No Man of Her Own

Based on I Married a Dead Man, a novel by noir literary hero Cornell Woolrich (published under his William Irish pseudonym), Mitchell Leisen’s No Man of Her Own is not only one of noir’s more underappreciated films but it also features one of Barbara Stanwyck’s most underappreciated performances. Stanwyck plays the unmarried and pregnant Helen Ferguson who, after being discarded by her slimy boyfriend Steve Morley (Lyle Bettger), boards a train and befriends another pregnant woman who’s traveling home with her new husband to meet his family for the first time. When the train crashes and the couple are killed, Helen survives and gives birth in the hospital but wakes up to discover she’s been mistaken for the new wife and accepts an invitation to move in with her new “in-laws” to raise her baby there. (“It isn’t too late, I can still back out!” she chants to herself until the last possible minute.) It’s a wonderfully Woolrichian story: the suspense simmers as Helen makes mistakes that almost expose her true identity but ratchets up when scumbag Morley arrives aiming to blackmail her. John Lund plays Bill Harkness, the “brother-in-law” who falls in love with her, and the wonderful Jane Cowl plays Mrs. Harkness, the “mother-in-law” who may be savvier than she leads on. Leisen crafts an exquisite production from a talented cast and an expertly paced script, the environment outside the Harkness home saturated with coldness and anonymity, best represented late in the film when two innocents must dispose of a corpse down by the train tracks on a cold, silent, lifeless night.