Shed No Tears
Shed No Tears
| 09 June 1948 (USA)
Shed No Tears Trailers

A man listens to his wife and fakes his own death so that she can get her hands on his insurance policy.

Reviews
Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good
Holstra Boring, long, and too preachy.
Cleveronix A different way of telling a story
Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
MartinHafer I love film noir movies. And, although "Shed No Tears" is from a tiny production company (Equity Pictures) and has mostly small-time or over the hill actors, it's a top film--gritty, intelligently written and cold-hearted...the way you WANT noir to be!When the film begins, a husband and wife have just set up the fake death of the husband. Using a corpse they bought, they then started a fire in a motel room and made it appear as if the husband was the victim. The plan is to then use the husband's insurance policy to get rich and they'll take off and start a new life. However, what the man (Wallace Ford) doesn't know is that his wife is scum....a true femme fatale. You see, his beloved young wife (June Vincent) already has another lover and is planning on keeping all the money!Into this twisted tale of domestic bliss comes an unknown quantity-- the husband's adult son from a previous marriage. No one anticipated that he'd not believe the way his father supposedly died--and he hires a skunk of a private detective to investigate. I say the dick is a skunk because he soon figures out what's happening and he plans on bleeding the 'grieving widow' of at least some of her insurance money.If it sounds like most of the people in this film are scum, you have it right. Rarely have I seen a film with so many wonderful twists-- all because most everyone (aside from the son) are just dirt! Additionally, great dialog, lots of smart writing, acting and direction make this a surprisingly strong and entertaining film.
Spikeopath Directed by Jean Yarbrough and starring Wallace Ford and June Vincent, Shed No Tears was once one of those lost film noirs that noiristas craved to see. Now widely available to view, it proves to be a decent journey into noirville, even if it becomes a touch shaky come the final third. Plot has Vincent as a devious femme fatale wife who convinces her husband (Ford) to fake his own death. The plan is to get rich on the insurance claim, but soon it becomes apparent that hubby is caught in a web of murder, blackmail and treachery. The plot dynamics are laid out for us very early in the peace, leaving the rest of the narrative to tease us with the shifty shenanigans of the protagonists. Classic noir staples are adhered to with the characterisations, viper woman, dupes, dopes, crooks and cronies. Yarbrough moves it along at a good old "B noir" clip, while the screenplay has enough twists and surprises in it to keep the noir faithful pleased. 7/10
kidboots ...so says sexy Edna (June Vincent with her distinctive blonde hair streaks), the much younger wife of businessman Sam Grover (Wallace Ford) when he tells her she must shed no tears!! At her urging he has faked his own death to defraud the insurance company out of a fortune - the only problem is that while he is desperately waiting, holed up in a distant town, she is definitely shedding no tears in the arms of her lover Ray.There are more twists and turns than a mountain road - enter Sam's son, Tom, who has been estranged from his father since his marriage to Edna. He has doubts that his father is dead and Edna's icy demeanour doesn't exactly quell his suspicions. His eager fiancé puts him in touch with debonair private eye Huntington Stewart (just imagine Clifton Webb from "Laura") who seems to have a finger in everyone's pie. His first port of call is the "grieving widow" where a phone call indicates that she is not grieving nor a widow. He tries to shake her down for $5,000 - to give Tom a start in life but Tom wants to handle things in his own "rough house" way!!Then Sam returns, he has only had one letter from Edna and he is now completely suspicious - but don't feel sorry for poor cuckolded Sam. He is not above bilking his landlady by selling off all her furniture when she is away for the day!! Once back he seems to know exactly what is going on - staking Ray out and then leaving Edna with a finger-printed gun and looking at a stretch in the big house whichever way she turns!! You have seen it all before but at just over an hour there is no wasted space. There couldn't have been any other actor in mind than Wallace Ford as the befuddled Sam who re-enters with a steely purpose but it is June Vincent's movie all the way, from crying crocodile tears when she is told of her husband's death to her only sincere bit of emotion when she realises something nasty has happened to Ray. It is also to Frank Albertson's credit that he makes his role as the standard detective stand out what with all the slippery characters abounding.
clore_2 Wallace Ford fakes his death in a hotel room fire. He hooks up with his much younger wife, June Vincent, and together they plan on bilking the insurance company for the payoff of 50 grand which will reunite them once she collects. She watches as he gets on the bus, then meets her boyfriend in the parking lot and they talk of how they're going to spend the money.All this happens in the first ten minutes or so - there's no fat on this baby.But meanwhile, Ford's son thinks that something is amiss, he thinks that Vincent killed Ford herself and he hires an investigator to prove it. This is where things really start perking as the Clifton Webb-like sleuth, played wonderfully by Johnstone White, soon figures out what's going on and he starts playing the supposed widow and the son against each other as well as Ford himself who comes back to town and discovers his wife in a clinch with her boyfriend.But wait - there's still more but you're going to have to find out for yourself. Jean Yarbrough, veteran of just about every kind of movie and TV genre, manages to keep one's interest despite a lack of noirish touches. It's likely that he had to get this done in a week or so, so there wasn't any time for complicated camera set-ups. The story here is the main thing, you likely will not be disappointed.