When Strangers Marry aka Betrayed

Orson Welles was an outspoken admirer of this compact B-noir classic by William Castle (later an assistant director on THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI), a taut and suspenseful sixty-seven minute story of a nubile bride arriving in New York City to meet the traveling salesman she hastily and very recently married before his abrupt and, in retrospect, strange departure. In her hotel she finds not her husband but, by uncanny coincidence, an old flame crestfallen to learn of her spontaneous marriage, a forgiving but oddly brooding type played by Robert Mitchum in a pivotal early role that first revealed his talents as an ambiguous hero. Together the bride and ex-lover search for the missing groom, discovering clues along the way that suggest he may be the ruthless “Silk Stocking Murderer.” WHEN STRANGERS MARRY offered an early role for a radiantly young Kim Hunter who wanders through a haunted city of beckoning signs and sinister figures like a noir Alice in Underworld Land. An arresting scene of the frightened, lonely Hunter, alone in her dingy hotel room while honky-tonk music and pulsing lights beckon, mysteriously unfolds like an animated Edward Hopper canvas. (Haden Guest)

With DR. BROADWAY