Too Late for Tears (1949)

starring Lizabeth Scott, Dan Duryea, Don DeFore

directed by Byron Haskin

Jane (Lizabeth Scott) and Alan (Arthur Kennedy), her husband, are driving home late one night when someone throws a bag containing $60,000 into their car. They argue about what to do with the money. He wants to turn it over to the police. She wants to keep it. He takes it to the train station where he puts it in storage in a piece of luggage.

Danny Fuller (Dan Duryea), the man who the money belongs to comes after Jane. He insists that she return the money to him. She tries to play stupid but he sees through her scam. She doesn't want to give up the money to Danny or the police.

The story takes a turn for the melodramatic when Jane and Alan go on a date the next night. She has his gun. Alan finds out she has his gun. They fight over it, the gun fires, killing Alan. Jane gets Danny to help her dispose of the body.

Jane's situation is complicated by a number of factors. Kathy (Kristine Miller), Alan's sister, lives across the hall from them and becomes suspicious when Jane starts acting like Alan ran off and left her. Jane has trouble finding the claim ticket for the bag that is in storage. Don Blake (Don DeFore), an old friend of Alan's, shows up and starts asking questions about his missing friend. Things quickly spiral out of control.

Thoughts

This is the fourth film that Lizabeth Scott is in that I have watched in the last few years. The others are The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), Dead Reckoning (1947), and Pitfall (1948). I think this might be my favorite of the four movies.

Roy Huggins wrote the screenplay for this movie based on a short story which he wrote for the Saturday Evening Post. It is one of his earliest credits on IMDb. He went on to do a lot of writing for TV. He created The Fugitive (1963) and The Rockford Files (1974).

I really like all the twists and turns in the plot. Jane is determined to have the money and won't let anyone get in her way. It is unclear to me if she planned to kill her husband. I think that she might have wanted to kill Danny that night but changed her plans once her husband was killed by mistake.

I like all the performances in this movies. The way it all plays out is a little melodramatic and dated but the movie kept my interest and never felt like it dragged.