Her Sister's Secret

Plot-- A pregnant young woman is left with responsibilities when her soldier lover is abruptly sent overseas during WWII. So she looks to her married sister for help. All of which leads to unforeseen complications.

PRC was infamous for its bottom-of-the- barrel dreck, so why take a chance on one of its productions. All in all, this movie's a good reason why. No, the 1946 flick's not going to be confused with a glossy Ross Hunter soaper from the prosperous 50's. Still, this 90-minutes is well-mounted, well-acted, and intelligently handled. That opening Mardi Gras scene is a grabber, conveying a real sense of joyous abandon. Clearly, PRC popped bigger bucks to back director Ulmer, while Ulmer responds with style and restraint. I particularly like the way the couple's intimate night is conveyed. First there's Toni and Dick in a romantic upspiral, then Ulmer cuts to a romantic shot of the night sky, and finally he inserts a gloriously lit daybreak. The result is a tricky topic finessed via cinematic art.

Then too, a topic like unwed mothers and lost love could easily descend into overload. But not here. The movie manages its touching parts without getting sappy. Plus, the principals (Coleman, Lindsey, and Reed) calibrate without over-emoting despite the heavy material. I expect the topic of tangled relationships really registered with uprooted wartime audiences. Looks too, like the story's moral says a lot about there being more to parents than just biology, even if the point takes a while to work out. I guess my only gripe is with the heavenly choir ending, which really does pile it on. Anyway, this skillful production shows that even lowly PRC could manage a respectable result when it really tried.

I saw this film at a screening several years ago at the Edinburgh Film Festival. The picture was actually introduced by Mr.Ulmer's daughter. It's a typical 1940's melodrama that is well directed. It is apparent in viewing the film that Ulmer knew exactly what he was doing when he made a movie. It was only the second Ulmer film I had seen, the first being the superior Detour. I can't remember the plot in too much detail because it was a while ago, but it involves an illegitimate child. It has a good social message in that it sheds light on how so-called "bastard" children are sometimes the subjects of social discrimination. I'm surprised it hasn't received more votes. I guess I was lucky to catch that screening.

I really enjoyed playing the part of Billy Gordon in this film. Although I was less than 4 years old, I have vivid memories of the entire process of making this film. The studio lights in those days were very bright & hot, causing the ladies' makeup to run after a short time. The big camera used for close-ups looked like a giant eye which made me quite nervous. I didn't like the tractor being used to move the props around...A tractor belonged outside in my opinion...My 3 year old little mind thought of it like a mechanical Tyrannosaurus Rex with big hind wheels and small front wheels...Quite a scary dinosaur! I remember that the entire cast & crew were so kind to me on & off the screen. My Dad, Mom, brothers & sisters were very encouraging & worked hard to tutor me...Lots of rehearsals were done at home, so that there would be no mistakes on the set. There are relatives and friends who are interested in purchasing this movie...Do you know if it is available on DVD?

We know from people like Bobby Darin and Jack Nicholson that, with the stigma of having an illegitimate child once so prevalent, the person you call "Mommy" might not be. Your real mother could in reality be your sister, your aunt, anybody.

In "Her Sister's Secret" from 1946, director Edgar Ulmer keeps this film out of maudlin territory and presents a poignant story of a mother's pain at having to give up her baby for her sister to raise.

Nancy Coleman stars as Toni, a young woman who meets a soldier, Dick (Philip Reed) during the New Orleans Mardi Gras. They fall in love, and he wants to marry her. They decide to wait until his next leave to be sure.

When they part, they agree to meet, if they both feel the same, at a restaurant. Unbeknownst to her, his leave is canceled. He writes to her at the restaurant but the letter never reaches her. By then, she is pregnant.

Toni finally confides in her sister Renee (Margaret Lindsay). She and her husband (Regis Toomey) have not been able to have a child, so she offers to raise the baby as their own. Toni agrees, but in her heart, she never really gives up the baby.

After her father dies, she starts literally stalking the child and his nurse, sitting in the park each day. Truly alone now, she makes a decision that is going to cause problems.

One can't help watching a film today and realizing how different things were when the film was made. Can you imagine someone sitting in a park each day, watching children, and a nurse handing you a kid and asking you to watch him for a minute? Like I suppose that happens.

She would have been picked up by the police the minute someone notices she's there every day. We live in a much different society now.

Also, having an illegitimate child was tantamount to being a criminal, so bad you had to disappear, return later with someone else having taken your baby, or say you were married and your husband died, or end up in a home for unwed mothers. Nowadays people take out headlines announcing an unmarried pregnancy. Amazing.

Anyway, Toni is in terrible pain, and one can't help but feel for not only her, but all the women who went through that situation years ago. In Toni's case, because she believed Dick didn't love her, she could not get past losing the baby, Billy, too.

The Mardi Gras scenes are marvelous, showing the festivities and people's enjoyment.

The acting is very good, with Nancy Coleman giving a lovely performance as a heartbroken woman, and Margaret Lindsay as her sophisticated older sister.

Philip Reed, who at some angles bears an eerie resemblance to Tyrone Power, is fine as the soldier who leaves without realizing he's going to be a father. Regis Toomey plays Lindsay's husband, and he comes off as a genuinely nice guy and a good man.

How wonderful that the little boy who played Billy, Winston Severn, has posted here with his reminiscences of the film. Though he was only four at the time, his memories are strong.

I really liked this film. The actors pulled me in, and it was well directed. Not the world's greatest production company, but it pulled off a winner.

I just finished watching the film (thanx, DVR) and, unlike one earlier reviewer, I don't recall Robert Osborne saying it was a great film. Tho he did praise Ulmer in general. But I readily admit my memory of the introduction might not be perfect; I just don't remember him calling it a great film.

It's not a great film. But it is a good one. Despite what yet another reviewer said about the budget, it's definitely a B-movie, probably shot very quickly -- just probably with a bigger budget than some B's, and definitely well-crafted enough to look terrific. Stylishly shot for the most part, the best-looking part is, of course, that marvelously fluid Mardi Gras first act. I was really impressed by how expansive and lively Ulmer, Planck and company could make their inexpensive, studio-bound Mardi Gras.

Still, yes, this is a B, and there are some rough edges. A few blown edits does not a bad film make. Almost all of Ulmer's films, almost all B-movies, have flaws. Often, definitely often in Ulmer's case, they don't negate the strengths of the films -- in this case, smooth, confident direction and cinematography and, for 1946 at least, a *relatively* sensitive and intelligent approach to the subject matter -- more on that later. (It would probably take longer to recite a list of Detour's flaws than to watch the film -- and none of them matter in the slightest; Detour is a great film.)

And the major performance were all quite good, altho I will say that Stephenson took top honors -- something not surprising from the great character actor.

It's funny, reading the negative comments about Winston Severn as young Billy, because enjoying his adorable moppetedness in the film really got me thinking about child actors. Some are remarkable (Ann Carter in Curse of the Cat People, Anna Torrent in Spirit of the Beehive, Nicholas Gledhill in Careful, He Might Hear You, to name just three), but, to a certain extent, at least, extremely young actors, like Severn in this picture, are sorta bad-performance-proof.

He played a three-year-old. He acted like a three-year-old. No, the "performance" wasn't smooth or "professional", but it was utterly real and engaging. No, it's true, he didn't always seem to know what he was doing -- just like many three-year-olds don't always look like they know what they're doing in real life. Would a better-trained (likely, older) kid who hit marks precisely and enunciated every line smoothly have necessarily been better for the film? I don't think so. Severn's utter kid-ness made Billy a hugely sympathetic character. I thought he was a striking plus for the film.

The plot and script bow to filmmaking formulae of the times, and some of the character motivations and the plot developments that come out of them strain to work, but Ulmer and his talented actors handle them pretty well. For me, the hardest part of the film to live with was the very end -- with people other than poor Reid's character apparently getting to decide that he will never be allowed to know he even has a son! Holy keee-rap, that's cruel. But not unexpected from films of the time. As was pointed out, there are even better films of the era that dealt with similar themes (giving up one's child -- sometimes illegitimate,sometimes from a dead or supposed-dead spouse), and they, too, often featured parents and/or children who were conscioulsy denied by others the truth of their relations to each other. It sticks in my craw with those films, too.

Matthew