SECRET EVIDENCE


US, 1941, 60 minutes, Black and white.
Marjorie Reynolds, Charles Quigley, Malcolm Mc Taggart, Howard Masters, Robert White.
Directed by William Nigh.


The title promises more than the film actually delivers. This is a very brief supporting feature, the touch of romance, the touch of the law, the touch of crime.

The romance is established right at the beginning, a lawyer becoming assistant district attorney, his assistant and his romance with her, his coming to meet her parents. In the meantime, her past boyfriend, a thief, has been released from four years in jail and wants to take up the relationship. She resists. Further complication is that her younger brother had been holding the jewels from the robbery but she had forced him to give them back to the authorities.

The former criminal demands that the young woman meet him. The younger brother comes along with his father’s gun, the brother and sister struggle and the gun fires. In the meantime, the thief has refused to deal with another crony who also arrives with the gun and attempts to shoot him. The young woman then phones the ambulance.

It turns out that the new assistant district attorney will have to prosecute. The brother keeps his counsel. The young woman also conceals what happened. And the man who was shot lies in hospital, refusing to give information, with his assailant coming to visit him. He also mocks the assistant district attorney, trying to prove to his former girlfriend that you can’t trust lawyers.

The rest of the film takes place in the court, cross-examination, the case getting no further until the thief stands up in court, is cross-examined, his assailant is in court and pulls a gun, with the thief having the satisfaction that he humiliated the assistant district attorney. However, romance has to come at the end – which it does.