The Man Who Cheated Himself

The bond of brotherhood is tested in Felix Feist’s oddly titled The Man Who Cheated Himself, a tense police procedural in which one of the murder investigators is actually the perpetrator. Lee J. Cobb plays homicide detective Ed Cullen, who uses extraordinarily poor judgment when he helps his high society, satin gown wearing girlfriend Lois Frazer (Jane Wyatt) cover up her murder of her husband by disposing of the body and the weapon. (Wyatt would later become famous for the opposite of noir: the housewife on television’s Father Knows Best). Not only must Ed lead the investigation of his own crime but his little brother Andy (John Dall), new to the homicide division, is assigned as his partner, delaying his honeymoon to focus on the case. The premise holds tremendous potential for suspense, and Feist delivers it handily, especially whenever both brothers are on screen and investigating, like when Ed spies a stray bullet hole in the spine of a book at the crime scene. The final sequence, Ed’s attempt to hideout with Lois in the abandoned ruins of Fort Point below the Golden Gate Bridge, has an almost ghostly quality to it, wind whipping through windowless buildings, footsteps in pursuit up silent stairwells; in fact, the final arrest after a protracted hide and seek is almost anti-climactic.