Don't get me wrong, I liked the film, but it was let down badly an ending that doesn't work and was plainly tacked on for shock value.
So he killed her because they had been married and he wanted her out of the way so he could start again, right?
Well, that means that when the cops were searching high and low for a link between him and the victim they missed a marriage certificate. Even the most inept of cops would surely check that.
I take your point, but I think you're being a bit harsh. The idea, I think, is that the cops don't really need to look very hard, since they are being drip-fed all the evidence they need to arrest Dana Andrews. And we can assume that just as he (and Sidney Blackmer) are busily supplying the police with their carefully stage-managed evidence, so Andrews is equally busily covering his tracks vis-a-vis his late wife. Had Blackmer not suggested the plot, then the cops might have had to work harder and might well have come up with the previous marriage, so I think it all works in Andrews' favour until his final, fatal slip of the tongue.
I think there are goofs in the movie - Andrews wipes all the fingerprints off the car interior and then takes his gloves off before going back into it and leaving some more, but at the trial, the forensic officer tesitifies that the car was clean - but I don't think this was one of them. Or am I still missing something?
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The marriage certificate would have been in her real name, Emma. The cops knew the victim under her stage name, which she got from a guy some distance away. They may not have been able to connect the two. They didn't have as much access to information back then as they do today.
And they don't work that hard today either.
Women are like deer - You can't just charge in, you gotta stalk 'em...
Isn't it established at some point that there were no papers found in her apartment, so she was identified only as Pat, not Emma?
shareBut after the guy from the prosecutor's office found out her real name and he told Joan Fontaine that he couldn't find any connection between her and Andrews under BOTH NAMES. So he either didn't actually check any further or there is a huge plot hole.
I'm here, Mr. Man, I can not tell no lie and I'll be right here 'till the day I die
Well, it was the 50s, no computers or networks, so I guess it was kind of hard to check nation wide if the two had been married.
shareWell, it was the 50s, no computers or networks, so I guess it was kind of hard to check nation wide if the two had been married.
Regardless of what was or wasn't found in her apartment, one is inclined to believe the cops would have found out her real name anyway. After all, the investigation was going nowhere, so one of the obvious things to do would have been to dig deep into her background - unless they were quite entirely incompetent or outrageously lazy.
"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan
The marriage certificate would have been in her real name, Emma. The cops knew the victim under her stage name, which she got from a guy some distance away. They may not have been able to connect the two. They didn't have as much access to information back then as they do today.This is, of course, ridiculous. What does it matter what name she's using? There's no indication Garrett changed his name. If they did a thorough check of his background, which they supposedly did, they would have found that he had been married at one time. Naturally, they would have had to follow up on that to make sure there wasn't any association with the victim.
The plot was taken from an early 20th-century novel about circumstantial evidence by mystery writer Mary Roberts Rhinehart, called "The Case of Jenny Brice." The seeming victim of the falsified evidence takes advantage of the situation and actually murders his wife, similar to the ending of "Reasonable Doubt."
While watching this film, I really thought that Susan's father had committed the crime, and that he was going to let Dana Andrews' character get punished for it. That would have been a better ending, I think. Geez, they even found a way of getting rid of him during the film (he gets killed in a car accident).
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💕 JimHutton (1934-79) and ElleryQueen 👍
They even forgot to check her birth certificate.
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