This Side of the Law
1950 film by Richard L. Bare
This Side of the Law is a 1950 American film noir directed by Richard L. Bare and starring Kent Smith, Viveca Lindfors, Robert Douglas and Janis Paige.
Plot
David Cummins is trapped in a dry cistern and wondering whether he will die there. A flashback to a week earlier reveals the events that landed him there.
David, a bright but downtrodden hobo, is arrested for vagrancy, and he is sentenced to pay $50 or serve 30 days in prison. After lawyer Philip Cagle pays the fine, he explains to David that he is the executor of the estate of the wealthy Malcolm Taylor, to whom David bears a striking physical resemblance. Taylor has been missing for nearly seven years and is about to be declared legally dead, which Cagle hopes to avoid. He offers David $500 to impersonate Taylor, but David demands $5,000 before agreeing. They drive to Taylor's mansion near a cliff, where David must fool Taylor's wife Evelyn, brother Calder and sister-in-law Nadine. Just as they arrive, Cagle tells him, "By the way, your brother hates you."
Evelyn is unhappy to see David, as Taylor was not a nice man. She does not know that her husband's most recent affair was with Nadine.
The public source identifies “This Side of the Law” as 1950 film by Richard L. Bare. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Side, film and Richard.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12129243. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950.
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This entry incorporates text from “This Side of the Law” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.