The Hour Before the Dawn is a 1944 American drama war film directed by Frank Tuttle starring Franchot Tone and Veronica Lake.

In 1939, Jim is headmaster at a school and has fallen in love with a young Austrian woman, Dora Bruckman, who works for his sister-in-law, May.

She meets regularly with her supervisors in London, Mrs. Müller and Kurt van der Breughel, who pose as Austrian refugees.

Dora is ordered to provide German bombers with a bearing to a camouflaged airfield where Roger is stationed, using the headlights of May's car.

[2] When the book was published, it became a best seller, but Paramount were reluctant to make a film based on it because it was about a conscientious objector - something that was felt to be palatable to the American public while the USA was neutral, but not after.

However, after time passed, executives began to feel the public would be sympathetic to a movie about a genuine objector, as it was one of the freedoms the Allies were fighting for.

[3] The movie was the first film produced by William Dozier, who had worked as a story editor at Paramount for a number of years.