THE BIGAMIST (1953)

Last in a series of issue-oriented B-pics directed by Ida Lupino, produced & (mostly) scripted by then husband Collier Young*, offers a surprisingly delicate & sympathetic treatment of a subject ripe for exploitation. Edmund O’Brien’s the man in the middle, a traveling salesman with second wife Ida Lupino (and child) in L.A., and first wife (and business partner) Joan Fontaine in San Francisco. And he might have pulled off this ‘Captain’s Paradise’ indefinitely if he weren’t being vetted by Edmund Gwenn for a planned adoption with childless Fontaine. (No spoilers, the film’s all flashback.) Lupino handles this all with simple assurance, if skimming the surface at times, but generally letting the situations speak without any of the expected melodrama typical of the period. You have to search for villains, even O’Brien is more lonely and depressed than scoundrel, feelings nicely parsed in a late speech from Gwenn. There’s a neat twist in a doubled-up meet-cute for Lupino & O’Brien (celebrity bus tour*; then Chinese restaurant), with nothing quite comparable for Fontaine who, instead, gets final shot as partial amends, plus the more glamorous treatment. The film’s more worthy than exciting, but it’s honest stuff, more than decent in every sense.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Mirroring the film, producer Young was married to both Lupino and Fontaine . . . just not at the same time! He split with Lupino in ‘51 and married Fontaine the following year. Not many female directors at the time, even Lupino moved into series tv after this with the exception of THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS/’66. A surprise hit with a sequel she didn’t helm.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The bus tour where O’Brien & Lupino meet is a Tour of Star Homes in Beverly Hills: Barbara Stanwyck, James Stewart, Jack Benny and (an in joke) Edmund Gwenn. Not a super mansion or walled-off estate among them, but middle-class (well, wealthy/upper middle-class) style abodes not so different from what audiences might strive to achieve back when the super rich made maybe 10X what you made, rather than the 500X of today.