The Family Secret (1951)

Thanks for the memories!

Such a frustrating disappointment

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

***SPOILERS*** It's when young law student David Clark, John Derek, came home one evening disheveled and confused that his father attorney Howard Clark, Lee J. Cobb, senses that something was very seriously wrong. As it soon tuned out David's best friend Art Bradley was found dead with his skull crashed outside a tavern wher the two usually hung out at. As it turned out it was David who killed Art, who was drunk and disorderly, in self-defense. It all started when Art caught David innocently talking with his girlfriend Vera Stone, Jane Alexander, and just flipped out!Howard left everything up to David in him turning himself into the police which David at first intended to do. But at the very last moment the next day at D.A George Redman's, Santo Ortega, office he got cold feet and just offered to help find Art's "murderer". As fate would have it local bookmaker Joe Elsner, Whit Bissell, ended up taking the rap for a crime that he didn't commit. It was Elsner who came upon the scene of the crime but was too sacred to report it. Not in just that he was involved in illegal, taking book, activities but had a fight, verbally, with Art over money he owed Elsner while placing bet with him.Howard took the case for Elsner knowing that he's innocent and trying to keep this tragedy in the Clark Family from getting worst than it already was. David meanwhile is on the verge of having an emotional collapses in that now he's not only responsible for one life being lost but possibly another Joe Elsner! If he's convicted in murdering Art Bradley and ends up either behind bars for life or executed by the state.***SPOILERS*** Things just couldn't get any worse for both David his father Howard and especially Joe Elsner. Just when Hoaward was about to brake the case wide open in his client's favor by proving that main witness for the prosecution Archer Sims, Raymond Greenlest, was not only a proved liar but spent three years in a mental institution Elsner, while on the stand, suffered a massive heart-attack and died a few moments later! With now two people's deaths on his conscience David after talking things over with his fiancée and secretary Lee Pearson, Jody Lawrance,decide to do the right thing and give himself up for the self-defense death of Art Bradley. It was the totally innocent Joe Elsner's death that finally made David see the light in what he's done. And with that and two years behind bars, for homicide not murder, he can finally clear his conscience and then marry Lee who'd be withing for him when he gets out.

This movie was horrible. I couldn't even get through it. It's about a young man that supposedly kills his best friend in self defense. He claims the friend was drunk and starting attacking him so he had to defend himself and accidentally kills him. John Derek plays the man who commits the murder. And his dad, played by Lee J. Cobb, just happens to be an attorney.This is cookie-cutter soap opera drama. The acting is horrible, except for the gal that plays John Derek's secretary, played by Jody Lawrence. At one point, she is relaying phone messages "from your harem", to Derek's character. But she does it by taking on the accents and mannerisms of each of the callers. It's hilarious! But there's nothing else here worth watching.