I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes (William Nigh, 1948)

Elyse Knox in I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes

Cast: Don Castle, Elyse Knox, Regis Toomey, Charles D. Brown, Rory Mallinson, Robert Lowell, Bill Kennedy. Screenplay: Steve Fisher, based on a story by Cornell Wooolrich. Cinematography: Mack Stengler. Art direction: Dave Milton. Film editing: Roy V. Livingston, Otho Lovering. 

I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes is a tidy, by-the-numbers Wrong Man thriller with an eleventh-hour climax -- in short, the kind of drama that would become standard on television a few years after it was released. Tom (Don Castle) and Ann (Elyse Knox) are a young dance team getting by between bookings on Ann's pay (and tips) as an instructor in a dance hall. One night, Tom flings his shoes out the window at a yowling cat. That same night, an elderly miser in their neighborhood is murdered and robbed. Tom's shoes become an important clue in the search for the killer, leading to his conviction for murder and imprisonment on Death Row. His only hope lies in Ann's attempt to persuade the police detective, Clint Judd (Regis Toomey), with whom she has flirted at the dance hall, to find the real killer. The movie was made by Poverty Row studio Monogram, so there's nothing fancy about it. The stars are low-wattage: Castle had been a bit player at Paramount before World War II, and had trouble restarting his career after being drafted and serving in the Army Air Force. Knox was a former model whose career never quite took off before she was signed by Monogram to play the girlfriend of Joe Palooka in a series of movies based on the comic strip hero; she married football player Tom Harmon and became the mother of Mark Harmon. Regis Toomey was probably the best-known member of the cast, with an IMDb list of 273 credits, stretching from 1929 to 1985, mostly in character roles. Director William Nigh started as an actor, but turned director in 1914, working steadily for B-movie factories like Monogram. I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes was his next-to-last feature. Mostly a straightforward movie, it does try a little too hard in a montage in which Tom, counting the hours until he goes to the chair, is haunted by echoes of the word "shoes." It comes off, unfortunately, as a little silly. Otherwise, it's solid, unpretentious and modestly entertaining.