Time Table

(1956)
Directed by Mark Stevens
Written by Robert Angus (story), Abne Kandel (screenplay)
Starring Mark Stevens, King Calder, Felicia Farr, Marianne Stewart, Wesley Addy, Allen Reed, Jack Klugman
IMDB Entry

The cliche is that actors want to direct. Sometimes it works out well.* Sometimes it doesn't. And when the actor/director also produces the movie, it has a good chance of being a vanity project that is an utter disaster. Time Table is something that might have fallen into the category, but the result is an excellent film noir with surprising twists.

We see Dr. Paul Brucker (Wesley Addy) riding a train and being called to help a sick passenger. He discovers the man has a highly contagious disease, blocks off the car, and goes to the baggage car just behind to his medical kit. Once there, he takes a gun from the kit and tells the baggagemen to lie down, where he injects them with a sedative. While they are asleep, he blows up the safe and escapes with half a million dollars in an ambulance with the patient.

Charlie Norman (Mark Stevens) is called away from a planned Mexican vacation with his wife Ruth (Marianne Stewart) to investigate the robbery for the insurance company. He joins up with railroad cop Joe Armstrong (King Calder) to find the robbers. When all the clues turn out to be dead ends, Charlie and Joe both agree that this was incredibly well planned.

Warning:  Major plot twist given away in next paragraph.

Then we discover who the mastermind -- Charlie himself. He has been having an affair with Bruckner's wife Linda (Felicia Farr) and they plan to run off together with the money. Of course, snags occur in his master plan and he has to improvise. It only makes things worse.  And there are more twists to come until the end.

It's an interesting role for Stevens. He definitely looks like the standard Hollywood hero and, up until the twist, you figure he will slowly uncover the evidence to put the thieves behind bars. The twist is a surprise, but logical. Instead, King Calder fills that role, even though he and Charlie are close friends. Wesley Addy was a successful film heavy of the 40s and 50s.

One familiar face in the cast is Jack Klugman, in one scene as a man peripherally involved with the heist and who reluctantly gives the investigators details. A familiar name and voice is Alan "Fred Flintstone" Reed as the man who rents the criminals a helicopter.

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*Charles Laughton, Ron Howard, Robert Redford, et al.