The Family Secret (1951)

Crime, Drama

85 min    -    Rating: 6.3

John Derek, Lee J. Cobb, Jody Lawrance…

Outside a tavern, best friends Art Bradley and David Clark exchange punches over a girl. Art is drunk and pulls a knife on David, who hits Art over the head with a rock. Art dies and a panicked David drives home, where his parents are having a card party. Outside the house David hoses down his car to get rid of the mud stains, then runs upstairs to wash his dirty, bloody face and change his dirty clothes, then walks downstairs to greet his parents' guests like nothing is wrong. But the police call the house to inform David's father Howard, a retired criminal attorney, of Art's death; Art's mother is one of the Clarks' guests. They all go to the morgue to identify the body and the doctor gives Art's mother a sedative and sends her to bed. David feigns surprise about Art's death, but later his father confronts him and he admits that he killed Art. Although it looks like a classic case of self-defense, David hesitates to inform the police. David's father urges him to surrender to the police and also tell his mother that he did it. She takes a radically-different approach, advising him to keep quiet because he could go to prison. David's father tells him to follow his conscience about