I was looking through another one of the streaming channels, this time one that specializes in mystery stuff that's presumably in the public domain. It's where I watched Death Goes to School, and this time, the movie in question was The Second Woman.
The on-screen synopsis mentioned Rebecca, and boy did the beginning remind me of Rebecca. Betsy Drake plays Ellen Foster, who like Joan Fontaine in Rebecca has a comment about not being able to go back to Manderley, because the house has burned to the ground. In this case, however, we're then informed that Ellen might be in danger because of who she has in her house. That person is Jeffrey (Robert Young), and at this point we get the flashback about how the two met and why Jeff might be trouble.
Ellen is an insurance actuary, working in risk calculation, and she's moved from the big city back to the California coast to be with her aunt Amelia (Florence Bates), although in Ellen's case she's not bad news the way that Barbara Stanwyck's Thelma Jordon was. As you can imagine, Ellen and Jeffrey meet, and the two begin to develop a close relationship, but it's complicated by the fact that bad things seem to keep happening to Jeffrey. Heck, we know that his house is going to burn down, although unlike Rebecca that happens midway through the movie, not at the climax.
There's even a first Mrs. DeWinter of sorts, although that woman didn't quite get married to Jeffrey. She was killed in a drunk driving accident just before their wedding, and Jeffrey's business partner, fellow architect Ben Sheppard, was the father of Jeffrey's fiancée. Jeffrey's trying to put his life back together, with a bit of help from his friends the Ferrises (John Sutton and Jean Rogers), although they're now a divorced couple, the sort of couple that winds up becoming better friends after the divorce than they were during the marriage.
As I said, a bunch of bad things happen to Jeffrey, and it's clear that, like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight, somebody else is causing these bad things to happen in order to drive Jeffrey crazy. But who's doing that, and why? Ellen, being an actuary and studying risk, consequently has a bit of detective in her, so she starts investigating. That's part of why the opening bit mentions the possibility of her being in danger thanks to Jeffrey's presence.
The Second Woman isn't a bad movie, but it's one that you can't help but think of other movies while you're watching. And the problem is that those other movies are better, making The Second Woman look like a pale imitation. If you came to The Second Woman before those other movies -- and if it had a better print -- it might have a bit of a better reputation. And if it had been made at a major studio instead of being a United Artists release, it might be the sort of thing to wind up on one or another of the movie channels more frequently, which would put it at least a bit higher in people's consciousness. As it is, I hadn't even heard of the movie before seeing it on this streaming channel.
So definitely give The Second Woman a chance. It may not be the greatest movie out there, but it definitely deserves to be seen.
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