforts by a murder aboard The Silk Express.

Hamilton is determined and spunky as the lead, a far departure from his fate in a film from 1944 (SINCE YOU WENT AWAY) where he was only shown in a photo within a picture frame as Claudette Colbert's husband.

The supporting cast has a number of familiar Warner Bros. faces: Allen Jenkins, Guy Kibbe, Robert Barratt, Vernon Steele--but the round-up of suspects by detective Guy Kibbe is just one of the many clichés in the script which is riddled with just such moments. It comes across as Agatha Christie, without the wit, not that this is from a Christie play or novel.

Guy Kibbe as the detective is overly emphatic in his gruffness, as are just about all of the performances. It's strictly for movie buffs who aren't fussy about how over-baked acting was back in 1933 melodramas.