Ruth Stanton Bowman is on a honeymoon cruise with her new husband John Bowman in Dangerous Crossing. The last thing she expects is to lose him on the ship. They met four weeks and two days earlier, so they really don’t know each other very well. That’s the first clue that something may not be quite right. After they board, John leads Ruth to their cabin, Cabin B-16, where she admits that she was a mess when he first met her—the second clue that trouble might be looming. John leaves Ruth in their cabin to stash some money with the purser’s office—and then disappears. Ruth spends the remainder of the film looking for her missing husband and trying to solve the mystery about how he—how anyone—could disappear on a ship at sea.
Ruth looks for John when he first disappears but doesn’t see him anywhere. When she returns to Cabin B-16, their cabin, the door is locked. She asks the steward to unlock it, but the cabin is now empty, and he tells her that the cabin has not been booked for this crossing. She doesn’t have the key; she doesn’t have the tickets. The steward gets the purser, and while Ruth is alone in the empty cabin, she thinks to herself: “I knew it couldn’t last. . . John, what have they done? Why did I let you get mixed up in all my troubles?”
(This blog post about Dangerous Crossing contains spoilers.)
Ruth faces another problem: Is she a flighty, hysterical woman, as everyone is beginning to suspect? When the steward and the purser return to Ruth in Cabin B-16, the purser finds that Ruth is checked into Cabin B-18 under her maiden name. When they arrive in the new cabin, she finds her own luggage, but not her husband’s. The purser plans to call the ship’s doctor, but Ruth protests. When she leaves Cabin B-18 to look for John again, she is frightened inexplicably by a man walking with a cane and collapses. When Ruth comes to, the purser; the ship’s nurse, Nurse Bridges; and the ship’s doctor, Dr. Paul Manning, are in her cabin.
All the people that she can remember seeing before her husband disappeared claim never to have seen him. Second Officer Jim Logan saw her at the gangplank, but he doesn’t remember seeing Ruth with anyone else. Anna Quinn, the stewardess, did see both Ruth and John in Cabin B-16 when they first arrived, but she claims that she was never in Cabin B-16. Ruth now wants to see the ship’s captain, and the ship’s doctor accompanies her.
Captain Peters orders a search of the ship. He discovers that Ruth has no passport and no tickets, and she is not wearing a wedding ring. The doubts about her sanity begin in earnest. Captain Peters offers to let Ruth leave the ship on a pilot boat and return to New York City. She refuses to leave the ship until she finds her husband. After she leaves the captain’s quarters, Dr. Manning tells Captain Peters that he wants to check her story and verify what she says. Captain Peters wants the doctor to keep an eye on Ruth because he can’t have her running around the ship and disturbing the other passengers.
In the meantime, John calls Ruth in her new cabin, Cabin B-18. (How does he know the cabin number?) He tells her, “We’re in terrible danger, Ruth. I’ll tell you more when I can. All I can say now is, don’t trust anyone. Not anyone.” He promises to call the next night, at 10 p.m. When he doesn’t, Ruth fears for his safety.
Dr. Manning tells her that the search of the ship ordered by Captain Peters is complete. John Bowman is not onboard the ship. But Ruth doesn’t believe this and wants to continue searching for her husband.
Ruth trusts her husband John completely. The number of people that she doesn’t trust is long. It includes crew members and other passengers: Anna Quinn, the stewardess; Key Prentiss, a fellow passenger who introduced herself to Ruth before the ship even set sail; Captain Peters; Dr. Manning; Second Officer Jim Logan, who saw her but not her husband board the ship; the male passenger with a cane; and Nurse Bridges. Dangerous Crossing does a good job of building the suspense. When the film reveals the true villain, I was surprised because, unlike Ruth, I didn’t trust anyone at all and suspected everyone, including her husband.
The film also highlights the predicament of women in the 1950s. In addition to Ruth’s inability to keep her emotions in check when she is most in need of keeping her wits about her, others are quick to judge her negatively. Except for Dr. Manning, no one is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, even though she just lost her newlywed husband. Captain Peters is especially guilty of this, and Dr. Paul Manning is a bit doubtful, too, although he professes to be well-meaning. Ruth does not have the cruise tickets or her passport because she left them with her husband John. She is penalized for leaving her important documents with her husband during a period like the 1950s when that kind of submissive behavior was expected of women. In other words, she is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t.
Dr. Manning and Ruth slowly become attracted to one another: They start to spend a lot of time together while Ruth looks for John and the doctor investigates Ruth. Ruth becomes hysterical when Dr. Manning shows her a radiogram stating that people she knows at home in Philadelphia don’t know of any John Bowman and don’t believe that Ruth is married. Ruth gets so hysterical that Dr. Manning slaps her across the face. He may have come across as well-meaning in 1953, but I thought he was a little bit creepy and a little bit sexist by 2025 standards. And slapping Ruth across the face isn’t the only example.
Dr. Manning helps Ruth search for her husband John in places where admittance to passengers is prohibited. Ruth decides that she wants to know more about Dr. Manning while he takes her on this tour of the ship. She learns that he has never been married and that he enjoys his job as a medical doctor aboard a cruise ship: “I’ve saved the lives of people I’ve never seen before and will never see again. I don’t know which it is I like more, the feeling of responsibility or the feeling of power. I don’t know many men who could play God so many times in the course of a year.” Dr. Manning professes to Ruth and to Captain Peters that he wants to help Ruth, but this conversation didn’t strike him from the suspect list for me.
Dr. Manning is tending to Ruth in her cabin when Captain Peters arrives to tell them that the stewardess, Anna Quinn, gave a full confession: She and John Bowman, who married Ruth using an alias, were working together to get rid of Ruth and steal her inheritance. The captain tells Ruth: “After we talked to her [Quinn], we found these . . . . Your passport and your marriage certificate.” Dr. Manning is quick to intercede: “I’ll take those, Captain, until she needs them.”
After Captain Peters leaves, Dr. Manning continues his position of authority over Ruth, and Ruth says nothing to Dr. Manning about him taking her documents, and she even lets him leave her cabin with them. Ruth Bowman doesn’t learn her lesson, which makes Dangerous Crossing even more noir than, I believe, the original filmmakers intended. When Captain Peters hands her passport and marriage license to her, she should never have let Dr. Manning grab them. Leaving them in the possession of her husband John Bowman is what got her into trouble in the first place. She sure as heck shouldn’t have allowed Dr. Manning to leave her cabin with those documents. But this is the world of film noir. And few questioned women’s place in the world in 1953.
Dangerous Crossing may seem a bit dated today, but the film is still fun to watch, especially if you like a puzzle with a lot of pieces. I rooted for Ruth all the way, and I think viewers are meant to. The story is told from her point of view, so viewers believe her perceptions and what she is going through. Jeanne Crain gives a wonderful performance as the put-upon Ruth Bowman, who doesn’t have enough opportunities to enjoy her honeymoon cruise.
And if you are a fan of Carl Betz, Dangerous Crossing is worth a look because of his performance. He’s not on-screen much after his character disappears mysteriously, but I thought he made the most of his screen time. I am used to seeing Betz in The Donna Reed Show reruns, and it was a real treat to see him in Dangerous Crossing. And not just for his acting abilities, by the way. In one scene, he is shirtless; in another, he is dressed in a uniform. He carries off both scenes—and all his others—quite nicely!
This article about Dangerous Crossing (1953) is my entry for the Hit the Road Blogathon hosted by Quiggy at The Midnite Drive-In. Click here for the complete list of blogathon participants and links to their blogs. The list is updated each day of the blogathon, from August 29 to September 1, 2025, and I will update the link as soon as the first entry is listed.
August 1953 release date • Directed by Joseph M. Newman • Screenplay by Leo Townsend • Based on the radio play Cabin B-13 by John Dickson Carr • Music by Lionel Newman • Edited by William H. Reynolds • Cinematography by Joseph LaShelle
Jeanne Crain as Ruth Stanton Bowman • Michael Rennie as Dr. Paul Manning • Carl Betz as John Bowman • Mary Anderson as Anna Quinn • Marjorie Hoshelle as Kay Prentiss • Willis Bouchey as Captain Peters • Yvonne Peattie as Nurse Bridges • Max Showalter (aka Casey Adams) as Second Officer Jim Logan
Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox • Produced by Twentieth Century Fox
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