Night Editor (1946)

A married cop (William Gargan) is having an affair with a wealthy society dame (Janis Carter). During one of their trysts on the beach, they witness the brutal murder of a young girl. However, because both are married and have respectable lives that would be ruined if their affair was brought out into the open, they don't go to the police. But when an innocent man is arrested and sent to death row for the murder, the cop's conscience starts to bother him but she doesn't have one and couldn't care less. Based on a popular radio show of the 1940s, this is an efficient "B" noir with all the necessary noir trimmings. Dialogue like "this is the end of the line, baby", a tough talking hard boiled hero and Carter as the coldest hearted of noir heroines. She's rotten to the core and makes Stanwyck in DOUBLE INDEMNITY look like Pollyanna. The film contains one of the oddest things I've seen, one of the characters puts salt in his buttermilk before drinking! Curiously, the film is set in the 1920s (it's told as a flashback) but everything from dialogue to costumes is pure 1940s noir. Directed by Henry Levin (WHERE THE BOYS ARE) with a score by Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco. With Jeff Donnell as Gargan's doormat of a wife, Frank Wilcox as the unctuous killer and Anthony Caruso.