"The Man I Married" was released in 1940 and played in a limited number of theaters before the studio pulled the picture. America was not yet at war and the Germans were pressuring 20th Century Fox to shelve the picture. The Hitler regime had succeeded in pulling the plug on some productions that the Nazis did not like or compromising other films like James Whale's "The Road Back" which was a sequel to "All Quiet on the Western Front." The Universal production was edited and new comedy relief scenes were added to water down the plot. Universal had facilities in Germany and feared that their movies would not be permitted to be distributed in German theaters.
To the film, Joan Bennett played a magazine editor who accompanies her German born husband, Francis Lederer, back to the Fatherland with their minor child. As their sojourn in Berlin lengthens, the husband is seduced by the Nazi Party and takes on an Aryan mistress. Irving Pichel directed the movie which also incorporates newsreel footage. It is an interesting anti-fascist propaganda tract that proves quite absorbing. Other players are Anna Sten, Otto Kruger, Lloyd Nolan, and Ludwig Stossel.
"Shadow of a Woman" was filmed in 1945 and released in 1946. The Warner Brothers production has a definite "B" movie feel. It was shot using secondary studio players (Helmut Dantine and Andrea King are the leads), but the plot crosses over into film noir territory. A woman's hasty marriage to a quack "doctor" specializing in nutritional medicine puts her life into immediate peril. It was Dantine's final role for Warner Brothers as his contract was not renewed. He continued acting as a free lance performer in such films as "The Whispering City" an Eagle Lion noir.
Both Lederer and Dantine were Austrians who relocated to the USA. Lederer was an actually a WWI veteran who had served in the Austro-Hungary Imperial Army. Dantine was sent to the USA to escape the Nazis as he was an outspoken opponent of the "Anschluss" which saw Germany take over Austria and absorb the nation into the Third Reich.
Ironically, Lederer's final acting role would be in an episode of "Night Gallery" entitled "The Devil Is Not Mocked" opposite Dantine. Perennial Nazi Martin Koseleck (who was a German Jew) also made an appearance in the same episode.
Lederer never achieved full stardom, but he did well in real estate and lived to be a hundred years old. He also played a Nazi agent in "The Otto Frick Story" on "The Untouchables."
After seeing, "The Man I Married" and "The Madonna's Secret," I really want to search out Arthur Ripley's "Voice in the Wind."
Dan
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