Playwright John Guare once compared money to life preservers. People are just as desperate for money as someone in the ocean is for a way to float. They may be swimming fine, but without that life preserver they could go down in rough water and disappear without a trace. In Too Late for Tears a married couple that are swimming fine suddenly find themselves with an excess of life preservers when a bag of money lands in their car. We mean it literally—it comes out of the night and plops into the back seat of their convertible. It’s a lot of money—$100,000, which would be more than a million bucks today. The couple don’t really need this cash but they can’t make themselves give it up. Which leads to serious problems when the crook who accidentally threw the bag into their car comes looking for it.
The promo poster is interesting. It shows bad guy Dan Duryea trying to make Lizabeth Scott tell him where the money went. But Scott’s tough. She’ll endure anything to keep the hundred grand. As an allegory about greed Too Late for Tears runs on a couple of tracks, but the way it suggests that the craving for money can make a woman forgive—or perhaps pretend to forgive—the unforgivable is a pretty potent commentary. Some viewers may find the very suggestion offensive, which is where thinking of the money as life preservers helps. What price wouldn’t a rational person swimming in the ocean pay to guarantee that they would never drown? Too Late for Tears asks the question and the answer isn’t pretty. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1949.
