ONE GIRL’S CONFESSION. Columbia Pictures, 1953. Cleo Moore, Hugo Haas, Glenn Langan, Ellen Stansbury, Burt Mustin. Written, produced & directed by Hugo Haas.

   And if Hugo Haas could have played Cleo Moore’s part, he’d have done that, too. But since she’s a hard-featured, statuesque blonde, it think it’s just as well that he didn’t try.

ONE GIRL'S CONFESSION Cleo Moore

   Statuesque in the Anita Ekberg sense. Bodies like this don’t seem to be in favor today, but back in 1953, I’ll bet this movie was the trash equivalent of Gangbusters. This was long before nudity was acceptable on the screen, but there are a lot of open blouses with frilly lingerie underneath to (almost) make up for it.

   Anybody who’s honest about it knows exactly why this movie was made. And yet — even though at times it reminded me of the cinematic equivalent of a Gold Medal novel — when it comes down it, this movie is as moral as a Sunday morning in church.

ONE GIRL'S CONFESSION Cleo Moore

   Mary Adams is a waitress who robs her employee and long-time benefactor of $25,000, and goes to jail for it, without telling anyone where she hid the money. As bad it sounds, it’s not, since the money was part of the rackets, and her boss at the restaurant is also the crook that cheated her father many years ago. This, at last, is her chance to get even.

   Crooked money is cursed, as they say, however, and when she’s paroled after only three years of good behavior, she finds this out. When she finds a need for the money, the plot suddenly doubles back on her. After some travail, justice finally wins out.

ONE GIRL'S CONFESSION Cleo Moore

   The plot is flawed — how could anyone believe that Mary Adams would be as trusting as she is? — but the essential point is that she is really a Fine Person at Heart. You may not believe it from the screen images you see here, but Cleo is a marshmallow in this film, and so is Hugo Haas.

— Reprinted from Mystery*File #35, November 1993, slightly revised.


[UPDATE] 12-01-10.   You’d think with all that this movie has going for it, I’d remember it, but I don’t, and I have no idea why.

   This is a problem with a solution, however. This film was released on DVD earlier this year as part of the Bad Girls of Film Noir, Volume II collection, a set I purchased as soon as it was out.

ONE GIRL'S CONFESSION Cleo Moore