My Name Is Julia Ross (Joseph H. Lewis, 1945)

May Whitty in My Name Is Julia Ross

Cast: Nina Foch, May Whitty, George Macready, Roland Varno, Anita Sharp-Bolster, Doris Lloyd. Screenplay: Muriel Roy Bolton, based on a novel by Anthony Gilbert. Cinematography: Burnett Guffey. Art direction: Jerome Pycha Jr. Film editing: Henry Batista. Costume design: Jean Louis.

A tidy, twisty thriller about a woman (Nina Foch) who, when she gets hired as a secretary to a wealthy elderly woman (May Whitty) who lives in a lonely, isolated old house by the sea, becomes a pawn in a plot to cover up a murder. It's one of the films -- another is Gun Crazy (1950) -- that suggest that Joseph H. Lewis could have been more than just a B-movie director. Short (65 minutes) and to the point.