Mystery Street is a black-and-white

Black-and-white

Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...

 film noir

Film noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...

 directed by John Sturges

John Sturges

John Eliot Sturges was an American film director. His movies include Bad Day at Black Rock , Gunfight at the O.K. Corral , The Magnificent Seven , The Great Escape and Ice Station Zebra .-Career:He started his career in Hollywood as an editor in 1932...

 with cinematography

Cinematography

Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...

 by famed lensman

Cinematographer

A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...

 John Alton

John Alton

John Alton A.S.C. , born Johann Altmann, in Sopron/Ödenburg, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary, was an American cinematographer...

. The film stars Ricardo Montalban

Ricardo Montalbán

Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino, KSG was a Mexican radio, television, theatre and film actor. He had a career spanning six decades and many notable roles...

, Bruce Bennett

Bruce Bennett

Bruce Bennett was an American actor and Olympic silver medalist shot putter. During the 1930s, he went by his real name, Herman Brix .-Early life and Olympics:...

, and Elsa Lanchester

Elsa Lanchester

Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was an English-American character actress with a long career in theatre, film and television....

.

The MGM film was shot on location in Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

 and Cape Cod

Cape Cod

Cape Cod, often referred to locally as simply the Cape, is a cape in the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States...

; according to one Boston-based film critic, it was the first time Hollywood used Boston as a location. Also featured are Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....

 in Roxbury, Massachusetts

Roxbury, Massachusetts

Roxbury is a dissolved municipality and current neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was one of the first towns founded in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, and became a city in 1846 until annexed to Boston on January 5, 1868...

 and Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in nearby Cambridge

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

. The film's story earned Leonard Spigelgass

Leonard Spigelgass

Leonard Spigelgass was an American film producer and screenwriter.Born in Brooklyn, New York, Spigelgass got his start collaborating on the script for Erich Von Stroheim's Hello, Sister!...

 a nomination as Best Story

Academy Award for Best Story

The Academy Award for Best Story was an Academy Award given from the beginning of the Academy Awards until 1957, when it was eliminated in favor of the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay, which had been introduced in 1940.-1920s:...

 for the 23rd Academy Awards

23rd Academy Awards

The 23rd Academy Awards Ceremony awarded Oscars for the best in films in 1950. The nominations were notable this year, as All About Eve was nominated for fourteen Oscars, beating the previous record of Gone with the Wind.-Awards:...

.

Plot

Blonde B-girl Vivian (played by Jan Sterling

Jan Sterling

Jan Sterling was an American actress.Most active in films during the 1950s, Sterling received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The High and the Mighty , and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the same performance...

), working at "The Grass Skirt" in Boston talks a drunk (Marshall Thompson

Marshall Thompson

Marshall Thompson was an American film and television actor.He was born James Marshall Thompson in Peoria, Illinois. In 1943 Thompson, known for his boy-next-door good looks, was signed by Universal Pictures...

) in the bar into "borrowing" his car. She drives to Cape Cod with the car's owner drunk by her side. When the man realizes he's miles from Boston he objects and demands that he be taken back. Instead, she ditches him and steals the car. Afterward she meets up with a mysterious man who kills her. A day later the drunk reports the car stolen to his insurance but neglects to mention the blonde as not to get in trouble with his wife (Sally Forrest

Sally Forrest

Sally Forrest , is a retired American film actress of the 1940s and 1950s.She began her film career as a dancer in films in the 1940s before moving on to small film roles. After meeting director Ida Lupino, she was cast in a few of her films including Not Wanted and Hard Fast and Beautiful...

). Months later, the B-girl's skeleton washes up on a beach. Barnstable

Barnstable, Massachusetts

Barnstable is a city, referred to as the Town of Barnstable, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the county seat of Barnstable County. Barnstable is the largest community, both in land area and population, on Cape Cod. The town contains seven villages within its boundaries...

 cop Peter Morales (Montalban) teams up with Boston police and uses forensics

Forensics

Forensic science is the application of a broad spectrum of sciences to answer questions of interest to a legal system. This may be in relation to a crime or a civil action...

 with the help of Dr. McAdoo, a Harvard doctor (Bennett), to figure out who the woman is.

The cop then tries to figure out how she died and, later, who killed her. Vivian's nosy landlady (Lanchester) attempts to blackmail a boyfriend Vivian used to call from her boarding house, going so far as to visit the wealthy married man and steal his gun. Morales tracks down the stolen car from police records and questions Henry Shanway, the drunk man Vivian was with the night she disappeared. Eventually Morales finds Shanway's car and he's identified in a police lineup. The innocent man is arrested and charged with the murder. Morales and Dr. McAdoo find the bullet still stuck in the car. Morales then finds out that the landlady has the gun, but not before she tries to blackmail the owner and is knocked over the head, and later dies. Morales chases after but loses the killer. Morales
finds a hidden baggage check in the landlady's room, which sends Morales racing to catch the killer before the murder weapon can be disposed of.

Featured cast

Actor	Role
Ricardo Montalban Ricardo Montalbán Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino, KSG was a Mexican radio, television, theatre and film actor. He had a career spanning six decades and many notable roles...	Lieutenant Peter Morales
Sally Forrest Sally Forrest Sally Forrest , is a retired American film actress of the 1940s and 1950s.She began her film career as a dancer in films in the 1940s before moving on to small film roles. After meeting director Ida Lupino, she was cast in a few of her films including Not Wanted and Hard Fast and Beautiful...	Grace Shanway
Bruce Bennett Bruce Bennett Bruce Bennett was an American actor and Olympic silver medalist shot putter. During the 1930s, he went by his real name, Herman Brix .-Early life and Olympics:...	Dr. McAdoo, of Harvard Medical School
Elsa Lanchester Elsa Lanchester Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was an English-American character actress with a long career in theatre, film and television....	Mrs. Smerrling, the landlady
Marshall Thompson Marshall Thompson Marshall Thompson was an American film and television actor.He was born James Marshall Thompson in Peoria, Illinois. In 1943 Thompson, known for his boy-next-door good looks, was signed by Universal Pictures...	Henry Shanway, Grace's husband
Jan Sterling Jan Sterling Jan Sterling was an American actress.Most active in films during the 1950s, Sterling received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The High and the Mighty , and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the same performance...	Vivian Heldon, bar-girl and murder victim

Bennett's character was modeled after a real-life Harvard professor of legal medicine named George Burgess Magrath, who received his medical degree from Harvard in 1898."

Reception

Time magazine called it a "low-budget melodrama without box-office stars or advance ballyhoo [that] does not pretend to do much more than tell a straightaway, logical story of scientific crime detection" but notes that "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 New York Times called it "an adventure which, despite a low budget, is not low in taste or its attention to technical detail, backgrounds and plausibility" with a performance by Montalban that is "natural and unassuming."

A contributor to Ain't It Cool News

Ain't It Cool News

Ain't It Cool News is a website founded and run by Harry Knowles, dedicated to news, rumors and reviews of upcoming and currently playing films and television projects, with an emphasis on science fiction, fantasy, horror, comic-book and action genres...

 characterized the film as a precursor to CSI-style police procedural

Police procedural

The police procedural is a subgenre of detective fiction which attempts to convincingly depict the activities of a police force as they investigate crimes. While traditional detective novels usually concentrate on a single crime, police procedurals frequently depict investigations into several...

s, with a Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....

 professor providing the forensic science.