The Hour Before the Dawn

The Hour Before the Dawn is a 1944 drama film directed by Frank Tuttle and starring Veronica Lake and Franchot Tone. It was based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham. An Austrian refugee is living in England with a family who have taken care of her during the war. The eldest son of the family has affections for her but he and the rest of the family are unaware that she is in fact a Nazi spy working to gather information to aid in Hitler's planned invasion of England. It is often rumoured that this film may have led to the downfall of Veronica Lake's career. She was at her peak at the time... of production, with films such as Sullivan's Travels, This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, I Married a Witch and So Proudly We Hail! all having been big box office successes for her and Paramount. After this film was released, her career declined and her films were less popular, with the exception of Ramrod, The Blue Dahlia and to a lesser extent Saigon, the latter two of which paired her with four-time co-star Alan Ladd.
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