Numbered Woman

Heroic nurse Linda Morgan decides to risk everything after her brother Tommy is falsely jailed for stealing bonds. Hoping to prove his innocence, she takes a job under an assumed name as a private nurse for Lew Adams, a dying gangster who knows who really stole the bonds. To show Adams she is a fellow crook who can be trusted, Linda has herself thrown in jail on a phony charge. There she befriends Vicki, the hard-bitten gun moll of Adams' confederate Blake. After the women are freed on bail, Vicki takes Linda to Blake's hideout, where the stolen bonds are located. Realizing she finally has the evidence that can free Tommy, Linda goes to call the police, but not before Blake and Vicki reveal that they've known her true identity all along. It may not only be too late for Tommy, but for the beautiful Linda as well...

Numbered Woman is a tense crime-driven potboiler from low-budget Poverty Row studio Monogram Pictures. It stars the gorgeous Sally Blane, the older sister of screen legend Loretta Young who appeared in classics such as I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) and The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939). Lloyd Hughes, who is top-billed but appears in the film surprisingly little, started his career in prestigious silents like The Sea Hawk (1924) and The Lost World (1925), but by the talkie era had become a fixture in "B" pictures with titles such as The Drums of Jeopardy (1931) and Midnight Phantom (1935). More notable is the presence of Ward Bond, the beloved character actor who starred in Wagon Train from 1957 to 1960 and was a favorite of legendary director John Ford. (Bond is probably best remembered today for playing Bert the cop in It's a Wonderful Life.) Director Karl Brown worked as a cinematographer on D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) but wound up making low-budget "B" movie fare in the sound era.