When she was young and in her salad days Sylvia Sidney seemed to be cast as
innocents with lives buffeted by time and circumstance. In the title role of Mary
Burns, Fugitive rural girl Sylvia who works in a coffee shop has fallen for smooth
talking city guy Alan Baxter.
She learns the hard way that he's one of the FBI's public enemies when she gets brought in on a holdup and Baxter escapes and she's caught. After trial and conviction she's sent to women's prison for 15 years.
In this film everybody manipulates Sylvia, her cellmate brassy Pert Kelton, G-man Wallace Ford, and the rest of law enforcement as an 'escape' is arranged hoping she'll lead the cops to Baxter. But she really doesn't know anything and can't convince anyone of that fact.
There are some real good performances here from Sidney and from Baxter as one cold villain with one weakness, the hots for Sylvia. Just as cold and villainous but without the libido problems is Brian Donlevy in one of his earliest roles. He meets quite an end.
With the part of the arranged escape that doesn't go quite as planned some elements of White Heat are here.
This one is a crackerjack sleeper from Paramount.
She learns the hard way that he's one of the FBI's public enemies when she gets brought in on a holdup and Baxter escapes and she's caught. After trial and conviction she's sent to women's prison for 15 years.
In this film everybody manipulates Sylvia, her cellmate brassy Pert Kelton, G-man Wallace Ford, and the rest of law enforcement as an 'escape' is arranged hoping she'll lead the cops to Baxter. But she really doesn't know anything and can't convince anyone of that fact.
There are some real good performances here from Sidney and from Baxter as one cold villain with one weakness, the hots for Sylvia. Just as cold and villainous but without the libido problems is Brian Donlevy in one of his earliest roles. He meets quite an end.
With the part of the arranged escape that doesn't go quite as planned some elements of White Heat are here.
This one is a crackerjack sleeper from Paramount.