The best Claire McDowell’s crime movies

A social climber charms a debutante, seduces a factory worker and commits murder.

Convicted of manslaughter for a drunken driving accident, Kent Marlowe is sent to prison, where he meets vicious incarcerated figures who are planning an escape from the brutal conditions.

A Chicago gang led by Slade carries out an audacious brokerage robbery. Lieutenant Bill Mason takes the case, continuing his friendly-enemy relationship with crime reporter Ann Rogers. One gang member is caught; eventually, others follow. But Mason hasn't a clue to Slade, principally because he's unaware she's a woman.

A foreword warns against the peril of yellow journalism, and the story illustrates it by following events in the upstate New York town of Cornwall after prominant financier George Ferguson is killed. Two types of New York City journalists descend on Cornwall, one interested in facts, the other in getting sensational "news". Mrs. Ferguson is known to have been friendly with a local banker. The Fergusons quarrel the evening he is killed (by "burglers", his wife tells the police later), and she is arrested, spurred on by the "bad" journalists, who also manage to badger the banker's wife into the hospital. Meanwhile, young Bruce Foster runs the Cornwall Courier, and shows the big city reporters how to dig out real news while they attempt to subvert justice for their own ends.

A maker of illusions for magicians protects an ingenue likely to be murdered.

A fast-talking reporter befriends a young woman and her male companion who are wanted for a policeman's shooting.

A woman murders her husband's mistress and someone else gets accused of the crime.

A mild-mannered insurance salesman gets mixed up with gangsters.

This MGM Crime Does Not Pay series short shows the role the crime laboratory plays in the solving of cases, and how even the smallest detail can become a major clue.