Dangerous Crossing

This noirish low-budget mystery stars Jeanne Crain as a newlywed who discovers that no one believes her when husband Carl Betz goes missing from their honeymoon cruise, with Michael Rennie as the ship's doctor who helps her work out the truth. The puzzle unfolds deftly enough, with Crain refusing to resort to distressed damsel histrionics, and director Joseph M Newman (assisted by nine-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Joseph LaShelle) makes evocative use of sets that had been built for Howard Hawks's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Jean Negulesco's Titanic. The suspenseful story (a 1943 radio play called Cabin B-13) is by John Dickson Carr, a master of the "locked room" mystery, who met - rather than lost - his wife on a cruise.