The Man Who Cheated Himself

Money scenes, as San Francisco police detective Ed (Lee J. Cobb) arrives to calm down his wealthy married lover Lois (Jane Wyatt), who rightly suspects her husband (Harlan Warde), despite having left for the airport, is plotting to kill her, violence and quick thinking ensuing, in The Man Who Cheated Himself, 1951.

Rare location shots of the old toll booth at the Golden Gate Bridge, from producer Jack M. Warner and director Felix E. Feist, as detective Cullen (Lee J. Cobb), who’s just moved the body of her lover’s husband, whom she shot, to the airport, talks with a patrolman (Bud Wolfe) about his also-cop younger brother, The Man Who Cheated Himself, 1951.

We’ve just met John Dall as eager new San Francisco homicide detective Andy Cullen, and Lee J. Cobb as his brother Ed, who’ll be supervising him, and who offers his wedding gift, then phones his anxious married mistress Lois (Jane Wyatt), having deduced that she called earlier, then meets the fianceè Janet (Lisa Howard), early in The Man Who Cheated Himself, 1951.

No fooling around in the opening, Harlan Warde as San Franciscan Howard looks to be plotting a crime, and we’re given reason to think it will involve his wife Lois (Jane Wyatt), who intrudes, Felix E. Feist directing, in Columbia’s The Man Who Cheated Himself, 1951, starring Lee J. Cobb, restored in 2018 by Eddie Muller’s Film Noir Foundation.