TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 a.m. ET is Mitchell Leisen’s No Man of Her Own (1950), with Barbara Stanwyck, John Lund, Jane Cowl, Henry O’Neill, Lyle Bettger, Phyllis Thaxter and Richard Denning

By David in TN
Saturday, May 7, 2022 at 12:39:00 A.M. EDT

TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 a.m. ET is Mitchell Leisen’s No Man of Her Own (1950), with Barbara Stanwyck, John Lund, Jane Cowl, Henry O’Neill, Lyle Bettger, Phyllis Thaxter and Richard Denning.

Film Noir Guide: “Stanwyck (43 at the time) plays a young woman expecting a child out of wedlock (gasp!). The father (Bettger, in his screen debut), a real louse, slides a ticket to San Francisco and a five-dollar bill under his locked door as Stanwyck stands outside his apartment sobbing hysterically.

“On the train she meets a young married couple (Denning and Thaxter) who take a shine to her. Unfortunately, there’s a terrible wreck and Denning and Thaxter are killed. In the hospital, after giving birth to a boy, Stanwyck realizes that she’s been mistaken for Thaxter, who was seven months pregnant, and that Denning’s wealthy parents (Cowl and O’Neill), who have never met their daughter-in-law, want her to come live with them. Penniless, she goes along with the impersonation for the sake of her baby.

“Denning’s brother (Lund) suspects that she’s not really his sister-in-law but falls in love with her anyway, making her guilt even more unbearable. Things heat up when she receives an anonymous telegram (‘Who are you? Where did you come from? What are you doing there?’).

“Based on a Cornell Woolrich novel I Married a Dead Man, this soap opera noir is entertaining but dragged-out. Denning went on to star in TV’s Mr. and Mrs. North and Michael Shayne, and played the Governor in Hawaii Five-O. In 1996, No Man of her Own was remade as a comedy (Mrs. Winterbourne), starring talk show host Rikki Lake.”

Before Noir Alley on Saturday Night, TCM has a Gary Cooper Thirties Epic Adventure Stories double feature. At 8 p.m. ET, Beau Geste (1939), followed at 10:15 by The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935).

David in TN: Beau Geste, the 1924 French Foreign Legion novel by P.C. Wren, which the movie was based on, was my Dad’s favorite book.

N.S.: How can someone writing a book devoted to movies from the 1940s and ‘50s, write something so shallow and stupid (“gasp”) about the vastly superior mores of the time?...

When I was about eight, I saw Coop for the first time in The Virginian (1929) and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. All I can recall from the first one was Coop telling a bad guy (Walter Huston?), “Smile when you say that, Mister.” From Bengal Lancer, all I can recall is the title card.

When I was a kid, Coop was the biggest Western star for me. Although he died when I was only three, his Westerns played all the time on TV. John Wayne’s Westerns didn’t play nearly as much on local TV in New York, especially not his best ones.

However, I saw my first Wayne Western also when I was about eight, with my Nana. It was called Shepherd of the Hills (1941), and co-starred Harry Carey. Wayne played a young man who was hunting for the father who had deserted him and his mother… to kill him. The father has since taken up with a Christian religious community, and is a roving preacher.

The big crowd scene, in which the young man encounters his father, has a middle-aged woman say, “He’s his father’s son,” in identifying to whom the Wayne character belongs.

That picture had a particular resonance for me. My old man had deserted my mom, sister, and me when I was only 14 months old. Upon seeing that picture, I resolved that when I found the old man, I was going to “punch” him.