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Wives Under Suspicion
USA 1938
produced by Universal
directed by James Whale
starring Warren William, Gail Patrick, Ralph Morgan, William Lundigan, Constance Moore, Cecil Cunningham, Jonathan Hale, Lillian Yarbo, Milburn Stone, J. Anthony Hughes, Samuel S. Hinds, James Flavin, Matty Fain, John Harmon, William Ruhl, Edward LeSaint, Edwin Stanley, Ben Taggart, Bert Moorhouse, Minerva Urecal
screenplay by Myles Connolly, suggested by the play The Kiss Before the Mirror by Ladislas Fodor, music by Charles Henderson, Charles Previn, Frank Skinner
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Jim Stowell (Warren William) is the town's most successful and most
prominent district attorney, and a man who sees death sentences as badges
of honour - much to the dismay of his wife Lucy (Gail Patrick), who feels
neglected due to his many late hours at the office and his inability to
not think about his job. When he's shot at by the associate of a mobster
(Matty Fain) he has sent to death row but rather miraculously survives
with his attacker dead, he seems to have second thoughts, promises to make
Lucy his top priority, and promises her a romantic holiday - only to be on
the day of their departure be presented with what he perceives as an
open-and-shut case, that of MacAllen (Ralph Morgan), a man who has shot
his wife in a fit of jealousy and now pleads legal insanity. Stowell
thinks it was pre-meditated though and does his best to send him to the
chair - even if the guy's story moves pretty much everyone, including
Lucy, as it's the story of a man who has neglected his wife for work, whom
the eventual realisation that his wife cheats on him drove over the brink.
Stowell is unmoved by this of course, and he also fails to see the the
parallels to his own life - until he finds Lucy in front of her mirror,
just as MacAllen claims to have found his, all made up and peparing to
leave the house, and just like MacAllen, Stowell then follows her, finds
her with another man (William Lundigan), and without knowing the (actually
perfectly innocent) motives for this, almost shoots her, just like
MacAllen did - and this is where he begins to understand ... The next
day in court, Stowell changes his charge from murder to manslaughter, and
suddenly, Lucy, who was about to leave him, loves him again, and he has
finally learned his lesson ... Lillian Yarbo, one of the busier coloured
actresses in the era's major league Hollywood, plays Stowell and Lucy's
maid, but the very racist treatment of her character is a little strong to
swallow not only for today's audiences. Basically, this is a
film that falls in two: The first part is light-weight and almost comedic,
and Warren William really shines in the role as the slick yet likeable
district attorney, and the direction's really as spirited as the story.
And then there's the secong part, where William's character is to learn
his lesson, and on a story level it's as on-your-nose as it can get while
William himself seems to go stiff and the direction goes a little too much
for the all too obvious, to ultimately make the point that was announced
very clearly halfway through the movie. It would have been a really
interesting movie, would it have kept the levity of the first half
throughout, but like this it's a slight disappointment. By the
way, James Whale's second adaptation of Ladislas Fodor's play The Kiss
Before the Mirror, the first one having been 1933's The Kiss Before
the Mirror, but while the two movies share the same core, they differ
widely in their respective actual plotlines.
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