For fully half its running time, No Man of her Own shapes up to be the sort of woman's weeper in which Barbara Stanwyck had scored previous triumphs, like Stella Dallas or Always Goodbye. But then it flashes its noir credentials, consisting of its provenance from a William Irish (Cornell Woolrich) story, disingenuous direction by Mitchell Leisen, and an expert performance by Stanwyck. It's about Stanwyck's stealing another woman's identity and whether she can pull it off or whether she has to.
Knocked up and jilted by her heel of a lover (Lyle Bettger), Stanwyck follows him to New York only to be icily rebuffed and handed a train ticket home. En route, she meets up with young marrieds Phyllis Thaxter and Richard Denning, headed to his home in Illinois to have their first baby. A horrible train wreck kills them both, sparing Stanwyck, the wedding ring Thaxter had given her to hold minutes before the crash, and her own newborn son; `for his sake,' she decides to pass herself off as the bereaved wife, whom Denning's parents have never met.
She's welcomed into the family with open arms, and becomes the doting daughter-in-law. Along the way, she makes a few faux pas (like signing her real name!), but they're ascribed to the trauma she underwent. Taking a particular shine to her is Denning's younger brother (John Lund), who starts squiring the young `widow' around town. But, this being one of Woolrich's grim gardens, there's a canker in the rose, in the form of Bettger, who has tracked her down. He has no interest in her, or in his son, but smells the money she has come into and blackmails her into marrying him. Stanwyck, however, hatches a scheme of her own....
The plot, of course, is nothing if not far-fetched, but succeeds on its own melodramatic terms by unstinting commitment from Leisen (who shows an unexpectedly deft hand at suspense) and Stanwyck stars of her magnitude could redeem many a vehicle less promising than this (that's why they were stars). There's a nice contrast between the idyllic middle-class life Stanwyck has fallen into and the dark streets of the demimonde where she must rendezvous with Bettger. Special mention, though, must go to Carole Mathews, whose three brief appearances as `the blonde' (Bettger's latest squeeze) turn an ironic little subplot into something like an instrument of the Fates.
Knocked up and jilted by her heel of a lover (Lyle Bettger), Stanwyck follows him to New York only to be icily rebuffed and handed a train ticket home. En route, she meets up with young marrieds Phyllis Thaxter and Richard Denning, headed to his home in Illinois to have their first baby. A horrible train wreck kills them both, sparing Stanwyck, the wedding ring Thaxter had given her to hold minutes before the crash, and her own newborn son; `for his sake,' she decides to pass herself off as the bereaved wife, whom Denning's parents have never met.
She's welcomed into the family with open arms, and becomes the doting daughter-in-law. Along the way, she makes a few faux pas (like signing her real name!), but they're ascribed to the trauma she underwent. Taking a particular shine to her is Denning's younger brother (John Lund), who starts squiring the young `widow' around town. But, this being one of Woolrich's grim gardens, there's a canker in the rose, in the form of Bettger, who has tracked her down. He has no interest in her, or in his son, but smells the money she has come into and blackmails her into marrying him. Stanwyck, however, hatches a scheme of her own....
The plot, of course, is nothing if not far-fetched, but succeeds on its own melodramatic terms by unstinting commitment from Leisen (who shows an unexpectedly deft hand at suspense) and Stanwyck stars of her magnitude could redeem many a vehicle less promising than this (that's why they were stars). There's a nice contrast between the idyllic middle-class life Stanwyck has fallen into and the dark streets of the demimonde where she must rendezvous with Bettger. Special mention, though, must go to Carole Mathews, whose three brief appearances as `the blonde' (Bettger's latest squeeze) turn an ironic little subplot into something like an instrument of the Fates.