One Girl's Confession

Mary Adams (Cleo Moore) is a waitress in a waterfront bar run by a man who had swindled her father years before. One night, she climbs in the man's bedroom window and steals $25,000 from under his pillow. The police arrive the next morning and, to escape pursuit and reprisal of the bar-owner, she confesses her crime. When the money is not recovered, Mary is sent to prison for five years, but earns early release for good behavior. While on parole, she gets another waterfront waitressing job. Dragomie Damitrof (Hugo Haas), the owner of this bar, is a foreign scoundrel father-figure type. Mary believes that she is being watched by the authorities still trying to recover the money, and is somewhat un-trusting of everyone.

Mary meets Johnny (Glenn Langan), and soon begins to entertain thoughts of helping her new boyfriend with a business loan. Then Dragomie nearly loses the bar in a card game and she promises to give him enough money to delay the debtors. Not being able to herself retrieve the money, Mary draws him a map to the location where she buried the loot. When Dragomie realizes this is the same girl that stole money from her infamous employer three years earlier on this same waterfront dock, he tells her. When returning from the cache, Dragomie bitterly tells that he could not find the money and angrily throws her out of his home.

Some days later, she finds the bar appears to be under new ownership and the boyfriend is worried about her. Upon closer inspection, it develops that the bar is still owned by Dragomie and it is reported that he has taken a vacation and moved into fancy new digs, apparently finding the money after all. With vengeance in her heart, she sets out confront him, and recover the money. In the ensuing argument, she strikes him on the head and leaves him for dead. The owner's girlfriend tells her she is mistaken, as she witnessed Dragomie win the money gambling. Deciding that the remaining recovered money has caused her too many problems, she donates it to an orphanage and confesses to her assault on Dragomie.

• Cleo Moore as Mary Adams
• Hugo Haas as Dragomie Damitrof
• Burt Mustin as Gardener
• Russ Conway as Police Officer
• Gayne Whitman as District Attorney
• Martha Wentworth as Old Lady
• Glenn Langan as Johnny

The film was released theatrically by Columbia Pictures in the United States on April 6, 1953, and European releases included it as Farligt tjuvgods in Sweden and Confessione di una ragazza in Italy.

In October 2000, it had its West German television release as Geständnis eines Mädchens. In 2010, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment included it in volume 2 of their Bad Girls of Film Noir series.[2][3][4]

• One Girl's Confession at IMDb