CRIME OF PASSION (1957)

I tuned into this latter-day film noir because it stars two of my favorite actors of that period: Barbara Stanwyk and Sterling Hayden. She's Kathy, a proto-Women's Lib newspaper columnist who falls in love instantly with Bill (Hayden), a visiting police detective. She quits her job, marries, moves to LA and is instantly bored being a housewife and having to put up with airhead police wives (one of whom is Fay Wray, of King Kong fame). She devotes her scheming self to advancing her laconic husband's career (even to sleeping with his boss, played by Raymond Burr), and mayhem results. The beginning is clumsy and poorly scripted, and Hayden, the arch-tough cop, plays completely against type. But, once it gets going, the redoubtable Stanwyk brings it off. Worth watching.