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Plot

With a little extra effort, Columbia's Key Witness might have been a model B picture. John Beal plays inventor Milton Higby, whose treacherous ex-girlfriend is mysteriously murdered. As the number one suspect, Higby is in the doghouse witht he Law. Fortunately, it seems as though someone witnessed the crime; less fortunately, that someone has apparently disappeared from the face of the earth. Higby also tries to disappear by disguising himself as a bum, which only adds to his already mounting problems. So little critical attention was paid to Columbia's B product in the late 1940s that one reviewer labelled Key Witness costar Trudy Marshall as a "newcomer", even though she'd been in pictures since 1942 (Marshall, incidentally, is the mother of 1970s star Deborah Raffin).
MPAA Rating:
Genre(s):
Crime and Mystery,Drama,Thriller
Run Time:
67min.
Distributor(s):
Columbia Pictures
Director(s):
David Ross Lederman
Starring:
Trudy Marshall , Jimmy Lloyd , Helen Mowery , Wilton Graff
Themes:
Assumed Identities,Clearing One's Name
Tone:
Tense
Keywords:
bum,disguise,false-accusation,girlfriend,impersonation,inventor,killing,murder