Too Late for Tears

This is a solid and sometimes memorable crime drama, filled with tension, and featuring some pretty good performances from the cast. The noir atmosphere works well, and the story, while perhaps far-fetched at a couple of points, is quite involved and grabs your attention from the beginning.

Lizabeth Scott gets one of her best roles, as a hard-hearted woman who seizes her opportunity to play the male characters against each other so that she can get what she wants. Scott is slightly lacking in the glamour that would make her a really memorable femme fatale, but she has plenty of strength, and her voice works well for the character. Dan Duryea gives one of his many fine noir performances, taking good advantage of his many opportunities with his shady character. Arthur Kennedy and Kristine Miller are both sympathetic as the more innocent of the main characters. Don DeFore's character sometimes seems a little out of place, but he is often crucial in advancing the plot.

The story starts with an unlikely coincidence, with a bag of money that gets tossed into the wrong car. But from there, most of the story developments follow naturally, and the tension is built up rather well as things get more complicated. It's an entertaining movie that has most of the things that fans of film-noir and crime drama would want to see.

No need to recap the convoluted plot. The movie's a sleeper among noirs, thanks mainly to an unpredictable and well thought-out screenplay from writer Huggins. Just when you think you've got things figured, you don't. I especially like the way Huggins subtly reverses Jane's (Scott) and Danny's (Duryea) competitive relationship. Watching the two circle each other is like watching two hungry sharks. Apparently, they want to mate but don't dare get too close. Note too, how effectively director Haskin uses the stylish wide-brimmed hats to veil the identity of men entering a room. I don't recall this clever effect in any other film. This is also one of the few noirs to make the central character a woman (Jane) instead of a man.

Then too, it's a very well cast movie. Duryea is of course Duryea, a major icon of noir. On the other hand, Scott was always more a presence than an actress. Still, her presence here is used to good effect as a greedy spider woman, even if she doesn't achieve much depth. But I especially like the underrated Don DeFore. His trademark nice guy is also used to good effect in what turns out to be something more than just a nice guy. (Be sure to catch ex-Dead End kid Billy Halop as the cranky boat manager.)

I guess the only missing element from classic noir are the angular shadows of moral ambivalence. Haskin does film a number of night scenes, but I don't spot the classic lighting. Perhaps that's because his specialty as a director was science fiction and adventure films. Anyway, I'm not sure why this withering little drama hasn't achieved more recognition. Maybe it's because it was an independent production without studio backing. But whatever the reason, the movie remains a gritty little noir worth catching up with.

Lizabeth Scott sinks her teeth into the role of a ruthless woman in "Too Late for Tears," also known as "Killer Bait," a 1949 film directed by Byron Haskin and written by a man who later became a very popular TV writer-director and creator of some top series, Roy Huggins.

The film also stars Dan Duryea, Don DeFore, and Arthur Kennedy.

Scott plays Jane Palmer, the wife of Alan Palmer (Kennedy) - while driving one night, someone from another car throws a satchel into their car. It turns out to be $60,000 (the equivalent of $598,000 today). Alan doesn't want anything to do with it, preferring to take it to the police, but Jane wants to keep it and spend it. Finally she convinces him to hide the money and wait for a time.

Jane, it turns out, is one tough cookie, and without giving much away, let's say that getting her hands on that money becomes her full time job, and she's determined that nothing and no one will stand in her way. Unfortunately for a few people, they stood in her way.

Really terrific noir set in Hollywood, with Dan Duryea playing a sleaze, but actually less of a sleaze than Jane - he's more of an opportunist than evil; Don Defore is friendly and unassuming as a friend of Alan Palmer's, and Arthur Kennedy, one of the finest actors in film, is just plain wasted. Perhaps this was a film he had to do in order to fulfill a contract, or it was a loanout on trade - it was a waste.

It's Scott's film, and with her husky voice, lovely smile and pouty lips, she's able to, at first anyway, hide a core of steel underneath.

Very good. If you're a fan of film noir, see this one.

Byron Haskin of Arsenic and Old Lace and War of the Worlds fame teamed up with Roy Huggins to create this solid film noir entry. Huggins writing is superb for the genre - neither pretentious nor overly manic. The pace is brisk but not painfully so. And the film is very well conceived, well directed, well edited and very well acted.

The remarkable Lizabeth Scott (Jane Palmer), married to a young Arthur Kennedy (Alan Palmer), is the focus of our attention. The coupled are driving to a friend's house when a car flashes them and its occupant tosses a leather bag with 60,000 dollars into their car and drives off. Jane wants to keep it, Alan wants to turn it in. Soon, this windfall becomes a mixed blessing, as it reveals a rather frightening side of Jane's personality. The plot intertwines noir twists and turns and incessant mystery and, frequently, winds up in unanticipated places.

Lizabeth Scott is PERFECT, and really MAKES this film as much as the intriguing story and successful directing. Don Defore also turns in a notable performance as does Kristine Miller. Dan Duryea was nicely cast in his role as the heavy, but his performance here was just a sliver below his usual par.

This is very nice bit of noir cinema and will satisfy most noir fans, as well as modern crime drama aficionados. Recommended!

Lizabeth Scott did her best remembered work in film noir (more than half of her only 21 screen credits fall within the noir cycle), and became one of its iconic faces. Rarely, however, was she called upon to play the fully-fledged femme fatale, and there's probably a reason for this: She couldn't bring off duplicity.

Her smile had no shadings into wry, or ironic, or smirky; it had but one setting – a fresh, guileless grin that lit up like a Christmas tree. F. Scott Fitzgerald (in his sad screenwriting days) observed of Joan Crawford that you couldn't give her a simple stage direction like `telling a lie' because then she'd give an impersonation of Benedict Arnold betraying West Point to the British. But Scott can't manage even that, which results in confusingly mixed signals when her characters are motivated by malice, like Coral Chandler in Dead Reckoning: Her smile keeps convincing us that she's on the up-and-up.

Her damn smile keeps switching on in Too Late For Tears, even though there's no doubt that she's one hard, cold case. She and husband Arthur Kennedy are bickering one night en route to a party in the Hollywood Hills when suddenly a suitcase crammed with cash lands in their roadster. He wants to turn it over to the police, but she persuades him to think it over, so they check the valise at Union Station. When she starts buying clothes and furs against the checked capital, it's clear she has no intention of surrendering the windfall; we learn that her background was `white-collar poor, middle-class poor,' and that she'd made a previous marriage solely for money.

Strange men start ringing her doorbell. First Dan Duryea shows up, a blackmailer for whom the payoff was intended. He slaps her around playfully (`What do they call you – besides stupid,' she taunts him. `Stupid will do – if you don't bruise easily,' he purrs back). Quickly Scott maneuvers Duryea into helping him murder Kennedy but still won't tell him where the money's stashed. Though wary, he falls for her, starts hitting the bottle, and grows careless. Meanwhile, Kennedy's sister (Kristine Miller) harbors suspicions about his mysterious disappearance. When the next caller (Don DeFore) shows up, claiming to be an old Air Corps buddy of Kennedy's, she makes an alliance with him to find out what's really going on. And the claim ticket for the money keeps changing hands....

The plot is none too simple, and in consequence director Byron Haskin spends a lot of time trying to keep it clear rather than addressing some questions about character and logic that inevitably arise. Why did the avaricious, manipulative Scott marry Kennedy in the first (or second) place? Why does the sister live so conveniently close? How did Duryea, and for that matter DeFore, find Scott so easily? But few thriller plots are so tightly constructed that they survive rigorous analysis. Too Late For Tears passes muster as hard-boiled, late-40s noir and as one of Scott's hardest, strongest performances, inappropriate smile and all.