Too Late for Tears is a 1949 American film noir starring Lizabeth Scott, Don DeFore, and Dan Duryea.

Directed by Byron Haskin, its plot follows a ruthless woman who resorts to multiple murders in an attempt to retain a suitcase containing US$60,000 ($609,000 in 2023) that does not belong to her.

In the years since its release, it has been noted for featuring one of Scott's strongest performances,[3] and her character one of the most vicious femme fatales in film noir.

When Alan is at work, a man named Danny Fuller comes to the Palmer apartment and tells Jane the money was intended for him.

Jane suggests she and Alan take a pedal boat ride at MacArthur Park and tells Fuller to meet her there.

The film was adapted for the screen by Roy Huggins, based on his own serialized novel of the same name, which had been published by The Saturday Evening Post.

[7][8] Stromberg initially sought Joan Crawford for the lead role of Jane Palmer, Kirk Douglas as Danny Fuller, and Wendell Corey as Don Blake.

[2] It was re-released in August 1955 under the alternate title Killer Bait by Astor Pictures, a distributor that specialized in theatrical reissuing of films.

[11] Astor Pictures often paired the film as a double feature with Johnny Holiday (1948), which they reissued under the alternative title Boy's Prison.

For producer Hunt Stromberg, director Byron Haskin and scenarist Roy Huggins, who adapted his own Saturday Evening Post serial, herein have fashioned an effective melodramatic elaboration of that theme.

Despite an involved plot and an occasional overabundance of palaver, not all of which is bright, this yarn about a cash-hungry dame who doesn't let men or conscience stand in her way, is an adult and generally suspenseful adventure.

[6]Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times conceded that Scott "gives the role everything she does have with a growling, unvarying intensity," but felt that overall the film was "a routine specimen of crime melodrama.

"[14] Film critic Dennis Schwartz in 2005 wrote a favorable review: Byron Haskin's low-budget film noir makes good use of its Los Angeles locale and its lady bluebeard is fun to watch as she does her nasty gun thing with her nice guy hubby and rotten poison thing with her boyfriend (she took care of her first hubby off camera, so we're not sure how he got it!

Jane's drive for wealth was so extreme that she will not stop at murder to rise above her impoverished middle-class circumstances, and her warped character is used to show how money can't buy one happiness.

The husky-voiced winsome smiling Lizabeth Scott turns in a finely tuned performance as the femme fatale; while Dan Duryea is in his element as the alcoholic weak-kneed cad, who shows he doesn't have as much stomach for his criminal mischief as does his lady accomplice.

[16] Too Late for Tears fell in the public domain in the decades after its release, owing to the dissolution of its corporate holders who failed to renew its copyright.