Glenn Ford is very enjoyable in this movie that is well worth watching because it covers such currently hot topics as racism (and its exploitation), communism, McCarthyism, greed and martyrdom. Glenn Ford is law professor without courtroom experience who needs some in order to keep his job. No one wants to take him on with a law job because of his inexperience. He manages to get taken in with Arthur Kennedy. They take the case of a young teenager who is on a private beach without permission when he meets a female classmate who takes his hand and then puts it on her thigh. They hung and then she breaks away, tears her dress and suddenly dies. She had known rheumatic heart disease, which even back then was known to be caused by strep and resulted, most commonly, in mitral valve disease and subsequent heart failure. This condition is much less prominent now (and the only case that I ever saw as a family physician in practice for 40 years was when I was an intern), perhaps due to penicillin or some change in the bacteria's propensity to cause this complication. In any event, the teenager is charged with first degree murder on the basis of the flimsiest of evidence. Glenn Ford is made his attorney by Kennedy's character who exploits him into making the teenager, a Hispanic kid, a potential martyr. When Kennedy is a committed communist or is exploiting him to raise money is never quite clear.
It is a most incompetent defense. Glenn Ford's character (he plays the same in every movie) calls no witnesses! Since this is being prosecuted as a murder, it is strange that there is no mention of an autopsy. Thus, we have no idea about the condition of her heart other than what her own cardiologist wrote on the death certificate. Glenn Ford, here, falls in love with Kennedy's secretary, Dorothy McGuire, who for some reason still lets him get tangled up in going to a communist rally to raise money, allegedly for the teen's defense, and subsequently gets subpoenaed to appear before a McCarthy-like senate committee. Why she didn't even warn him about that is never made clear. Trying a young teenager for murder as an adult in these circumstances is very strange. There was certainly some grounds for "reasonable doubt." This was certainly no "12 Angry Men."
It is a most incompetent defense. Glenn Ford's character (he plays the same in every movie) calls no witnesses! Since this is being prosecuted as a murder, it is strange that there is no mention of an autopsy. Thus, we have no idea about the condition of her heart other than what her own cardiologist wrote on the death certificate. Glenn Ford, here, falls in love with Kennedy's secretary, Dorothy McGuire, who for some reason still lets him get tangled up in going to a communist rally to raise money, allegedly for the teen's defense, and subsequently gets subpoenaed to appear before a McCarthy-like senate committee. Why she didn't even warn him about that is never made clear. Trying a young teenager for murder as an adult in these circumstances is very strange. There was certainly some grounds for "reasonable doubt." This was certainly no "12 Angry Men."