The Woman in the Window

Joan Bennett,Robert Blake,Edward G. Robinson,George 'Spanky' McFarland

Richard Wanley, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Gotham College in New York, is on his own as his wife and children are away for the summer. He and his two best friends, physician Michael Barkstane and DA Frank Lalor, have all admired the painting of the beautiful woman in a store window. So Wanley is pleasantly surprised that he meets the woman late one evening as he stands admiring the portrait on his own, she who invites him to her apartment for an innocent drink to view some sketches of her done by the same artist. Wanley's plan to boast to his friends about meeting her changes when their quiet evening is interrupted by the unexpected entrance of her jealous and violent boyfriend. In being attacked by the man, Wanley ends up killing him in a case of self defense. Instead of calling the police, Wanley is able to convince the woman that they should hide the fact of the killing as they both have too much to lose in the process with neither of them outwardly being tied to the dead man or each other: she believes nobody knows that she and the dead man even knew each other let alone dated as he refused to go out together in public and probably made sure no one ever saw him enter her apartment; she is even sure the name he gave her, Frank Howard, is not his real name; and between her and Wanley, all either knows about the other is Wanley eventually discovering her name being Alice Reed and where she lives. Despite not knowing anything about police procedure in murder investigations, Wanley offers to take care of disposing of the body while she destroys any evidence of either him or the dead man ever having been in her apartment, after which they will never have to see each other again. Wanley is able to dispose of the body in the woods, it which he knows will eventually be found with no ties back to them. Things take a turn when the dead man is found and his identity is divulged, and as Lalor is placed in charge of the investigation for his office, he who continually fills in his friends on what he and the police discover from evidence, which ends up being much more than Wanley would have ever imagined.—Huggo