The Tall Target (1951)

A New York City detective, traveling by train between New York and Baltimore, tries to foil an on-board plot to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln before he reaches Baltimore to give a major pre-Inauguration speech in 1861.

Director:

Anthony Mann

Writers:

George Worthing Yates (screenplay), Art Cohn (screenplay)

Stars:

Dick Powell, Paula Raymond, Adolphe Menjou

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Dick Powell	...	John Kennedy
Paula Raymond	...	Ginny Beaufort
Adolphe Menjou	...	Colonel Caleb Jeffers
Marshall Thompson	...	Lance Beaufort
Ruby Dee	...	Rachel - Slave Maid
Richard Rober	...	Lt. Coulter
Leif Erickson	...	Stranger
Will Geer	...	Homer Crowley - Train Conductor
Florence Bates	...	Mrs. Charlotte Alsop

Storyline

The historical fact of a possible assassination attempt on the President-Elect Abraham Lincoln makes the movie very interesting. The drama comes from a fictitious New York police sergeant discovering the plot and boarding the last train to Washington, DC, to protect the new president to be. Dick Powell does a very good job using deduction and logic to find who on the train could be conspirators. He is foiled at different times but manages to succeed even when the conspirators have caught him. The movie's action takes place mostly on the train and the effects of travelling are well done. Historically, several states have already seceded from the union and that included Virginia. That's why Lincoln had to travel to Washington, DC, through Maryland, also a slave state. When he was taking his own "Inaugural Train" the plan was to kill Lincoln in Baltimore during a long stop but Lincoln's supporters did some slight of hand to sneak him on board the last train to the capital. Maybe not ...

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Plot Keywords:

train | assassination plot | detective | bodyguard | assassin | 

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Genres:

Adventure | Crime | Drama | Thriller

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

17 August 1951 (USA)

Also Known As:

Man on the Train

Filming Locations:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios - 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$966,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

78 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The names of all the stations mentioned in the film on the line as the train travels south out of New York would be familiar to a traveler on the modern Northeast Corridor as they are still used by Amtrak, except for Darby Junction which is a now a station on the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority's Wilmington/Newark regional rail line. Their placement in the film is geographically accurate - Darby Junction would have been the first place the train could have stopped south of Philadelphia.

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Goofs

The Colonel asks a former West Point cadet to salute him inside a train. In military customs and courtesies there is no saluting inside, unless reporting.

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Quotes

Rachel - Slave Maid: I'm afraid for him.
John Kennedy: You should be. Anyone who fires at Lincoln tomorrow won't last five minutes.

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Crazy Credits

Opening credits S l o w l y roll up from the bottom of the screen, over a background of a train station. The word "TALL" is extra tall.. and the credits are followed by: Ninety years ago, a lonely traveler boarded the night train from New York to Washington DC and when he reached his destination, his passage had become a forgotten chapter in the history of the United States. This motion picture is a dramatization of that disputed journey.

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Soundtracks

The Battle Hymn of the Republic
(uncredited)
Music by William Steffe
Arranged by Bronislau Kaper

User Reviews

The First Plot Against Abe.

The various Presidential assassinations have generated few first rate films. The best of the lot is Oliver Stone's JFK, but it is also quite controvertial as Stone takes for granted the conspiracy theory of A.D.A. Garrison of New Orleans (which was generally discredited). But Stone's movie does resurrect the real atmosphere of confusion and doubt that political murder retains to this date. So, for all it's defects, it does make its point.

There is no film about Garfield's assassination, and only one old film (THIS IS MY AFFAIR with Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, and Victor MacLaughlin) touched on McKinley's murder. With Lincoln you have no definitive film, a la JFK, but several movies that show the killing or deal with the events or personalitie around it. These include the two sequences in Griffith's BIRTH OF A NATION and ABRAHAM LINCOLN, the film biography of Edwin Booth (PRINCE OF PLAYERS - with Richard Burton as Edwin, Raymond Massey as Junius Brutus Booth Sr., and John Derek as John Wilkes Booth), and the story of Dr. Samuel Mudd, THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND (directed by John Ford, and starring Warner Baxter as the unfortunate Doctor - this may be the best of the Lincoln Assassination films due to Ford's excellent directing). And there is this nice little film directed by Anthony Mann, and starring Dick Powell and Adolphe Menjou. Historically, it is more accurate than some of the reviewers here would believe. An Italian barber named Fernandina was behind the plot (originated in Baltimore) in which a Pinkerton operative infiltrated the scheme to cause a disturbance while Lincoln was delivering a speech in Baltimore, and in the confusion give one of a dozen selected plotters a chance to kill the President-elect. Pinkerton tipped off Old Abe, and his stop in Baltimore was cancelled. Also, he boarded the train in Philadelphia in a disguise (a tam-a shanter and cape were suggested in the press). Lincoln was lampooned for being a silly coward by his opponents, but it was probably true - during the initial weeks of the Civil War Baltimore got more military treatment (including a massacre of a mob of citizens by Massachusetts soldiers) than any other Northern trouble-spot. Fernandina disappeared in the next few months (his eventual fate remains unknown). Pinkerton (who had worked with Lincoln in Illinois, dealing with the Illinois Central Railroad - which also brought him into contact with General McClellan) went on to create the Secret Service. If he overestimated Southern strength, it was unfortunate - but he was a great detective. For all the fictional aspects of the film's script, the movie does capture the urgency of the situation, and the uncertainty of the early days of the Civil War.