John Derek was a terrible actor. The rest of the cast isn't any better and neither is the writing.
A spoiled young man kills his friend In the heat of anger. The family decides to say nothing and see how it plays out. The killer's mother is especially cold, "After a while we will forget all about this!" Never mind that the slain boy's mother is her best friend. An innocent man is accused and tried and drops dead from a heart attack.
Even the resolution at the end is boring. The movie just STUNK!
The Family Secret
1951
Crime / Drama
Plot summary
Outside a tavern, best friends Art Bradley and David Clark exchange punches over a girl. Art is drunk and pulls a knife on David, who hits Art over the head with a rock. Art dies and a panicked David drives home, where his parents are having a card party. Outside the house David hoses down his car to get rid of the mud stains, then runs upstairs to wash his dirty, bloody face and change his dirty clothes, then walks downstairs to greet his parents' guests like nothing is wrong. But the police call the house to inform David's father Howard, a retired criminal attorney, of Art's death; Art's mother is one of the Clarks' guests. They all go to the morgue to identify the body and the doctor gives Art's mother a sedative and sends her to bed. David feigns surprise about Art's death, but later his father confronts him and he admits that he killed Art. Although it looks like a classic case of self-defense, David hesitates to inform the police. David's father urges him to surrender to the police and also tell his mother that he did it. She takes a radically-different approach, advising him to keep quiet because he could go to prison. David's father tells him to follow his conscience about confessing, to the district attorney. The day David and his father walk into D.A.'s office for David to confess, the D.A. receives word that Art's killer has been arrested. The suspect is Joe Eisner, a well-known illegal bookie to whom Art owed money. Realizing that an innocent man has been wrongfully arrested for Art's killing, David sees his chance to avoid prison time by allowing Joe Elsner to take the blame. Ashamed about his son, David's father keeps quiet but urges David to do the right thing--then Joe Eisner's wife asks David's father to defend her innocent husband. She knows that Howard Clark is retired but she argues that he is the best criminal lawyer in town who's been recommended to her. Of course, Howard Clark refuses to help her, knowing his son David is the culprit. However, David and his mother Ellen convince David's father to take the case and defend the innocent Joe Elsner, to ensure that an innocent man won't take the blame for David's deed. Persuaded by these arguments, Howard Clark agrees to defend Joe Elsner, but the court proceedings don't go as planned: a tough prosecutor and an untruthful witness for the prosecution complicate matters. At the same time, a guilt-ridden David becomes more and more desperate to find inner peace by confessing to the killing.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLUMovie Reviews
It is good John Derek married well
A Cross + to Bear
***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.
Makes You Think
Spoiled son who's also a playboy accidentally kills his friend and then tries to hide it. His sense of guilt and his father's sense of honest justice keeps you guessing. Makes a parent think what they would do in the same situation.