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TWIN HUSBANDS
US, 1933, 68 minutes, Black-and-white.
John Miljan, Shirley Grey, Monroe Owsley, Hale Hamilton, Wilson Benge.
Directed by Frank R.Strayer.
Twin Husbands is more entertaining than it might have been. It is a short supporting feature, running just over an hour, very strong on dialogue, more like a theatrical piece, and confined in its action to a few rooms – with a scene with a car to open things out.
What is interesting is the number of twists and the revelations about characters.
It begins something like an amnesia drama with a man waking up and being told that it is four years later, talking with the butler and finding out something of the truth, that it is a set up. In fact, it is a plan to retrieve the bonds by a wife and private secretary from a wealthy man flying in South America. The amnesiac soon discovers something of the truth, finding that the butler is an actor, planning with him to deceive the wife and the private secretary – as well as the financial manager of the estate, accepting the bonds and signing for them.
Two thieves arrive and reveal that the amnesiac is in fact a top safe cracker, Sparrow. Then the police arrive and take away the wife – only for her to find that she is in the apartment owned by Sparrow and that the police are his men. Finally, the actual police arrive and confront the private secretary. In the meantime, the wife has discovered the truth about the embezzlement by the financial manager and has returned to the house. The actor-butler has been trying to escape but is kept back by the police.
When the amnesiac and the financial advisor go to the office of the secretary, they find that the wealthy husband has died in a plane crash and that the wife and the secretary had planned to take the money and escape to South America.
There is a final confrontation, the secretary let off by having to agree to be in need of psychiatric care and being paid off to go to South America by himself and disappear. The actor-butler gets good payment – and there is a touch of romance in the air at the end.
The films directed by Frank R. Strayer, director of many similar kinds of films in the 1930s but moving towards religious themes at the end of his career in the late 1940s, especially with such films as The Pilgrimage Play.