Best movies like Criminal Lawyer
The famous trials!... tricks!... fixes!.. of the smartest mouthpiece of them all !
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Criminal Lawyer Starring Pat O’Brien, Jane Wyatt, Carl Benton Reid, Mary Castle, and more. If you liked Criminal Lawyer then you may also like: The Unknown Man, Up for Murder, Upperworld, News Is Made at Night, The Nuisance and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
A drunken attorney tries to sober up in order to defend a friend in murder case.
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Up for Murder
Young reporter accidentially kills his newspaper's editor in a fight over the publisher's mistress, who is also the paper's society editor.
Upperworld
A railroad tycoon, disillusioned with his marriage, starts seeing a showgirl. Things go agreeably until the woman's manager decides to blackmail the millionaire.
News Is Made at Night
Newspaper editor (Foster) will do almost anything to increase circulation. He campaigns to free a condemned man while accusing a wealthy ex-criminal of a string of murders.
The Nuisance
Fast-talker extraordinaire Tracy gives one of his quintessential wiseguy performances as a conniving ambulance chaser who falls in love with Evans, unaware she's a special investigator for a streetcar company he's repeatedly victimized.
The Jury's Secret
A reporter covering a murder trial guesses that the murderer of a ruthless businessman is her ex-fiancé and persuades him to confess and clear the innocent man on trial.
Dangerous Years
Jeff Carter has put an end to the town's delinquency with a boys' club. Young hoodlum Danny shows up and influences teenagers Doris, Willy and Leo. They hang out at a juke joint where Eve works. When Jeff tries to stop a robbery planned by Danny, he is killed and Danny goes on trial.
Francis Covers the Big Town
A man who has a talking mule gets a job on a newspaper, and both get mixed up in a murder trial.
Bulldog Edition
Two rival newspapers are engaged in a circulation battle, complicated by the fact that a vicious gangster inserts himself into the middle of it. Also complicating matters is that one newspaper's editor and circulation director are competing for the affections of a pretty blonde reporter.
Slaughter on 10th Avenue
A rookie assistant DA is assigned to investigate the murder of a longshoreman, killed for exposing gangster involvement on the piers, and meets up with a "code of silence" amongst all potential witnesses.
Criminal Lawyer
Barry Brandon, a criminal lawyer, visits the night club of Denny Larkin, his primary client, with Betty Walker, a spoiled society girl. The police raid the club and Brandon pleads that the whole group is guilty, just to get even with Larkin for a rebuke. On the same night in court, Madge Carter is on trial for disorderly conduct, and Brandon volunteers to defend her, and proves the case against her if a frame-up. Finding that she is penniless, Brandon hires her as his secretary, and falls in love with her. Brandon is appointed district attorney and has ambitions of becoming the state governor. Having dinner at Betty's home, she maneuvers him, while he is drunk, into marrying her. Later, Madge is a witness when Larkin shoots down a fellow gangster. By threatening Brandon's life, he forces her to commit perjury at his trial, and say he fired in self-defense. Brandon, the prosecuting attorney (who has had his marriage to Betty annulled) knows she is lying but doesn't know why.
The Final Hour
A down-and-out lawyer gets back on his feet with help from a singer who later retains him to defend her on a murder charge.
Secrets of a Nurse
This Universal programmer was based on a Collier's Magazine story by journalist Quentin Reynolds. This story in turn was ostensibly based on a true incident, in which a gangster "returned from the dead" to save an innocent young man from the electric chair. The nurse of the film's title is Katharine McDonald, who falls in love with her prizefighter-patient Lee Burke as he recovers from a beating received in a fixed prizefight. Katharine must fend off the advances of criminal attorney John Dodge, another patient who also loves her and becomes jealous of Lee. But when Lee is framed for the murder of his disgruntled manager, Slice, by a henchman of the fight-fix leader, Joe Largo, Dodge takes on his defense and works with Katherine to discover the real killer. Convicted and sentenced to death, Burke is about to walk the "last mile", as Katharine encourages mortally wounded Largo to a deathbed confession.
Gang Bullets
A Capone-like racketeer named Anderson, who after being chased out of one town by the authorities immediately sets up shop in another. Unable to get any tangible evidence against Anderson, DA Wayne orders his assistant Carter to dig up some dirt on the gangster boss. To do this, Carter pretends to turned crooked, joining Anderson's gang in order to accumulate evidence. Alas, Carter's girl friend Patricia knows nothing of her boyfriend's subterfuge, and she suspects the worst.
Who Is Hope Schuyler?
A girl reporter is trying to tack down the lady-in-the-title, as a key witness in a graft trial, which involves three murder and that many failed attempts. A prosecuting attorney in the district attorneys office is aiding her in solving the mystery of the missing lady.
Mr. District Attorney
An assistant prosecutor and his spunky friend investigate a suddenly hot case.
I Was Framed
A reporter runs from charges by a corrupt politician only to face them years later.
Mr. District Attorney in the Carter Case
Like the first entry, this one is played mostly for laughs, with Radio's Mister District Attorney. James Ellison replacing Dennis O'Keefe as feckless assistant DA P. Cadwallader Jones. The publisher of a tony fashion magazine is murdered, requiring Jones to sift through a colorful array of suspects. He is helped along by snoopy girl reporter Terry Parker.
The Man Who Dared
A crusading reporter plans his own arrest and conviction for first degree murder, trying to show that the death sentence should be outlawed when based on circumstantial evidence alone, but his plan goes awry.
Women Without Names
Joyce and Fred MacNeil's honeymoon comes to an abrupt and unsatisfying halt when Fred is accused of murder. Railroaded into prison through the efforts of politically ambitious assistant DA Marlin, Fred awaits his doom on Death Row, while Joyce works overtime on the outside to clear her husband's name
The Bride Wore Crutches
A cub reporter goes after his story in a big way when he single-handedly exposes a crime ring.
Portia on Trial
Lady lawyer Portia Merryman (Frieda Inescourt) defends woebegone Elizabeth Manners (Heather Angel), who is on trial for shooting her lover Earle Condon (Neil Hamilton). Ironically, Portia herself had once had a relationship with Earle Condon, but Earle's father, powerful publisher John Condon (Clarence Kolb), forced them apart. She has a pretty good idea of what is going on in Elizabeth's head, since she herself was on the verge of killing Earle Condon when his father ruthlessly took custody of her illegitimate son. As Portia toils and strains to free her client, she carries on a romance with Dan Foster (Walter Abel) -- the attorney for the prosecution. LA Law and The Practice have nothing on this one!
Headline Hunters
A rookie reporter in pursuit of an expose gets tangled up with big-time mobsters.
Parole Racket
Following a long investigation, Police Detective-Lieutenant Anthony "Tony" Roberts becomes convinced that there is some powerful unknown-master-mind leader behind the gangs of crooks who are terrorizing the city, and it has something to do with paroled convicts. He sets up a scheme with his supervisor to have himself shamed by being demoted to a patrolman and then caught in the act of receiving bribe-money from a racketeer. He is convicted and sent to prison, and the manner in which his parole is arranged leads him, dangerously, to the secret-head of the gang.
Scarlet Pages
Nora Mason becomes entangled in a family mix-up of murder and scandal that threatens to ruin her career and entire future; Unless the mother she does not know can find a way to save her.
The Return of October
A wholesome girl believes her new racehorse, October, is the reincarnation of her favorite uncle, Willie.
The Strange Mrs. Crane
Hoping to bury her criminal past, Jenny Hadley settles into a comfortable existence as Gina, the wife of the politician Clinton Crane. When her former associate Floyd Durant shows up to blackmail Gina, she has no choice but to murder him. Things take a bizarre turn when Barbara Arnold is charged with Durant's murder and Gina is selected to serve on the jury.
Perfect Strangers
Romance at a murder trial with a pair of sequestered jurors who are the only ones who think that the woman in the dock is innocent. Separated from their normal lives, jurors Terry Scott and David Campbell start to fall in love.
I Cheated the Law
An attorney (Tom Conway) learns he was duped into being his gangster murder client's (Steve Brodie) alibi.
Her Husband's Affairs
Bill Weldon is an Ad man who craves his wife Margaret's approval of his work, instead he gets constructive (and on-target) feedback, which he hates. Things get really strange when Bill creates advertising for a wacky inventor's embalming fluid.
Career Woman
A young woman graduates from a New York City law school, returns to her small hometown, and finds her first case is defending a childhood friend accused of murder. Director Lewis Seiler's 1936 courtroom drama stars Claire Trevor, Isabel Jewell, Michael Whalen, Gene Lockhart, Eric Linden, Charles Middleton, Edward Brophy, Kathleen Lockhart, Guinn Williams, El Brendel, Sterling Holloway, Ray Brown, Howard Hickman, Frank McGlynn Sr., Charles Waldron Sr., Spencer Charters and Eily Malyon.
The Unknown Man
A scrupulously honest lawyer discovers that the client he's gotten off was really guilty.