APOLOGY FOR MURDER. Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), 1945. Ann Savage, Hugh Beaumont, Russell Hicks, Charles D. Brown. Director: Sam Newfield.

   Hugh Beaumont plays Kenny Blake, a brash young reporter, in this film, and yes, I know, that’s redundant. All young reporters in the movies have to be brash. If they are allowed to get older on the job, they either become cynical or, once in a while, even more devoted to real journalism and the truth. Especially if the latter will sell newspapers.

   Blake’s editor is the latter, which is why I bring it up, but I’m getting ahead of myself. While Blake is interviewing one of the wealthier men in town, brashly of course, he is taken by the older man’s much younger wife (Ann Savage). Realizing that her husband is getting tired of her and is about to dump divorce her and leave her nothing, she picks up on Blake’s attraction to her.

   It seems as though she has a plan, and Blake is just the fellow who can help her with it. Should I go on? Have you heard this one before?

   Would it help if I told you that the working title for this film was Single Indemnity until Paramount Pictures got wind of it and told them to cut it out? In Blake’s editor’s eagerness to pull off the scoop of the year, he does not realize until almost too late that he is nurturing a viper in his bosom. So to speak.

   Unfortunately as a leading man in this kind of film, Hugh Beaumont is rather bland, with very little personality of his own, the kind that shows up on the screen. Ann Savage’s next film was to be Detour, and while she definitely doesn’t have the kind of presence in this film she was to have in that one, you can definitely see why they might have thought of her when they were casting the part.