Pre- Code: One More River (1934).

One More River (1934). Film directed by James Whale. It was produced and distributed by Universal Pictures. Cast: Diana Wynyard. The film is based on a novel by John Galsworthy. This marked Jane Wyatt's film debut.

The story begins when Lady Clare Corven, returns from Ceylon by ship to be with her family, who is happy to see her after she left her husband Gerald, for abusing her. While on the ship, she meets and falls in love with, James "Tony" Bernard Croom.



He husband Gerald, has the couple followed by a detective. One night, they can't get the car lights to work and Clare and Tony, park in the woods and innocently spend the night together. With this evidence Gerald uses it to sue Clare and Tony, for divorce and damages.

At the trial, Tony and Clare are found guilty, will Tony and Clare continue on with their romance or go their separate ways?

This is the first time I have seen this film, it's main focus is the social attitudes toward sex and divorce. When the film began, Diana's character was plain, but.. as the movie progressed, she became more sophisticated. It was fun to see a very young, Jane Wyatt.

Diana Wynyard, (16 January 1906 – 13 May 1964), began her career on the English stage. She attracted attention of Broadway and performed first in Rasputin and the Empress in 1932, with Ethel, John, and Lionel Barrymore. She performed in the film version, beginning her brief Hollywood career.

Fox Film Corporation, borrowed her for their film version of, Cavalcade (1933). As the noble wife and mother she aged gracefully against a background of the Boer War, the sinking of the Titanic, the First World War, and the arrival of the Jazz Age. With this performance, she became the first British actress to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

After a handful of film roles, most notably as John Barrymore's old flame in Reunion in Vienna, she returned to Britain, but concentrated on theatre work, including roles as Charlotte Bronte in, Wild Decembers, in Sweet Aloes, and as Gilda in the British premiere of Noel Coward's Design for Living.

 She was tempted to return to the screen to play opposite Ralph Richardson in, On the Night of the Fire (1939). Her greatest success was as the heroine of, Gaslight (1940), the first film version of Patrick Hamilton's play Gas Light. This was followed by roles opposite Clive Brook in Freedom Radio, John Gielgud in, The Prime Minister and Michael Redgrave in Kipps (all 1941), directed by Carol Reed to whom she was later briefly married.

After World War II, she performed in, An Ideal Husband (1947), from the Oscar Wilde play, but her remaining film appearances were in supporting roles, usually maternal, such as in Tom Brown's Schooldays (1951) and as the secretive mother (of James Mason's character) in Island in the Sun (1957).

On television she played Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the 1957 version of Mayerling, which starred Audrey Hepburn. Her stage career flourished after the war, and as a Shakespearean leading lady at Stratford, in London's West End and on tour in Australia, she had her pick of star parts.

 Between 1948 and 1952, she played Portia, Gertrude, Lady Macbeth, Katherine the shrew, Desdemona, Katherine of Aragon, Hermione in The Winter's Tale, and Beatrice to Gielgud's Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. In this production, she succeeded her friend Peggy Ashcroft. Wynyward stumbled off the rostrum during the sleepwalking scene in Macbeth in 1948. She fell 15 feet, but was able to continue.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s she also had success in the works of several contemporary writers, including the British production of Tennessee Williams's Camino Real. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1953.

She was married to the English film director Sir Carol Reed from 3 February 1943 until August 1947, and subsequently to a Hungarian physician, Tibor Csato. She died from renal disease in London in 1964, aged 58, while rehearsing The Master Builder with Michael Redgrave and Maggie Smith as part of the new National Theatre Company. Celia Johnson replaced her. Her last television performance was in the play The Man in the Panama Hat recorded in March 1964. Her death occurred before the intended broadcast in May 1964 and it was eventually shown posthumously on 21 September 1964.

Happy Birthday Jane Wyatt (1910-2006)

Born in Campgaw, New Jersey, Jane Waddington Wyatt came from a New York family of social distinction (her father was a Wall Street investment banker and her mother was a drama critic). Jane was raised from the age of three months in New York City and attended the fashionable Chapin School and later Barnard College.

After two years of college, she left to join the apprentice school of the Berkshire Playhouse at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where for six months she played an assortment of roles.

One of her first jobs on Broadway was as understudy to Rose Hobart in a production of "Trade Winds"--a career move that cost her her slot on the New York Social Register.

Wyatt made the transition from stage to screen and was placed under contract at Universal, where she made her film debut in director James Whale's, One More River (1934).

She went back and forth between Universal and Broadway and co-starred in Frank Capra's Columbia film Lost Horizon (1937) on loan out from Universal.

In the 1950s, she co-starred with Robert Young in, Father Knows Best (1954), the classic TV sitcom chronicling the life and times of the Anderson family in the Midwestern town of Springfield.

Wyatt died at age 96 on October 20, 2006.

The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950).

The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950). Cast: Lee J.Cobb, Jane Wyatt and John Dall.

When well to do Lois Frazer, wants a divorce from her husband, he decides that he is not going to let her get away so easy. After her husband with packed bags leaves for a trip, Lois finds a receipt for the gun he just bought lying on the floor. She believes that her husband is coming back to kill her.

Crying she calls her lover Detective Cullen and asks him to rush over. While they are talking, her husband returns to the house and sneaks in through a back door. Lois shoots him twice at close range. Cullen, knowing that the husband had an airline ticket for that night (his planned alibi) dumps the body off at the airport.

What follows will keep you sitting at the edge of your seat. Cullen, finds himself in the dangerous position of being assigned a case in which he was a witness. In trying to control the investigation, Cullen also has to deal with his younger brother, a new detective, by his side every step of the way.

I thought Lee J. Cobb and John Dall gave wonderful performances in this "B" film noir thriller. It is also nice to see a 20 year-old Lisa Howard, in a supporting role as Dall's new wife. I also thought that Jane Wyatt gave a wonderful performance playing the femme fatale.
Click to view : The Man Who Cheated Himself.


John Dall, is best remembered for two film roles: Alfred Hitchcock's film, Rope and the 1950 noir, Gun Crazy. He first came to fame in the film, The Corn Is Green, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.