***SPOILERS*** Having an affair behind his wife's back at his girlfriend Ruth Evens, Sandra Church, apartment overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge business executive Mason Eldridge, Lloyd Bridges, sees a woman being brutally attacked while looking out the apartment window. Calling the police to come over Mason doesn't leave his name in not wanting to get involved in that it would expose him in cheating on his wife Doris, Geraldine Brooks.
It's later when reading the morning papers Mason is shocked to see that the person arrested in being responsible for the woman's murder that he witnessed was the apartment building janitor Newton Yort, Debbs Green. Knowing that Yort is Innocent in the crime Mason is now facing the dilemma of by keeping quite he may well be responsible for having an innocent man end up in the San Quentin gas chamber! That in Mason keeping his mouth shut in order to save both his marriage and job as a big time executive in a San Francisco real estate firm!
Mason has both his girlfriend Ruth and best friend friend sculpture Scotty, John Ireland, in them by trying to help him out in testifying that they in fact saw the woman murdered and it wasn't Yort who did it! That leads to Scotty being exposed as lying under oath and perjuring himself when he story fall completely apart on the stand ! That also leads a guilt ridden and tortured Mason to debate with himself and his friend Scotty if he should come clean and finally do the right thing and testify in court in Yort's defense. It's then that things turn deadly with the real woman's murderer, Victor French, who's been following events in the case since day one decides to shut Mason up for good! With the killer trying to kill Mason he instead ends up getting killed himself when he tried to drive Mason's car off the road. Mason now realizes that justice was done in the killer getting his just deserts but there's still the fact that an innocent man Newton Yort is going to end up paying for his crime. Mason in him seeing no other way out finally decided, in what's a spur of the moment, just before Yort is to be sentenced to get on the stand and tell the truth and let the chips, his marriage job and reputation, fall where they may in him doing it.
***SPOILERS*** It took a lot of courage on Mason's part to not only get innocent Newton Yort off but in exposing himself as a sniveling coward who tried to get other to do, and almost end up behind put bars, what he should have done in the first place! But it was that one act of courage and decency that in the end not only saved Mason's both job and marriage, which in fact he thought by then he lost, but also made him a hero in the eyes of everyone. Including his long suffering wife Doris! Who despite him cheating on her felt that what Mason did in saving Yort's life more then made up for it!
It's later when reading the morning papers Mason is shocked to see that the person arrested in being responsible for the woman's murder that he witnessed was the apartment building janitor Newton Yort, Debbs Green. Knowing that Yort is Innocent in the crime Mason is now facing the dilemma of by keeping quite he may well be responsible for having an innocent man end up in the San Quentin gas chamber! That in Mason keeping his mouth shut in order to save both his marriage and job as a big time executive in a San Francisco real estate firm!
Mason has both his girlfriend Ruth and best friend friend sculpture Scotty, John Ireland, in them by trying to help him out in testifying that they in fact saw the woman murdered and it wasn't Yort who did it! That leads to Scotty being exposed as lying under oath and perjuring himself when he story fall completely apart on the stand ! That also leads a guilt ridden and tortured Mason to debate with himself and his friend Scotty if he should come clean and finally do the right thing and testify in court in Yort's defense. It's then that things turn deadly with the real woman's murderer, Victor French, who's been following events in the case since day one decides to shut Mason up for good! With the killer trying to kill Mason he instead ends up getting killed himself when he tried to drive Mason's car off the road. Mason now realizes that justice was done in the killer getting his just deserts but there's still the fact that an innocent man Newton Yort is going to end up paying for his crime. Mason in him seeing no other way out finally decided, in what's a spur of the moment, just before Yort is to be sentenced to get on the stand and tell the truth and let the chips, his marriage job and reputation, fall where they may in him doing it.
***SPOILERS*** It took a lot of courage on Mason's part to not only get innocent Newton Yort off but in exposing himself as a sniveling coward who tried to get other to do, and almost end up behind put bars, what he should have done in the first place! But it was that one act of courage and decency that in the end not only saved Mason's both job and marriage, which in fact he thought by then he lost, but also made him a hero in the eyes of everyone. Including his long suffering wife Doris! Who despite him cheating on her felt that what Mason did in saving Yort's life more then made up for it!