Searchanddestroy says Thomas Carr was a lousy director, and made Grade Z westerns for almost his whole career. Neither assertion is correct. It's true that for his first ten years Carr's film and TV work was cheapo stuff, mainly "Superman" and westerns with such "stars" as Sunset Carson and Whip Wilson (never heard of them? Join the club.) However, for the rest of his career he proved that given decent material and actors he would always do a very competent job. He worked prolifically on some of the best TV series of the late 50s and early 60s (I've seen a good many of his episodes), and the films got better too.
His material here was pretty good. John Kempner's script is clever and intriguing (three seems to have been his lucky number: he wrote the novel on which Joe Mankiewicz based "A Letter to Three Wives.") The titular lady is a spoiled rich girl, who's hardly seen once she's shot her older lover at the beginning. During jury selection for her trial sleazebag lawyer Richard Carlson identifies three jurors he thinks he can con into voting not guilty, using Murph, presumably an actor and played by Regis Toomey. To Maria Palmer, as the wife of Karek (Eduard Franz), a refugee from Communist Czechoslovakia, he asserts that The Jamie Dawn Foundation can arrange the escape of the son they left behind. With June Havoc, as a rather fading actress, he's a Texas oilman eager to bankroll a revival of her biggest hit, and he offers Ricardo Montalban, a man struggling to provide for his wife (Laraine Day) and kids, $5,000 to write articles on "How I Acquitted Jamie Dawn." Carlson is more interesting than usual, and Toomey is a very plausible con artist. The flaw in Carlson scheme is that the three he suborns will never do a Henry Fonda and bring the other nine jurors round to voting not guilty, and indeed none of them tries. This would mean a hung jury and a mistrial, so he'd have to start all over again. Still, that doesn't spoil the enjoyment and I felt it was 81 minutes well spent on a film I'd never heard of until it popped up on YouTube.
If you can find it, check out David Niven in a 30 minute Goodyear Theatre episode called "Decision By Terror." He plays a jury foreman desperately trying to get his fellow jurors to declare an obviously guilty gangster not guilty, because hoods are holding his wife and son.
His material here was pretty good. John Kempner's script is clever and intriguing (three seems to have been his lucky number: he wrote the novel on which Joe Mankiewicz based "A Letter to Three Wives.") The titular lady is a spoiled rich girl, who's hardly seen once she's shot her older lover at the beginning. During jury selection for her trial sleazebag lawyer Richard Carlson identifies three jurors he thinks he can con into voting not guilty, using Murph, presumably an actor and played by Regis Toomey. To Maria Palmer, as the wife of Karek (Eduard Franz), a refugee from Communist Czechoslovakia, he asserts that The Jamie Dawn Foundation can arrange the escape of the son they left behind. With June Havoc, as a rather fading actress, he's a Texas oilman eager to bankroll a revival of her biggest hit, and he offers Ricardo Montalban, a man struggling to provide for his wife (Laraine Day) and kids, $5,000 to write articles on "How I Acquitted Jamie Dawn." Carlson is more interesting than usual, and Toomey is a very plausible con artist. The flaw in Carlson scheme is that the three he suborns will never do a Henry Fonda and bring the other nine jurors round to voting not guilty, and indeed none of them tries. This would mean a hung jury and a mistrial, so he'd have to start all over again. Still, that doesn't spoil the enjoyment and I felt it was 81 minutes well spent on a film I'd never heard of until it popped up on YouTube.
If you can find it, check out David Niven in a 30 minute Goodyear Theatre episode called "Decision By Terror." He plays a jury foreman desperately trying to get his fellow jurors to declare an obviously guilty gangster not guilty, because hoods are holding his wife and son.