The Lady Confesses

Mary Beth Hughes and Hugh Beaumont are scheduled to be married as soon as his wife, missing seven years, can be declared dead. Then she shows up at Miss Hughes' apartment, says she's never going to give Beaumont a divorce. That evening she is strangled. Everyone seems to have a fine alibi, but nightclub owner Edmund MacDonald won't admit to seeing Beaumont at his club, even though three other people did.

Film Noir was a genre made for PRC, the cheapest of Poverty Row producers. It required fewer lights, the inevitable Venetian blinds meant there were no views outside windows to show, non-star actors were cheap, and the director of this one, Sam Newfield, although certainly competent, was the brother of PRC's studio chief. Jack Greenhalgh was a skilled cinematographer, so that left the problem of a script, and that was where PRC usually came up short.

Helen Martin's screenplay doesn't show a lack here. I couldn't figure out whodunnit until they told me, and the main actors are good. It's no classic, but I certainly enjoyed it.