The most beautiful train I’d ever seen—The Streamliner—comes hurling across the Arizona desert, and I would have wanted the opening credits of Bad Day at Black Rock to continue indefinitely. But once it clears the directors’ name, in the middle of nowhere, the Streamliner begins to slow down. In the sleepy arid town, the denizens stir and stare and gasp in amazement—the Streamliner has not stopped there for four years. An aging Spencer Tracy is the one-armed man who gets off, and the town will never be the same again.
    Twenty-four hours later, the Streamliner slows and stops again and no one is surprised in the least, for Black Rock has been totally transformed. The one-armed man turns out to be a retired army officer and he has come bringing a medal for heroism won posthumously by one of his men. It turns out that the hero was an American-born Japanese and Tracy wants to present the medal to his folks. The townsfolk deny the existence of such people and do all they can to obstruct him from his task, but he persists even when the resistance grows violent.
    Eventually the truth is outed—on the night following Pearl Harbour, the local lads (Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin) fuelled by alcohol as much as patriotism, went out and brought down America’s revenge upon the Japanese couple, executing them and burning their house down. Until now, the town’s respectable folk (Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan, Anne Francis) have cowered to the hooligans and covered up the crime, but the one-armed man inspires them to make a stand and put matters to rights.
    The last scene is when the Streamliner stops again, and the one-armed man clambers back on board. The (different) conductor is looking around in amazement.
“First time the Streamliner's stopped here in four years,” he declares.
“Second,” Tracy grumps.
    It became my first running gag. Thereafter, when anyone said anything was happening for the first time, I’d grump: “Second.” To this day, I don’t think anyone ever got the joke—they usually just look at me strangely. But I still think it’s funny.