The Bigamist

Harry Graham lives in San Francisco and works as a travelling salesman, a job that keeps him away from home for long stretches. He and his wife Eve, who is also his business partner, are trying to adopt a child. Their application draws the attention of Mr. Jordan, who runs the adoption agency, and he begins asking questions. What he finds is that Harry has been making far more trips to Los Angeles than his work explains: he has a second wife there, Phyllis, and a young child with her. Confronted with the discovery, Harry tells the whole story. The film follows a man caught between two households, neither of which knows about the other, and the strain this double life places on everyone involved.

Ida Lupino directed and plays Phyllis, with Edmond O'Brien as Harry, Joan Fontaine as Eve and Edmund Gwenn as Mr. Jordan. Collier Young wrote the screenplay and produced the film, which runs 80 minutes and was released in December 1953. The Bigamist was the fourth of the five features Lupino directed, arriving the same year as The Hitch-Hiker, and it was made outside the major studio system by her own production company. The large credited cast of 25 reflects a modest-scale independent production rather than a studio epic. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.8 from roughly 5,300 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.4 from about 124 votes, indicating a small but steady audience for a film that has stayed available without becoming widely seen.