Dead Ringer **** (1964, Bette Davis, Karl Malden, Peter Lawford, Philip Carey) – Classic Movie Review 2163

Director Paul Henreid casts his friend and sometime co-star Bette Davis, who hugely enjoys her lip-smacking double role as Margaret DeLorca and Edith Phillips, in the deliriously entertaining 1964 pot-boiling thriller Dead Ringer.

After her brother-in-law’s funeral, the working class Edith discovers her callous wealthy twin sister Margaret tricked her way into marriage with the man she also loved. So the vengeful Edith impulsively murders Margaret and assumes her identity and life style.

However, she finds impersonating her dead twin is riskier and more troublesome than she imagines when her life becomes complicated by her late sister’s sleazy boyfriend Tony Collins (Peter Lawford) and Los Angeles detective Sergeant Jim Hobbson (Karl Malden), who loved the supposedly dead Edith.

Though slightly past her prime, the 56-year-old Davis is basking in her new-found favour after her triumphant success in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). She shows she still has the life force and is never going give up her stardom, making a typically strong and forceful impression in both parts as Margaret and Edith. She even gets to sing ‘Shuffle Off to Buffalo’, though rather badly since she had no singing voice.

It’s a high-class B-movie, and all the better for it, with many of the themes, plotlines, characters and stylish flourishes of the old films noirs, all controlled and directed enthusiastically by Henreid. Ernest Haller’s black and white cinematography has the genuine old noir look. And it’s good that the movie has a then decent budget of $1,200,000 of Warner Bros studio money behind it.

Malden and Lawford are ideal, and there’s a fine gallery of co-stars in Philip Carey as Sergeant Hoag, Jean Hagen, George Macready, Estelle Winwood and George Chandler, who take to film noir to the manner born. Also in the cast are Mario Alcade, Cyril Delevanti, Monika Henreid, Bert Remsen, Charles Watts, Ken Lynch, Perry Blackwell, Bryan O’Byrne and Hazel Scott.

The score is by André Previn and the cinematography by Ernest Haller in his final film.

It runs 115 minutes.

It was released on 19 February 1964.

Henreid memorably acted with Davis in Now, Voyager (1942) and Deception (1946).

Screenwriters Albert Beich and Oscar Millard dust off a 20-year-old script based on the story La Otra (Dead Pigeon) by Rian James, previously filmed as the 1946 Mexican film La Otra starring Dolores del Río. It was remade in 1986 as the TV movie Killer in the Mirror, starring Ann Jillian.

It is the second time Davis played twin sisters, after 1946’s A Stolen Life, whose process shots were created by Ernest Haller, here improving the trickery. Makeup artist Gene Hibbs was hired for his talent to make older actresses look younger.

With the film set in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, the interiors were shot at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, the bar scene at the corner of Temple and Figueroa in downtown Los Angeles, and the burial scene at the Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles.

The jazz combo in Edie’s Bar is electronic organist Perry Lee Blackwell and drummer Kenny Dennis.

One of Paul Henreid’s two daughters, Monika Henreid, plays Janet the maid.

It was one of those occasions when everybody was happy and satisfied making the movie, and Henreid summed it up as ‘a wonderful experience’.

The cast are Bette Davis as Margaret DeLorca/ Edith Phillips, Karl Malden as Sergeant Jim Hobbson, Peter Lawford as Tony Collins, Philip Carey as Sergeant Hoag, Jean Hagen as Dede Marshall, George Macready as Paul Harrison, Estelle Winwood as Dona Anna, George Chandler as chauffeur George, Cyril Delevanti as butler Henry, Bert Remsen as bartender Dan Lister, Ken Lynch as Captain Johnson, Perry Blackwell as Edie’s Bar jazz singer, Mario Alcade, Monika Henreid, Charles Watts, Bryan O’Byrne and Hazel Scott.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2163

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