Excellent but underrated film

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

If you have a deep interest in how they picked juries in Los Angeles County around the year 1950, this is the movie for you. It begins with a couple of pre-credit shots (a rarity for Hollywood at the time) of the process and goes on its tiresome way for almost a third of the film. We are also introduced to our not very interesting jurors, who will spend most of their time talking about the case when they've been instructed not to and fighting with one another over nothing very much. Oh, and our two stars, Ginger Rogers and Dennis Morgan, fall in love for no particular reason. The murder case seems a distant afterthought for all involved.Eventually there is a lame parallel drawn between the proto-adulterous relationship of Rogers and Morgan with the adulterous (or was that, too, still in the potential stage?) affair between the accused and his other woman, the wife being the victim. Doubling down, a more direct parallel is established between the final holdout juror and the accused murderer. If I hadn't been on a Ginger Rogers kick I'd never have made it that far. This may not be her worst film, but I do believe that it is the most tedious. The most interesting thing about it is probably the location footage of Los Angeles that occasionally graces the proceedings. 3/10.

Ginger Rogers and Dennis Morgan serve on a sequestered jury during a murder trial. The two fall in love, despite his still being married and her separated. Combination courtroom drama and soap opera. The murder trial stuff is okay. Not 12 Angry Men but interesting enough. The soaper part is weak and drags the movie down. Predictable safe ending doesn't help. The selling point is the cast. Rogers and Morgan are both likable. The rest of the jurors are made of a variety of colorful characters. The standouts being Thelma Ritter, Anthony Ross, and Alan Reed (voice of Fred Flintstone). It's watchable enough but nothing special. Avid Ginger fans will appreciate it more than most.

Some scintillating pre-credits footage of bureaucrats shuffling through card files of prospective jurors, and we're off on the world's least interesting murder trial, propelled by a baffling romance between jurors Ginger Rogers and Dennis Morgan. Both are still married, she's separated, and the movie doesn't seem to know how to treat the prospect of their getting together--we're supposed to want them to, yet also not to want them to, because of all the lives it would disrupt. Meantime, the rest of the jury appears to be the stupidest ever, led by Thelma Ritter, doing her usual welcome Tenth-Avenue-salt-of-the-earth thing, but with bad lines. Rogers, as was her wont at this stage of her career, is more glamorous than the woman she's playing, and one detects a large whiff of star vanity; Morgan looks understandably bored. The movie's unaccountably fascinated with the minor details of jury duty, and everyone on this panel is such an idiot that there's nothing to do but watch them jabber and spar and lead to their inevitable verdict. Bretaigne Windust's direction (now there's a name) is disinterested and uncinematic, but not even a Capra or a Sturges could have made anything of this script.

The first third of the film is about the worst movie making I've ever seen. The director managed to create the sappiest stereotypical jurors one could possibly devise. Not believable characters at all.The remainder of the film is a bit better. Half the script is about the murder case being tried, but the other half of the script is about the relationships among the jurors...particularly the relationship that develops between Ginger Rogers and Dennis Morgan. Will he leave his wife for Ginger? Will she let him? The story is weak, but watchable. The sets are unbelievably cheap. But some of the acting is decent. Ginger Rogers has a few very good scenes, but I would have to say that the script held her back. Dennis Morgan could be a pretty decent actor back in the 1940s (see, for example, "In This Our Lives"), but here he is just okay. His career was fading toward television at this point.I've always enjoyed Thelma Ritter, but she always played the same character...but at least she was entertaining. Margalo Gillmore, a character actress you may recognize, has a decent role here as one of the jurors. Perhaps Anthony Ross worked better on the stage, but I wasn't impressed with him here. He seemed to try too hard. Howard Freeman, another character actor you may recognize, has a decent speaking part here. You may like to look for Alan Reed, who looked a bit like Fred Flintstone...and indeed was the original voice of Flintstone; not that this role is a particular good one. Paul Ford has a nothing role as judge; he was much better in later films where he excelled at playing a comic buffoon. Harry Bellaver is comfortable as the bailiff.This is no "12 Angry Men". But, it's watchable, and interesting in that the first third is so bad, and for seeing some of the actors. You're not likely to see many Dennis Morgan films that are later in his career.