Too Late for Tears (1949): watch the full film free, legally

A suitcase on a Los Angeles drive

Too Late for Tears is a 1949 American film noir directed by Byron Haskin and written by Roy Huggins. Huggins adapted it from his own serialized novel, published in The Saturday Evening Post. Lizabeth Scott stars with Don DeFore and Dan Duryea, while Arthur Kennedy, Kristine Miller, and Barry Kelley appear in supporting roles. The story centers on Jane and Alan Palmer, a Los Angeles couple whose ordinary return from a party is interrupted when a driver in an oncoming car throws a bag of cash into their vehicle.

Another car gives chase, but the Palmers escape. The bag contains $60,000, and their reactions immediately divide them. Jane wants to keep it; Alan wants to contact the police. They compromise by checking the bag at Union Station. While Alan is at work, Danny Fuller comes to the Palmer apartment, says the money was meant for him, and finds Jane ready to discuss splitting it. Alan's plan to surrender the cash puts him directly against Jane's determination to keep it.

Jane Palmer's pursuit of the cash

Jane arranges a pedal boat outing at MacArthur Park and asks Fuller to meet her there. Her actions leave Alan dead, and she and Fuller sink his body. She then tries to kill Fuller, but he gets away. Jane begins building a false explanation for Alan's absence, reporting him missing and seeking to make it appear that he fled to Mexico with the money.

Kathy, Alan's sister, lives in the apartment next door and grows suspicious. She finds the claim ticket for the checked bag. A man calling himself Don Blake arrives, presenting himself as Alan's war buddy and offering help in the search. Don and Kathy become attracted to one another. Jane realizes Kathy has the ticket and pressures Fuller to obtain poison for her. When Jane exposes Don as an impostor, she knocks him unconscious and takes back the claim ticket. The pursuit of the bag continues as Jane and Fuller confront the question of who has a right to the $60,000 and how far each will go to claim it.

From unsuccessful release to restoration

Producer Hunt Stromberg had previously worked successfully for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer before leaving the studio to make independent films. He first sought Joan Crawford for Jane Palmer, Kirk Douglas for Danny Fuller, and Wendell Corey for Don Blake. Instead, Hal B. Wallis loaned Scott, who was under contract to him, for the project at Haskin's request. Haskin had directed Scott in I Walk Alone in 1947. DeFore and Duryea were cast as Don and Danny.

United Artists opened the film regionally in Arkansas and Kentucky on July 3, 1949, followed by a Los Angeles opening on July 13. It was a box-office bomb, and Stromberg's financial failure led to bankruptcy. Astor Pictures reissued it in August 1955 as Killer Bait, often pairing it with Johnny Holiday, reissued as Boy's Prison. Reviews at the time were mixed. A. H. Weiler of The New York Times called it an effective melodramatic treatment of money as a source of evil, despite what he saw as an involved plot and too much dialogue. Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times considered Scott's intensity unvarying and called the film a routine crime melodrama. Dennis Schwartz wrote favorably in 2005, praising its use of Los Angeles and Scott's performance. The original camera negatives were lost, but a restoration drew on a French 35 mm dupe negative, an American 1955 35 mm print, and an inferior 16 mm print used to reconstruct the English opening and closing titles. The restored 35 mm print premiered at Noir City 12 at San Francisco's Castro Theatre on January 25, 2014.

Film details from the Wikipedia article “Too Late for Tears”. Text adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0.