Visiting Film Noir: The Man Who Cheated Himself

1950 Film Noir

From 20th Century Fox

Directed by Felix Feist

Starring 

Lee J. Cobb

Jane Wyatt

John Dall

Lisa Howard

B there...!  B actors in a B film noir.  Who could ask for anything more?  It's a pretty decent noir, too... not without its shortcomings, of course, but taut, edgy, suspenseful and with a different twist from any other noir I have seen.  Its offbeat casting had mixed results for me but still made the film compelling.

The story counts on a simple twist which one learns at the very beginning.  A wealthy San Francisco socialite (Wyatt) on the edge of divorcing her husband and carrying on with another man finds that her husband has purchased a gun.  After he leaves on a business trip she calls her lover (Cobb) who also happens to be a police detective.

He rushes to her fancy home and as they are discussing what the husband may be up to, they hear someone breaking in through a patio door in the room directly across from them.  Holding the gun which she had just found in its hiding place, she rushes into the room and puts a couple of slugs into her husband.  Posing as an intruder and obviously planning on killing her, they decide to get rid of the body.  He takes the body and dumps it at the airport from which he would leave on his business trip.  

Right here, right at the start, I had a problem.  She could have come clean.  She could have called the police and told the truth.  She could have said she thought her husband was an intruder and she shot him.  It's famously worked for others.  Why cause your boyfriend to cheat himself?  While inconsistencies like this don't usually elude me, I realize if honored, the movie would have been over in about 10 minutes.  And of course, we remember film noirs are frequently designed to not make sense.

The next day Cobb is assigned to investigate the murder and if that weren't enough, his brother (Dall), an over-eager, by-the-book street cop who has just been made a detective, is assigned to the case as well.  

The investigation scenes involving Cobb, Wyatt and Dall are filled with dread because Cobb and Wyatt have to be businesslike (calling him Darling would be a mistake), Cobb is lying to his own brother and partner and Dall is there to carefully observe Wyatt's manner and later share his findings.  Oh, I love this stuff. 

Howard and Dall

Dall is getting married to Howard who isn't getting the kind of attention she deserves because her husband is all-consumed with his first murder case.  And of course, little by little, scene by persuasive scene, he is discovering things that at first make him question his brother.  After a while he is convinced his brother is somehow involved so he begins trailing him.

There is an exciting confrontational scene between the brothers at Cobb's apartment and it takes the film into its a final chapter.  The ending is not unexpected although there is a chilling piece involving Wyatt.

Jack M. Warner is the producer.  He was the son of the head of Warner Bros but the father wanted nothing to do with the son, casting him out of WB and out of much of his life.  Tellingly, the son isn't even mentioned in the father's autobiography.  But Sonny wanted to be a producer and likely show the old man he was worth something.  He only produced three films and this one is considered the best of the bunch.

I know almost nothing about director Feist.  I am aware of two other noirs he directed,  Tomorrow Is Another Day and This Woman Is Dangerous.  He did a few westerns I liked but then became a television director.

Dall sneaking around

At other studios Cobb's role might have been played by Mitchum or Bogart or Robert Ryan or Dick Powell and Wyatt's role might have been given to Lizabeth Scott or Jane Greer or Audrey Totter or Claire Trevor or any number of others.  At one level I admire that none of them was picked and that Cobb and Wyatt were installed.  It's nice to see someone new interpreting a noir story.  It's just too bad they were miscast.

Cobb was picked because he had just enjoyed a tremendous success on Broadway playing Willie Loman in Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Death of a Salesman.  His name was constantly bandied about as everyone was scurrying around for the next movie he would make.  Warner, in trying to make something of his own name, thought casting Cobb against type, as a romantic lead, was just the ticket.  Well, it clearly wasn't.  While I immensely enjoyed him in his grouchy, boisterous character actor roles, he's no love bunny.  He seemed so uncomfortable and ill-at-ease.  Playing just the cop part, however, he is in top form.

The wholesome Wyatt was chosen, I should think, to give someone unusual a chance at playing a bad girl of noir, as stated above.  This character is such a witch (sp?), not an empathetic bone in her rigid body, finding everyone she knows unworthy of her caring.  There's no reason for sloshing about in tears of pity for this heartless snob. 

I thought the role of heartless dame, a noir staple, was well-written here and in the right hands would have been one of those memorable bad girls of noir.  But in the vanilla Wyatt's hands it was not to be.  Though her acting is just plain awful in a couple of scenes, it's more that she is simply wrong for the part.  (I'd be pleased to watch her in a Father Knows Best episode anytime.)

Wyatt with Cobb

She and Cobb also have zero chemistry together.  (Interestingly this is their third film pairing.)  Sex is built right into the fabric of film noir and there is nothing here to suggest any of that.  Wyatt needed to be a femme fatale and Cobb is just not the romantic lead type.  I'm sure he and Cary Grant never competed for the same roles.  The talented Grant couldn't have pulled off Cobb's role in 12 Angry Men either.

I think what might recommend this movie the most to a select crowd is the fact that John Dall is in it.  We fans just can't get enough of him because we have to settle for a mere eight movies.  His two best roles are in Rope (1948) as a conniving killer and in Gun Crazy (1950), as a disturbed young killer.  He was a completely fascinating bad guy, I think, because his own personality went a bit against the grain, an iconoclast to the very end.

He has to rein in some of his famous characteristics to play a straight-as-an-arrow cop and while it may not be as interesting as his villains, it's still Dall and he's great fun to watch.  He is certainly the conscience of the film.  Though technically a supporting role, he has as much screen time as Wyatt and Cobb.

Dall's bride is played with conviction by Lisa Howard.  She made only four films and was the then-wife of director Feist.  She gave up acting, became a blonde and a journalist and one of some acclaim due to scoring interviews with Khrushchev, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the Shah of Iran.  She became an intermediary between Castro and President Kennedy.  She ended her life on July 4, 1965 by swallowing sleeping pills.

From l... Howard, Dall, Wyatt, Cobb

Of course the cinematography by Russell Harlan is noir-appropriate with the moody lighting and shadows.  San Francisco is well-served.  Louis Forbes's mysterious music lends just the right moodiness and discomfort.  

There is good use of the empty Fort Point at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge for the film's conclusion involving the three principals.

The Man Who Cheated Himself was restored and preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Film Noir Foundation in 2018.  Despite its obvious shortcomings, it's a decent noir that fuses suspense with honest emotion.

Here's a trailer:

Next posting:

Another cop-gone-wrong noir