Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951 American film)

Convicted of murdering his abusive father at age 13, Bill Clark is freed after 18 years behind bars. On his release, Bill meets Dan Monroe, who seems to be friendly, but is angered when he discovers that Monroe is a reporter exploiting Bill for a sensational story about the released "boy killer." Now wary of people and unused to women, Bill is attracted to a blonde taxi dancer, Catherine ("Cathy" or "Kay") Higgins, who at first rejects his advances but invites him up to her apartment when he presents her with a watch as a gift. There, the couple is confronted by George Conover, Cathy's estranged boyfriend, who orders Bill to leave and pulls a gun. Bill attacks Conover but is knocked unconscious. Cathy retrieves the gun, shooting Conover when he moves toward her. The badly wounded man staggers out of the apartment and hails a cab. When Bill comes to, he finds Cathy packing to leave.

Cathy informs Bill that Conover is actually a New York police detective and urges him to go his own way, believing that the policeman would not want publicity from pressing charges for the shooting. Outside, however, Bill discovers that Conover has been hospitalized and that his assailant is being sought. Returning to Cathy's apartment, Bill convinces her that he has to leave with her, and they take a taxi to her brother's home in New Jersey.

Cathy's sister-in-law in not happy to see her, but her brother does allow her to borrow his car after they hear a radio report that Conover has died. Cathy leads Bill to believe that he had shot Conover just before passing out. At a diner, the couple abandon the brother's car and manage to stow away in an auto mounted on a car carrier. At first at odds with each other, the couple's feelings begin to warm and at a motel Bill persuades Cathy, who has now dyed her hair black, to marry him under assumed names.

The couple continue to hitch-hike. learning more about each other and growing closer along the way. In California, they meet Henry and Stella Dawson and their son, who are heading toward the lettuce fields of Salinas, where the couple finds honest work and happiness, making a comfortable home out of their workers cottage. At a barbershop, though, Henry sees Bill's picture in a true crime magazine, learning that there is a one-thousand dollar reward for information about him. Back at his cabin, Henry is eager to turn Bill in for the reward, but he seems to back down when Stella persuades him that it would not be right. Bill is suspicious about what Henry knows and might do and declines to go fishing with him the next day, but he resists the urge to run away again when Cathy announces that she is pregnant and also confesses that she was the one who had shot Conover.

That next day, Henry is badly injured in a car accident, and Stella gives into temptation for the reward money. When Bill sees a police officer walking from the Dawsons' cabin to theirs, he prepares to attack him with a scythe but Cathy stops him by shooting him in the shoulder. In custody and back in New York, Bill and Cathy each confess separately to killing Conover in order to spare the other. The district attorney, however, informs them that Conover had confessed before dying that he had been shot in self-defense and that the police had never really been looking for either of them. The couple is finally released to resume their life together.

• Ruth Roman as Cathy "Cay" Higgins
• Steve Cochran as Bill Clark
• Lurene Tuttle as Stella Dawson
• Ray Teal as Henry Dawson
• Morris Ankrum as Hugh Wagner
• John Kellogg as Dan Monroe
• Lee Patrick as Janet Higgins
• Hugh Sanders as Detective Lt. George Conover
• Stuart Randall as Frank Higgins
• Robert Hyatt as Johnny Dawson
• Harry Antrim as Warden
• Walter Sande as Sheriff

The film earned $1.7 million (adjusted to $30.5 million in current dollars) at the box office.[2]

A review in The New York Times was dismissive: "Apart from one sequence when the pair hide in a car being transported by truck to effect their escape, "Tomorrow Is Another Day" follows an ancient formula. Its tensions are manufactured and apparent. List "Tomorrow Is Another Day" as just another picture."[3]

Contemporary film critic Dennis Schwartz writes, "Gloomy minor film noir with a happy ending. The movie was made for John Garfield, but he died in 1952. A satisfactory Steve Cochran takes the part and gives it his best shot. Competently directed by Felix Feist (The Devil Thumbs a Ride/The Threat/Donovan's Brain), as always, and adequately written by Guy Endore (blacklisted after the movie for his political activism) and Art Cohn. Though watchable, the social conscious film remains forgettable--unable to leave a particularly sympathetic lasting impression of its outsider characters, whose distrust of the authorities leads them to be anti-social types and humorless downers for most of the pic."[4]

Film noir historian Eddie Muller ranks the film as number 20 out of "25 noir films that will stand the test of time."[5]

• Tomorrow Is Another Day at IMDb
• Tomorrow Is Another Day at AllMovie
• Tomorrow Is Another Day at the TCM Movie Database
• Tomorrow Is Another Day at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Tomorrow Is Another Day informational site and DVD review at DVD Beaver (includes images)