Tonight's Movie: That Other Woman (1942)

THAT OTHER WOMAN is a fun little "B" romance from 20th Century-Fox, starring James Ellison and Virginia Gilmore.

Emily Borden (Gilmore) works as the secretary to architect Henry Summers (Ellison), and she's pined after handsome, woman-chasing Henry for years.

Emily's Southern Grandma (Alma Kruger) comes up with a plan for Emily to capture Henry's attention by sending him anonymous notes from the "Pink Lady." The mysterious Pink Lady professes her admiration of Henry, and the plan is that, having caught Henry's notice at last, eventually Emily will reveal herself as the sender of the notes. However, matters end up spiraling out of control in ways that Emily and Grandma didn't anticipate.

Further complicating matters is Emily's Southern beau Ralph (Dan Duryea), who'd like to marry Emily himself. Ralph believes, with some cause, that Henry is a potential threat to Emily's reputation, not to mention his own hopes to marry Emily.

This is a cute little 75-minute movie directed by Ray McCarey. Its breezy, lightweight style and tone is fairly similar to other "B" romances McCarey directed for the same studio, such as THE COWBOY AND THE BLONDE (1941) and THE PERFECT SNOB (1942).

Virginia Gilmore, previously seen in BERLIN CORRESPONDENT (1942), does a good job in the lead role. She reminded me uncannily, in both looks and voice, of Jane Greer, whose film career had not yet started. Rather surprisingly, Gilmore's film career petered out within a couple years of this film being released, though she continued to occasionally work in television; she married Yul Brynner in 1944 so perhaps she intentionally cut back on her career. It's a shame, as as I can imagine her being as effective a leading lady in film noir as Jane Greer.

I've always liked James Ellison, but I found Duryea's "other man" Southern gent more appealing! Duryea definitely ups the film's energy level in any scene he's in.

Having watched so many Dr. Kildare films in recent months, it was a lot of fun watching Alma Kruger as Emily's Grandma. Her performance in this gave me an appreciation for just how good an actress Kruger was, as the drawling Grandma is quite a different character from starchy Head Nurse Molly Byrd.

Curiously, Lon McCallister is sixth-billed yet I don't recall him or anyone by his character's name showing up on the film!

The supporting cast includes Janis Carter, George Chandler, Charles Arnt, Minerva Urecal, Paul Fix, Mike Mazurki, and Ann E. Todd.

The script for THAT OTHER WOMAN was by Jack Jungmeyer. It was filmed in black and white by Joseph McDonald.

THAT OTHER WOMAN is available on DVD in a lovely print from Fox Cinema Archives. Although some of the FCA DVD prints have been iffy, I've found the black and white films of the early '40s in this series generally look very good.

I rented the DVD from ClassicFlix.