Director Mitchell Leisen, who made his name with sophisticated comedies like Easy Living and Midnight and such elegant dramas as To Each His Own and Hold Back the Dawn, takes a walk on the wild(er) side with No Man of Her Own, an adaption of I Married a Dead Man, a Cornell Woolrich novel written under a pseudonym. Part romantic sudser and part noir mystery, this preposterous yet deliciously entertaining melodrama allows Leisen to explore a new genre and flex some creative muscle while providing leading lady Barbara Stanwyck with a rigorous emotional workout. Stanwyck plays the pregnant, penniless Helen Ferguson, who takes the identity of the pregnant Patrice Harkness, when she and her husband are killed in a train crash. The rich Harkness in-laws, and their other son Bill, had never seen Patrice, so they accept her and her newborn son into their family. However Steve eventually finds her and starts to blackmail her. The film was remade in 1996 as the comedy Mrs. Winterbourne.


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