Two Girls

Night Editor/One Girl's Confession (1946) is another one of those nifty B-movie double features. The theme is "Bad Girls"

Night Editor starts with a framing story. A guy stumbles into a newspaper office after midnight, and sits down with his head in his hands. The night editor and other boys playing cards start telling a story about another guy they knew with problems. It was William Gargen, a policeman with a sweet wife (Jeff Donnell) and son, and a socialite girlfriend (Janis Carter). While making out with the girlfriend in lover's lane, they see a guy in another car bludgeon his girl to death with a tire iron and run off. Since he's in a compromised position, he doesn't try to catch the guy. Carter, meanwhile, is kind of excited by the violence - she wants to see the body. She is a real psycho.

The upshot is that Gargen has to investigate the murder, while hiding the fact that he was a witness - and if they scope his tire tracks, he'll be a suspect. He quickly finds that the victim ran in the same circles as his psycho girlfriend, Carter. One of her men friends looks a lot like the guy they spotted running. But when he calls him in for a statement, his alibi is Carter.

It ends with a moral and the reporter with the problems heads home to his wife and kids with a bounce in his step. But at least we got some really depraved sex and violence in the upper classes on the way.

One Girl's Confession is a different type of story. It stars platinum blonde Cleo Moore, a B-movie Marilyn Monroe. She is waitressing in a low dive run by the man who cheated her father, and who raised her. One night, she steals the money he makes on shady drug deals. When the police come, she confesses freely, but won't let anyone know where the money is.

She does her prison time well, making friends, keeping her nose clean and working the prison garden. As a result, she gets let out after serving only a year. But she's convinced they are still keeping an eye on her so she can't get the money. She gets a waitress job at director Hugo Haas' joint. Haas plays a Balkan wiseguy, who cares more about some complicated Balkan card game than running the restaurant - and maybe his girlfriend Smooch, Helene Stanton.

Things are looking up for Moore. She meets a nice sailor, Glenn Langan (AKA Glen Manning, The Amazing Colossal Man). She even considers giving Langan her money. Then Haas has a bad run of cards and loses everything, including the bar. So she offers the money to him, telling him where to dig it up - she thinks she is still being watched.

But he comes back empty handed, thinking she's playing tricks, and throws her out. She is so distraught at losing the money and her job that she gets holes up in bed for three days. When she comes back, the restaurant has a new owner, but only because Haas has sold it. He is now living in a penthouse and having a big party. Moore goes to confront him, assuming he stole the money and hid it from her. When he drunkenly mashes on her, she hits him with a bottle - and Smooch tells her he is dead. And he got the money from a card game the morning after he lost the bar.

She runs to the hiding place and finds the money under a tree's roots. She is so upset that she gives the money to an orphanage and goes to the police. But when she confesses, they call Haas and he answers the phone - he had just been knocked out - I'm not sure if Smooch was kidding or mistaken, but the police turn her away, and after she kind of tries to get the money back, she winds up with her sailor.

This is a fun movie with a lot of suspense and twists, and a slightly mystifying happy ending. But Cleo Moore is the best part - a down-to-earth beauty, honest to a fault, and open to love. I'd love to see more of her, but there doesn't seem to be any on Netflix.