Format: VHS from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on big ol’ television.
Frequent readers of this blog will probably know that one of my favorite words is “lurid.” Three years ago, I wouldn’t have known what I’m about to say—I love the lurid stuff. Evidently, the more lurid the film, the more I seem to like it. So when I suggest that The Bigamist is that special sort of lurid that only seemed to exist in the late 1940s and the 1950s when the same stuff that happens now happened, but no one was really able to talk about it. That’s what makes it so damn fun—it’s the tiptoeing around the actual subject that makes it seem so much more prurient and dirty.
There shouldn’t be a big shock when the plot twist reveals itself about a quarter of a way in. After all, this film is called The Bigamist, so learning that traveling salesman Harry Graham (Edmond O’Brien) has two wives should be expected. We start with him and his first wife, Eve (Joan Fontaine). They are unable to have children and are looking to adopt. Mr. Jordan (Edmund Gwenn) works for the adoption agency and tells them they must both expect him to dig thoroughly into their private lives, something that appears to visibly shake Harry.
