The Clay Pigeon is a 1949 American film noir directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Carl Foreman, based on a true story.

The drama features Bill Williams and Barbara Hale, a real-life husband and wife.

[2] Jim Fletcher (Williams), a former inmate in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, awakes from a coma at a Naval hospital, and is then informed that he has been accused of murder.

[3] Film noir specialist Eddie Muller speculates this is the first time the highly decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team, composed mostly of Japanese Americans, was acknowledged in a movie, and states that this was not simply the studio's formulaic trope of balancing something negative with a positive, but rather screenwriter Carl Foreman's personal progressive outlook.

[3] Time Out film reviews wrote of the film, "Directed by Fleischer with tight, spare energy, although the implausible script and bland leading performances (with Hale as the dead friend's wife, initially hostile but soon losing her heart) make it much inferior to The Narrow Margin.