and
Brian Donlevy in
Impact and
Helen Walker Powerhouse millionaire industrialist Walter Williams gets his board of directors to bend to his will without ever breaking a sweat. He has a beautiful young wife, Irene, whom he dotes on, and a seemingly perfect life together in San Francisco. Walt has business in Denver, and Irene accepts his invitation to go along and turn the scenic ride over the mountains via
Lake Tahoe into a mini-vacation. At the last moment, she feigns illness, then asks him instead to give a ride to her poor "cousin" (ostensibly her aunt's favorite nephew) hitchhiking his way home to Evanston, Illinois. The "cousin" is actually her lover, Jim Torrence. On a pull-out on a deserted roadside high in the Sierras, Torrence executes their murder plan, striking Williams directly on the head with a lug wrench, and then rolling his body down a steep embankment. Spooked by two moving van attendants stopping their truck to offer assistance with a seeming auto breakdown, he races off wildly in Williams' roadster, straight into a head-on collision with a gasoline tanker. Meanwhile, Irene leaves for a rendezvous with Torrence at a hotel in
Oakland, booked under the assumed names of "Mr. & Mrs. Jack Burns"―but he never shows. Bloodied and badly shaken, Walt regains consciousness before the moving van leaves. He manages to crawl onto its open tailgate before passing out. The next morning, he slips out of the van unseen and sees a newspaper announcing his demise. He ends up in the small town of Larkspur,
Idaho. A skilled mechanic, he immediately gets a job at a local service station owned by Marsha Peters, a young war widow. Back in San Francisco, police detective Quincy starts piecing together evidence against Irene. She is arrested as an accomplice in her husband's killing, potentially facing the death penalty. Rooming as a boarder with Marsha and her mother, Williams enjoys life recovering in Larkspur, but furtively follows developments in San Francisco, wanting to let Irene pay for her treachery. Three months pass, and Marsha's mother discovers clippings in Williams' room that relate the story of his presumed murder. Swayed by Marsha's kindness and evident love for him, he eventually tells her the truth. She convinces him they will never have a future together unless he goes back and clears Irene. When he does, Irene, a consummate liar throughout, sees an opportunity and effortlessly turns the tables on Walt, accusing him of planning the entire thing to murder both her and Torrence. The district attorney questions Williams' claims of amnesia to explain his three months' delay in reappearing while he was deemed murdered. When police investigators find the clippings of Irene's trial in Williams' room in Larkspur, Irene's claims that Williams plotted Torrance's murder gain credence. Irene is released, and Walt ends up on trial for his life. Desperate, Marsha turns to Quincy, who has harbored doubts and is open to helping her clear Walt. Nothing they produce can turn the tide until Su Lin, the Williams' former housekeeper, is found. She leads the pair to a hotel key Irene left in a jacket pocket in her apartment closet, which takes them to Torrence's suitcase, still checked at the Oakland hotel, revealing his Jack Burns alias and his connection to Irene. Walter is freed and Irene is rearrested. ==Cast==