When she is first seen, shopkeeper Pauline Lord is seen waking up the drunken Basil Rathbone on a park bench to prevent him from being arrested. She takes him home, as do most shopkeepers, and introduces him to her young son, who grows up to be handsome Louis Hayward. At that time, Rathbone is still hanging about, and it is never made clear if Lord and Rathbone have become romantically involved, married, or are just good friends. Lord tells Hayward that she took him into their home when he was just a baby because his natural parents couldn't keep him because of the scandal it would cause. She gives him money apparently left to him by his natural mother so he can move out on his own. Hayward is well-spoken, has an interest in the better things in life, and wants to become a playwright. He finds, with Rathbone's help, a picture of a young Billie Burke, whom for some reason he assumes is his mother. Finding out that Burke was a famous stage actress and now rents rooms in her large home, Hayward moves in, where he meets her pretty step-daughter Wendy Barrie and falls in love with her. Lord, in the meantime, falls ill, but is determined to hold on long enough to see Hayward's play produced with Burke in the lead.
It is obvious from the get-go where this storyline is going. This is the type of melodrama that played Broadway in 1880 and toured the sticks even as late as the 1960's with former Broadway stars in the leads. But this one creaks. There is no mustache twirling villain to hiss at, and definitely no railroad tracks for the heroine to be tied down on. It's mother-love drama at its sappiest, and if it wasn't for its cast, it surely would be a total bomb. Hayward would do better later in swash-bucking parts, and Burke, of course, would play this role in dozens of MGM films much better than this. There seems to be no real motivation for Lord's character to do what she does other than to prevent scandal. Sadly, while this is a rare chance for Basil Rathbone, outside of his Sherlock Holmes characters, to play a decent character, he has no real purpose in being there. Having terrified David Copperfield and Errol Flynn's "Captain Blood" the same year, and wormed his way into a "Kind Lady's" house, it's refreshing to see him be nice for a change. Character actors like Nana Bryant, Nydia Westman and Thurstan Hall round out the company as if they were extras waiting for "The Ghost Train" to pass them by.
It is obvious from the get-go where this storyline is going. This is the type of melodrama that played Broadway in 1880 and toured the sticks even as late as the 1960's with former Broadway stars in the leads. But this one creaks. There is no mustache twirling villain to hiss at, and definitely no railroad tracks for the heroine to be tied down on. It's mother-love drama at its sappiest, and if it wasn't for its cast, it surely would be a total bomb. Hayward would do better later in swash-bucking parts, and Burke, of course, would play this role in dozens of MGM films much better than this. There seems to be no real motivation for Lord's character to do what she does other than to prevent scandal. Sadly, while this is a rare chance for Basil Rathbone, outside of his Sherlock Holmes characters, to play a decent character, he has no real purpose in being there. Having terrified David Copperfield and Errol Flynn's "Captain Blood" the same year, and wormed his way into a "Kind Lady's" house, it's refreshing to see him be nice for a change. Character actors like Nana Bryant, Nydia Westman and Thurstan Hall round out the company as if they were extras waiting for "The Ghost Train" to pass them by.