Hold Back Tomorrow is an American 1955 film released by Universal

Universal Studios

Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....

-International.

Plot

A death row

Death row

Death row signifies the place, often a section of a prison, that houses individuals awaiting execution. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution , even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists.After individuals are found...

 inmate has one final request before his impending hanging

Hanging

Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...

: he wants to spend the night with a woman. The police bring him a suicidal

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 prostitute. After a night of lovemaking, the two are married by the prison chaplain. Just before going to the gallows

Gallows

A gallows is a frame, typically wooden, used for execution by hanging, or by means to torture before execution, as was used when being hanged, drawn and quartered...

, he describes a dream he had where the rope breaks during the hanging, the death bell rings, and he is freed. As he prays for his miracle the death bell tolls and the film fades to black.

Cast

• Cleo Moore
  Cleo Moore
  Cleouna "Cleo" Moore was an American actress, usually seen in the role of a blonde bombshell, in 1950s Hollywood films. She was known as Columbia Pictures's clone of 20th Century Fox's, Marilyn Monroe...
  
   as Dora
• John Agar
  John Agar
  John George Agar was an American actor. He starred alongside John Wayne in the films Sands of Iwo Jima, Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, but was later relegated to B movies, such as Tarantula, The Mole People, The Brain from Planet Arous, Flesh and the Spur, and Hand of Death...
  
   as Joe Cardos
• Frank DeKova
  Frank Dekova
  Frank Dekova was an Italian-American character actor.-Biography:Dekova was born in New York City and taught at a school in New York before joining a Shakespeare repertory group...
  
   as Priest
• Harry Guardino
  Harry Guardino
  Harry Guardino was an American actor whose career spanned from the early 1950s to the early 1990s. In 1964, he was cast in a short-lived CBS series entitled The Reporter, a drama about a hard-hitting investigative journalist named Danny Taylor. His principal co-star was Gary Merrill as city...
  
  

Production

This was the second film to costar Moore and Agar, who had together together in 1954's Bait, which was also directed by Hugo Haas

Hugo Haas

Hugo Haas was a Czech film actor, director and writer. He appeared in over 60 films between 1926 and 1962, as well as directing 20 films between 1933 and 1962....

. Agar was a Universal contract player at the time of this film; Moore was on loan from Columbia Pictures

Columbia Pictures

Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...

.