The Tall Target

“The Man is on the Train,” reads the mysterious message finger-painted on a train car window in Anthony Mann’s beautifully crafted political period noir, The Tall Target, inspired by the true story of an assassination plot against president-elect Abraham Lincoln in 1861. With his trademark effortless confidence, Dick Powell plays New York City detective John Kennedy (no relation) who springs into action to prevent a planned attempt on Lincoln’s life as he travels by train to Washington, DC, for his inauguration. While we never know exactly if and where the president has boarded (indeed we only see his image in the very last frame), director Mann introduces a variety of passengers who may have economic or political reasons to oppose Lincoln and his imminent war: militia colonel Caleb Jeffers (Adolphe Menjou), Confederate convert Lance Beaufort (Marshall Thompson), his sister Ginny (Paula Raymond), anti-slavery writer Charlotte Alsop (Florence Bates), and a stranger (Leif Erickson) who attempts to steal Kennedy’s identity, among others. Ruby Dee plays the Beauforts’ “maid,” who is really a slave (“Tell me, my dear,” she’s asked. “How does it feel being beaten?”). Most period noirs are either Gothic or westerns, but The Tall Target is neither: famed art director Cedric Gibbons designs an immersive mid-19th century milieu complete with gas lamps, three-piece suits, frock coats, and a shiny black locomotive coughing up fluffy billows of white steam into the night sky.