User Reviews

"The Two Mrs. Carrolls" is the second screen pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Alexis Smith, and oddly, it's Smith's character who's the 'other woman' in both films. It occurred the first time in 1945's "Conflict", but in that picture, it was Bogey's character who did the pursuing, while here, it's Cecily Latham (Smith) who intrudes on Geoffrey Carroll's marriage to the second Mrs. Carroll of the title. By that time though, Sally Morton (Barbara Stanwyck) had already been the 'other woman' to the first Mrs.C., who we only know by the 'Angel of Death' painting. Taking a chapter from "Bluebeard", Bogey's character is an artist who paints his victims before they succumb to a spiked milk cocktail.

It's never made clear how chemist Blagdon (Barry Bernard) figures out that Mr. Carroll is the customer who signs for his prescriptions as Fleming. But if he was that sharp, he should also have concluded that if Carroll was deranged enough to kill his first wife by poisoning, then knocking off a druggist wouldn't be much of a stretch. Too bad, he turned the screws just a little too tight for his own good.

Nigel Bruce is quite adequate depicting a country doctor who looks in on the Carroll's, you might call his performance right as rain. It's Dr. Tuttle's single minded obsession with an Ashton burglar and a Yorkshire strangler that gives Mr.C the idea for his farewell plans for wife number two. If only he'd have cut the phone line a minute sooner.

Perhaps the surprise performance in this tale belongs to the actress portraying daughter Bea, an unusually precocious Ann Carter. Watching her, it was almost impossible to believe that a child could converse with the language she used. It was somewhat irritating though to see how compliant she was with every single idea her father advanced, especially going away to school. I think she could have done some damage once the fireworks started.

Bogart and Stanwyck are genuinely competent in their roles; Stanwyck in particular turning things up a notch when it becomes clear that she could wind up a murder victim. The pair had generally good chemistry together, and seemed to be a better match than the intruder Cecily might have been with Mr. Carroll. Chalk that up to a fine performance by Alexis Smith, as this viewer found it hard to warm up to her character. Bogart fans might have some fun comparing his performance here against his similar character in the aforementioned "Conflict", a film which for my two cents is the stronger of the two.

The only reason to watch this film is because Bogart and Stanwyck are starring in it. Bogie practices his full-screen nutty facial expressions that later became famous in "The Treasure of Sierra Madre" and "The Caine Mutiny". Stanwyck recreates her "horrified-I'm about to be murdered looks" from "Sorry Wrong Number". The plot is pretty hokey and transparent but, like I said, it is fun to see great actors having fun, and it looks like they did on this film. I would bet that this movie was filmed in a few weeks time. I thought that Bogie's daughter would be the one to expose her Dad but she only gave clues to Stanwyck that caused her to be suspicious. As mentioned on the review the "milk out the window" later became "milk all over the sill and floor" for Bogie to realize that his poison milk was exposed to his wife. I saw this on TCM and there were satellite problems or something but only small parts were skipped. This movie, like so many Hollywood plots, has the "good guy" boyfriend that the wife should have married who comes to the rescue. What is funny is that in "real life" there is no way that Stanwyck would have married creepy Bogart and not the debonair, handsome Englishman that she was engaged to prior to Bogie. Of course, "real life" movies are not always good box office or much fun to see.

Although credits are top-draw, production values are very moderate. Peter Godfrey's direction is also a mite disappointing. Neither he nor screenplay writer Thomas Job have made much attempt to open up the stage play. Instant information dialogue is put across with a disconcerting lack of subtlety in both writing and delivery. Ann Carter's unrealistically precocious child and Nigel Bruce's blustering, stereotyped doctor are the worst offenders. Bogart himself delivers another of his very capable studies in psychopathology. Barbara Stanwyck is also cast strictly to type, but she too comes across effectively. Both she and Bogart give seemingly effortless portrayals as they both have parts they can play standing on their heads. Alexis Smith makes a strong impression in an unsympathetic part. On the other hand, Patrick O'Moore makes a wet, colorless hero. In the support cast, Anita Bolster (looking rather like Margaret Hamilton) gives an audience-pleasing portrait of a cynical servant. Godfrey himself does a brief and amusing cameo as a race-track con man. Barry Bernard registers as the blackmailing Blagdon, while Isobel Elsom delivers her usual capable rendition of a high society lady. Godfrey's direction is at its best in the climax with the camera tracking across the room with Bogart as he makes his preparations. It must be admitted that Godfrey sees the action from a cinematic rather than a stage audiences' point-of-view, but his approach is often unimaginatively routine. All the same, certain sequences do have power (the murder, the climax, the discovery of the portrait), but thanks as much to deft film editing and atmospheric photography by Peverell Marley (who lights Miss Stanwyck most attractively) as anything else. Stanwyck is also most attractively costumed and made up. Alert music scoring effectively mirrors every cue in the dialogue.

You could say that "Dragonwyck", "Secret Beyond the Door", and even Stanwyck's own "Sorry Wrong Number" all had elements of this film in them. Yes, I know Dragonwyck and Conflict were released before this film, but "Two Mrs Carrolls" was actually filmed in 1945 and just sat on the shelf at WB for two years.

Stanwyck plays Sally Morton, a woman who has a whirlwind courtship with artist Geoffrey Carroll (Humphrey Bogart), until she finds a letter from Mrs. Carroll. Geoffrey then tells her that though he and his wife have been married ten years that his wife has been an invalid since the birth of their daughter. But Sally will have nothing to do with busting up a home.

One great device of this film is that you never see the first Mrs. Carroll. You just see Bogey and the daughter coming in and out of her room. Geoffrey's mind turns to murder, and he is even painting his wife as "The Angel of Death". He signs for some dangerous chemicals at the pharmacist's and you see him going into his wife's room holding her milk, but looking like he is carrying a hand grenade.

Next thing you know it is two years later plus some time, because it is mentioned that the first Mrs. Carroll has been dead that long. Sally is now married to Geoffrey, who is complaining that he can no longer paint, that he is mentally blocked. And then he meets the wealthy Cecily Latham (Alexis Smith) who wants her portrait painted. She shamelessly flirts with Geoffrey, stealing him right out from under Sally's clueless nose. Geoffrey wants to leave Sally for Cecily - and her money - plus that chemist he bought the poison from years ago? He's hanging around and blackmailing Geoffrey, who is hardly wealthy.

The next thing you know, Sally isn't feeling too well, being told by her doctor to stay in bed. Then through casual conversation with Geoffrey's daughter - with whom she has a good relationship - some interesting facts about the first Mrs. Carroll come to light. When Sally convinces the daughter to let her into the locked room where Geoffrey is painting, what they find shocks them both.

Although the idea of Bogart playing an artist seems silly at first, you don't see him that much as an artist - although Jack Warner wanted him to wear a beret and a smock which Bogart had the power by that time to veto. Stanwyck is great as a woman who finds out her dream marriage is a nightmare and Bogart's slide into insanity is artfully done. I do have to ask Cecily - and all homewreckers for that matter - if you can get him to leave his wife this time, won't it be all the easier for some other woman to do it down the line? The bloom won't stay on your rose forever! And now I turn to the daughter. She really is a necessary character. Her interaction with Bogart all through the movie and their good relationship brings out the humanity in Bogart's character, and she innocently relays information to Stanwyck's character that she could not have easily gotten any other way. The only weird part is how she seems to be eternally eight. She does not age over the three year period that this film takes place.

In summary you have a great cast in a moody film set in a dark creepy English mansion. The housekeeper is a smart mouth from the word go, Nigel Bruce plays a doctor who is also a lush, and Patrick Moore as Stanwyck's old boyfriend has the patience of a saint. Unfortunately he has the sex appeal of one too. I'd recommend this one.

Of all the Humphery Bogart movies I have seen, The Two Mrs Carrolls proved he could make a good, creepy villain.

After the death of his first wife by poisoning her with milk he had spiked, Bogie, who plays a psychopathic artist meets another woman and marries her and he intends to do the same with her as he is having an affair with someone else. The second Mrs Carroll gradually gets suspicious of his behaviour and eventually finds out what he did to his first wife and manages to call the police. She refuses to drink a glass of milk he gives her and the police then arrive and he is arrested at the end, keeping calm despite this.

Although Bogie only appeared in one horror movie, The Return of Doctor X, The Two Mrs Carrolls certainly has horror elements.

Joining Bogie in the cast are Barbara Stanwyck, Dr Watson himself Nigel Bruce (appropiantly as a doctor and a very similar role to Watson too) and Alexis Smith. Excellent parts from all.

The Two Mrs Carrolls is a must for all Bogie fans and is certainly worth the £1.50 I paid for it. Excellent stuff.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

I had to laugh out loud when Bogie made this comment regarding meeting his second wife's former fiancé! The blatant paraphrasing from the last line of Bogie's classic, Casablanca, made 5 years earlier was quite hilarious.

This movie falls somewhere in between "Just OK" and "Pretty Good" .. in other words, 6/10. I'm not a huge Bogie fan, so perhaps my grading is a little unfair, although I must admit I like him when he's playing a bad guy or creep (like he does in this movie) rather than his usual good guy roles.

Barbara Stanwyck is terrific as always ... I've never seen her be anything other than flawless, regardless of the material.

The story of "The Two Mrs. Carrolls" is slightly convoluted or, as other posters have written here, could be due to bad editing -- chunks of the story are left out or just left to our imagination -- we must surmise how we got from point A to point E, while points B, C and D are left out entirely and not even alluded to.

Bogie plays an artist who gets inspiration from the woman he loves. When he finds another muse, he has no use for the former inspiration and he kills her. He poisons his first wife with glasses of milk (just like in Hitch's "Suspicion", but I'm not sure which movie came first) after he meets and falls in love with Barbara Stanwyck. During the first wife's period of poisoning/dying, Bogie paints an "Angel of Death" portrait of her.

Flash forward two years later ... Bogie and Stanwyck have been married for 18 months and Stanwyck has invited her ex-fiancé and two of his socialite friends (Cecily Latham, played by Alexis Smith, and her mother) to dinner. This is where Bogie utters his funny line about "beginning of a beautiful hatred" regarding meeting his wife's ex-fiancé, and gives us a glimpse into his irrational jealousy. (I think we've seen hints before this point of the flick.) At first, Bogie and Alexis Smith clash horribly, but (cliched as it is) it is only because they are so attracted to one another. Bogie agrees to paint Alexis's portrait and next scene we see the gang at the races with Bogie and Alexis holding hands. At this point we the audience know Stanwyck's days are numbered.

Soon thereafter Stanwyck is bed-ridden with a "nervous condition" and Bogie is working on a painting that he won't let anyone see till he's finished. While Bogie is out in town paying off the blackmailing chemist who sold him the drugs that killed the first Mrs. Carroll originally, Stanwyck and Bogie's daughter have a conversation where Stanwyck puts 2 and 2 together. The two sneak into Bogie's studio to look at his painting -- it is Stanwyck as the Angel of Death, with dark sunken eyes and the rib cage of a skeleton; truly a creepy painting.

The rest of the movie is better than what it has been up to this point, as some suspense and melodrama finally enter the picture. Bogie sends his daughter off to the train station with the house-maid, and comes back to kill Stanwyck. OK, enough spoiling; I'll leave something to those who haven't seen it yet.

Conclusion to my review: Decent enough, almost primarily due to Barbara Stanwyck. Worth watching if you can catch it on TCM and TiVo it and watch it at your leisure. Otherwise, not really worth going out of your way for, unless you're a huge Stanwyck or Bogie fan. (I'm the former!)

Two ways to look at this film, the performers and the script. Warner Brothers made the film in 1945, and waited 2 years to release it. There are reasons for that including Bogart being cast as an mentally ill artist is not the normal role for him. While he does get a tough guy type of murder he does late in the movie, in this one he plays an artist who is not a smart as his usual self.

Barbara Stanwyck is Sally, Geoffrey's (Bogies) second wife. He poisons his first wife with spiked warm milk and she never appears in the film. Ann Carter plays her young daughter Beatrice, who is rather precious and a bit of too grown up acting for a 9 year old (her age) when this was filmed. She is sort of detached, yet attached to her father (Bogie) and seems to show no emotion when her mom dies, which is kind of creepy. Her scenes with Bogart are strange as it is rare for him to do scenes with a juvenile.

Bogart has painted a portrait of the first wife, as an angel of death, who he killed after meeting Sally. His inspiration is apparently his plan to murder her. So logically he is working on a painting of Sally. He meets Cecily (Alexis Smith) and starts an affair with her. Amazingly Sally suspects the affair but since he is starting the process of poisoning her, she is a bit helpless to do anything about it.

Barry Bernard plays Horace, a chemist who is providing the poison being used for the murder. Then as he puts 2 and 2 together, he starts blackmailing the artist who is not starving and his wife Sally is loaded so he has money, hers.

From here, there is suspense, as we are left wondering if Sally is going to stop her own impending murder. Beatrice (the daughter) becomes the most valuable source of information for Sally as she get to see her portrait and learns he is next.

It's not top Bogart but the ladies in this have some claws. At the end, when the law catches up, they are offered a glass of warm milk. That is why this one is a bit warm but worth a look anyhow.

Probably because of its similarity to Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion" (1941) and George Cukor's "Gaslight" (1944), this Gothic noir was given a rough ride by the critics and didn't do very well commercially. Its story of murder, adultery and blackmail was based on Martin Vale's successful stage play of the same name, and like the two aforementioned movies, features a "woman in danger". It's significant for being the only film in which Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck starred together and is also interesting to watch because both stars play roles that are quite different from those for which they are best known.

During a two-week stay in Scotland, an artist and an heiress meet and fall in love. A problem arises when Sally Morton (Barbara Stanwyck) finds a letter addressed to the wife of her new beau and to her surprise, Geoffrey Carroll (Humphrey Bogart) readily admits that he has an invalid wife and a young daughter. After this revelation, Sally decides, without hesitation, to end their relationship. Geoffrey (posing as Mr Fleming), then purchases some poison from a London pharmacist called Horace Blagdon (Barry Bernard) and sends his daughter Bea (Ann Carter) away to school, so that he can concentrate on caring for his wife whose portrait he has painted as the "Angel of Death".

Two years after their first meeting and following the death of the artist's wife, Geoffrey and Sally are happily married and living together with Bea, in the cathedral town called Ashton. During this period, Geoffrey doesn't have the type of inspiration that he needs to produce his best work and so, when Sally's ex-fiancé Charles "Penny" Pennington (Patrick O'Moore) and two of his American acquaintances, the wealthy Mrs Latham (Isobel Elsom) and her attractive daughter Cecily (Alexis Smith) call by, Geoffrey is rather irritable. His mood doesn't improve when Cecily says how impressed she was by his recent one-man show in London and asks if he would paint her portrait. He immediately refuses but later changes his mind because Blagdon has discovered his real identity and has started to blackmail him.

When they work together on the new portrait, Cecily and Geoffrey fall in love and the beginning of their affair marks the point at which Sally's health suddenly deteriorates. She becomes weak and bedridden with a complaint that the local doctor diagnoses as an attack of nerves. Sally, however, begins to fear for her life when she learns that her symptoms mirror those suffered by the first Mrs Carroll shortly before her death and also discovers a painting (which Geoffrey had kept hidden from her) of herself as the "Angel of Death". As Sally becomes ever-more suspicious of the contents of the nightly glasses of milk that Geoffrey brings her, Cecily starts to demand that her lover should run away with her to South America and Blagdon's blackmail demands become greater. The pressure of all this on Geoffrey then becomes intolerable and provokes him into the irrational actions that follow.

One of this movie's greatest assets is its collection of colourful characters. The maid who works in the Carrolls' residence is incredibly impertinent, ill-mannered and full of snide remarks, the doctor who attends to Sally is a bumbling alcoholic who's clearly incompetent and Penny keeps hanging around because he's still obsessed with Sally. Geoffrey's daughter Bea is about 10-years-old, very prim and proper and exceptionally precocious and because of this, some of her comments take on an extra edge. Examples of this are when she says to her father "I know you'll do whatever is best for mother" and when talking to Penny about the portrait of her mother as the "Angel of Death", she remarks (with a dead-pan expression) that "father says it's representational".

The movie's real showstopper however, is Cecily whose conduct is incredibly inappropriate at times and outrageously funny. She's a shameless schemer who's determined to seduce Geoffrey and after he initially refuses to paint her portrait, Sally says that "people must suggest ideas to him before he paints them". Cecily turns to Geoffrey and says "Oh, and don't I suggest an idea to you?" to which he replies "yes, but nothing I'd care to paint".

Bogart, Stanwyck and the rest of the cast all turn in great performances, the cinematography is especially good and the atmosphere becomes decidedly creepy at times. There's more humour than is normally found in this type of movie and overall, it's entertaining and really worth watching.