Jim Stowell (Warren William) is an uncompromising District Attorney, notorious for prosecuting murder cases all the way to the execution chamber in Wives Under Suspicion (1938). But his workaholic hours and emphasis on the death penalty at any cost is taking its toll on Stowell's marriage.

When he promises his beautiful wife Lucy (Gail Patrick) a vacation and his undivided attention, their marriage looks like it could be on the mend. That is, until a high-profile murder case lands on his desk, involving a political science professor, Shaw MacAllen (Ralph Morgan), who murdered his philandering wife in a fit of jealousy. When MacAllen confesses all to Stowell on an irrefutable sound recording, the D.A. is determined to send the pitiful man to the electric chair. Stowell fights the defense's claims of MacAllen's insanity, anxious to win at any cost, and at great peril to his own marriage.

Soon the MacAllen case is spilling over into Stowell's own life in eerie ways. Bringing a decided thriller ambiance to the proceedings, Stowell begins to create his own murderous fantasies of catching Lucy in flagrante delicto with her handsome young friend Phil (William Lundigan).

British-born director James Whale's marital and courtroom thriller Wives was a remake of his earlier The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933) which he felt "hadn't come out right." Whale enlisted longtime Frank Capra collaborator Myles Connolly -- who had worked with the latter director on Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Lost Horizon (1937) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) -- to rewrite the script.

Significant changes to the script included the transformation of the defense attorney in the first film to the prosecuting attorney in the second. In the Wives remake, the wife was also innocent of having an extramarital affair, while in Kiss her guilt was made clear. In another memorable change of tack, Whale began Wives Under Suspicion with a highly expressionistic vignette at odds with the realism of the rest of the film. The stylish, beautifully shot sequence of a condemned killer's last days anticipated the edgy film noirs to come.

Whale was applauded by Universal's M.F. Murphy for finishing Wives in record time, a full five days ahead of schedule and $30,000 under budget. Though its title was generally considered ineffective by critics, the film garnered favorable reviews including the Hollywood Spectator's concession that it was "better than its title."

Though he directed such diverse material as the World War I melodrama Waterloo Bridge (1931), the British domestic drama One More River (1934) and the rousing Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein musical Show Boat (1936), Whale is best remembered for the expressionist mood and subtle black comedy of his four definitive Universal horror films: Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Despite the enormous success he brought the studio with his groundbreaking horror film Frankenstein, Whale was disappointed by his tenure at Universal. He felt the studio did little to earn its share of his earnings and awarded him lackluster projects like the critically-trounced desert-island film Sinners in Paradise (1938). And so, at the end of his Universal contract, he found a new agent, Phil Berg, who helped him secure the "A" picture The Man in the Iron Mask (1939) for Whale to direct. The film also proved an unprecedented coup for the director, who received a percentage of the profits for the first and last time.

Some have said that it was Whale's homosexuality that hastened his eventual retirement from Hollywood to pursue his interest in painting. After returning to film one last time in 1949 to make the unreleased Hello Out There, Whale finally died in 1957, drowned in his swimming pool under mysterious circumstances.

Director: James Whale
Producer: Edmund Grainger
Screenplay: Myles Connolly (based on the story "Suspicion" by Ladislas Fodor)
Cinematography: George Robinson
Production Design: Jack Otterson
Music: Charles Previn
Cast: Warren William (District Atty. Jim Stowell), Gail Patrick (Lucy Stowell), Ralph Morgan (Prof. Shaw MacAllen), William Lundigan (Phil), Constance Moore (Elizabeth), Cecil Cunningham (Sharpy), Samuel S. Hinds (Dave Marrow), Jonathan Hale (Dan Allison), Lillian Yarbo (Creola).
BW-69m.

by Felicia Feaster