The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry

Strange affair is right. Somewhere between sibling adoration and incestuous obsession is the relationship between Harry Quincey (George Sanders) and his possessive sister Lettie (Geraldine Fitzgerald) in Robert Siodmak’s The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry. His avuncular title assigned (oddly) by the residents of his small New England town of Corinth, Harry creates friction with Lettie when he starts falling for Deborah Brown (Ella Raines), a stylish executive from his employer’s New York headquarters (“There’s no sky in New York; the bright lights kill it off”). Lettie’s jealousy and manipulation are obvious to everyone, especially her sister Hester (Moyna MacGill), whose desire to see her own brother happy will put her in danger; when Harry and Deborah announce their engagement, tensions escalate, and Lettie resorts to more brazen measures to keep Harry under her control. Someone will even end up on Death Row. Based on a play by Thomas Job, the ending would be unrecognizable to that author as Universal demanded that Siodmak shoot several, tested them, and went with one that was so disappointing that producer Joan Harrison refused to work with the studio ever again. Probably the least expressionist of all of Siodmak’s American noirs, the film is driven by a steady tension among the principal players that keeps us wondering just how far Lettie might go.