The Narrow Margin Movie Spoiler

Richard Fleischer’s THE NARROW MARGIN is a ingenious film noir from 1952 which pulled out Oscar nominations in support of writers Martin Goldsmith and Jack Leonard. The story is established on a train running from Chicago to LA. Amongst the passengers, the ex- wife of a gangster, Mrs. Frankie Neil (Marie Windsor), travels under intense law enforcement protection. The cops assigned to guard her include Walter Brown (Charles McGraw), a hard-bitten sergeant who fends off the attentions of various mobsters on the train who would like Neil deceased.

On her way to LA to give evidence opposed to her previous spouse, Neil needs all the protection she can acquire while the story unfolds. McGraw is well-suited to the role of Brown, since he commonly portrayed cops inside films as diverse such as Stanley Kramer’s comedic IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD and the Fleischer-directed ARMORED CAR ROBBERY.

Meanwhile, Windsor acting to type into her role, which neatly follows her chosen career path being the actress-du-jour inside many noir movies of the time; the pinnacle of her career came via a transform into Stanley Kubrick’s brooding crime-thriller THE KILLING. A gangster picture so as to draws on all the talents of its outstanding cast, THE NARROW MARGIN is an often-unheralded submission into the catalog of 1950s crime flicks.

The mystifying blonde woman is in fact the witness he’s intended to be protecting.