When Strangers Marry

When Strangers Marry (re-release title Betrayed) is a 1944 suspense film directed by William Castle and starring Dean Jagger, Kim Hunter, and Robert Mitchum.

Premise
Millie Baxter, a naive woman, comes to New York City to meet her salesman husband Paul whom she only met months before, and discovers that he may be a murderer.

Cast
 Dean Jagger as Paul Baxter
 Kim Hunter as Millie Baxter
 Robert Mitchum as Fred Graham (billed as Bob Mitchum)
 Neil Hamilton as Det. Lt. Blake
 Rhonda Fleming as Girl on Train

Production
The film was originally known as Love from a Stranger then I Married a Stranger. 

Director William Castle was under contract to Columbia Pictures. The King Brothers liked a film he had made, The Whistler, and borrowed him from the studio for $500 a week (Castle was being paid $100 a week). Castle says the script they originally offered him was "horrible", the story of a gangster who is killed, rejected from Heaven and sent back to earth. Castle had made a movie from a script he disliked, Chance of a Lifetime and did not want to repeat the experience, so told the King Brothers they should not make the movie. The Kings, especially Frank agreed, and introduced Castle to the writer Philip Yordan. Castle says he and Yordan came up with the new story which the Kings liked. They had seven days and a budget of $50,000 to make it.

Philip Yordan says he gave the story to Dennis Cooper, an aspiring novelist who worked as a bookstore clerk, to write up, but that Yordan then had to rewrite it.

Filming took place in June 1944. Neil Hamilton and Kim Hunter were borrowed from Selznick International. Castle persuaded the leads to rehearse beforehand for free in their own time.

Rhonda Fleming made her film debut in a small role; she later claimed she was cast after being spotted by the director walking through the backlot. He said "you'll do" and put her in the film. She says she was not paid for her role.

It was an early film for Robert Mitchum who had previously made Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore for the King Brothers. The brothers later claimed they had the actor under a multi-picture contract and tried to enforce it but he made no further films for the brothers.

Reception

Critical response
When the film was released, Variety's review was positive, writing, "Only thing wrong with this film is its misleading title. Tag, When Strangers Marry, suggests another of the problem plays of newlyweds when in reality pic is a taught (sic) psychological thriller about a murderer and a manhunt full of suspense and excitement."

Orson Welles wrote a contemporary review of the film which said , "It isn't as slick as Double Indemnity or as glossy as Laura, but it's better acted and better directed ... than either." (He and Castle later worked together on The Lady from Shanghai/)

James Agee later wrote "The story has locomotor ataxia at several of its joints and the intensity of the telling slackens off toward the end; but taking it as a whole, I have seldom, for years now, seen one hour so energetically and sensibly used in a film".

Adaptation
The film was adapted for an episode of Lux Video Theatre as "I Married a Stranger".

Castle was going to direct Dillinger for the King Bros but instead accepted an offer to do a Broadway play Meet a Body.

References

Note

External links
 
 
 
 
Review at Variety
Complete film at Internet Archive

Category:1944 films
Category:1940s psychological thriller films
Category:American films
Category:American black-and-white films
Category:English-language films
Category:Film noir
Category:Films scored by Dimitri Tiomkin
Category:Films directed by William Castle
Category:Monogram Pictures films
Category:American psychological thriller films