My Name Is Julia Ross

source: My Name Is Julia Ross

Nina Foch insists that "My Name is Julia Ross" in this 1945 film noir also starring Dame May Witty and George Macready. It's short, and because it is, the film suffers. It could have stood to have been a good fifteen minutes to a half hour longer. When I was growing up, Foch was a fixture on television, playing a neurotic woman, the wife with the cheating husband, the nervous wreck. She became one of the great acting teachers in Los Angeles. Here, she's a pretty young ingenue playing the title role. Julia answers an ad for a secretary and is hired immediately by Mrs. Hughes and her son Ralph. Little does she know - though we learn immediately - that the employment agent is a front, set up to get just the right woman for this assignment, a woman with no family and no boyfriend. It's a live-in situation; once Julia gets to the house, she's drugged, and when she wakes up, she's told she's Mrs. Hughes and not allowed to leave. The acting is very good. Low budget but still entertaining - some things, particularly at the end, happen way too quickly, which is why I said the movie is too short. Nevertheless, I recommend it.

In London, Julia Ross (Nina Foch) is totally broken and unsuccessfully seeking a job. Her previous love affair with the lawyer Dennis Bruce (Roland Varno) has ended and he has just married with another woman on the previous night. When she sees an advertisement in a newspaper in the boarding house where she lives, she goes to the employment agency and she is interviewed by Ms. Sparkes (Anita Sharp-Bolster). When she learns that Julia is alone in London with neither relatives nor boyfriend, she offers a job position of private secretary with the wealthy Mrs. Hughes (Dame May Witty) and her son Ralph Hughes (George Macready). Julia is immediately hired and Mrs. Hughes tells that she must move to her house that night. Julia goes to the boarding house of Mrs. Mackie (Doris Lloyd) to pack her things and she meets Dennis that called off his wedding. They schedule a date for the next Friday and she goes to the house. Julia wakes up two days later at a seaside manor in Cornwall. Further, the employees believe that she is Marion Hughes, the wife of Ralph, who is unstable due to a nervous breakdown and delusional. Soon she learns that Ralph has killed Marion and now she is his alibi. Further he is plotting a scheme to kill her as if she had committed suicide. What can Julia do to save her life? "My Name is Julia Ross" is an entertaining film with an original story unlikely to happen. Julia Ross trapped in the mansion usually does not take the correct attitudes. Arthur Penn's "Dead Winter" uses a different storyline that slightly recalls the general idea of "My Name is Julia Ross". My vote is seven. Title (Brazil): "Trágico Álibi" ("Tragic Alibi")

A lovely little B picture with all the usual Joe Lewis touches.... people ripping up pillows and auras of lurking fear. Also, alas, an ending that comes out of nowhere, because, apparently, the auteur has lost interest in the movie, or perhaps because as a B picture it has to fit into a slot.

This was a typical grade B movie in 1940s Hollywood and yet it succeeded way beyond its expectations. Why? It has a wonderful plot and backed up by Nina Foch, George MacReady and Dame May Witty, as a female villain, of all people. When a young lady answers an advertisement for a secretary, she certainly gets more than she bargained for. The only talents her employers are seeking are those which will lead to her demise. Seems that Witty and MacReady want to pass her off as their daughter-in-law and wife, respectively. MacReady killed his real wife and wants to do Foch in as well so that a body can be claimed. The film deals with how Foch tries to get town people to believe her and how she is thwarted in practically everything she does. Why don't people believe her?

This picture starts off pretty well but quickly tails off into the Predictable Potboiler category. Answering an add from a phony employment agency, Nina Foch (Julia Ross) is kidnapped by a family anxious to find an alibi for unstable George Macready, who has evidently killed his wife. So, she becomes the unwilling stand-in. A pretty good start, but things go quickly downhill along with viewer interest. The main complaint is that Julia Ross is an extremely passive and helpless kidnap victim, thereby setting the Women's Lib movement back more than half a century. Showing very little gumption or pugnacity, she is easily held back, caught, restrained and forbidden throughout the film and each morning she is shown awaking in her bed, presumably after a good nights sleep. She does a great deal of grousing and complaining but does not show much forethought to or urgency towards escaping - wouldn't that be your main thought in a similar circumstance? Well, as I say the whole movie was a turn off, especially the hilariously contrived ending. Miss Foch did her best with out much to work with, and the support cast, Dame May Witty in particular, was very competent. It is mercifully short at 65", but it's not time well spent.

"My Name is Julia Ross" is a very, very rare sort of picture. It was created with a very modest budget and cast in order to be the second, or 'B' picture at a double-feature. However, when the film was screened, people liked the film so much that at many showings, it was the premier picture! This is rather unheard of and says a lot about the story from Muriel Bolton and Anthony Gilbert--as well as the direction by Joseph H. Lewis. The film begins with Julia (Nina Foch) looking for work. She's frustrated in her search and is excited when she sees that a new employment agency has opened. They interview her for a job and during the course of the interview, they have some strange questions--does she have any family, does she have a boyfriend and the like. Well, she can answer no to most of the questions but lies about the boyfriend part--telling them she has no one in her life. They are thrilled and offer her a job. Here's the bizarre twist. She suddenly finds herself drugged! And, she wakes up two days later in a prison-like mansion!! And, these strangers begin referring to her by another woman's name! She insists that she IS Julia Ross and demands to be set free but they treat her like she is insane. Her 'mother-in-law' (Dame May Witty) and 'husband' (George Macready) obviously have something awful in mind--but what? And, with all the neighbors having been told that she is a schizophrenic, she cannot convince any of them that she is telling the truth! What's next? See the film for yourself. Th bottom line is that everything works well in this film--the acting, writing, direction, sets. The only negative, and it's a minor one, but back in the 1940s, Hollywood had the Production Code and according to this code, evil had to be punished so viewers know that somehow things WILL work out for good. A similar film that works even better is the 1960s French film "Diaboliquement Vôtre". Likewise a man has been kidnapped and folks work very hard to convince him he's someone else. But because there is no code to restrict the film, the ending is VERY dark and more satisfying. Still, both are exceptional films and I recommend both very highly.

Julia Ross (Nina Foch) agrees to take a position as a secretary with the rich Hughes family to get over her boyfriend leaving her. Almost immediately she is drugged and shipped off to the family's estate in Cornwall. When she awakens they keep telling her she's Marion Hughes, has been mentally ill and keep her locked up...but why? You'll probably guess why but won't mind because this one is fun. Along with "The Narrow Margin" and "Face Behind the Mask" this is one of the best B pictures ever made. (B pictures were low budget pictures made quickly with low budgets and no major stars). It's just as long as it needs to be (only 65 minutes), is well-directed, fast paced and exciting. It only stumbles at the end which I found a bit too implausible to buy. Foch (a good actress) is just OK in the lead but Dame May Witty is great and George Macready is excellent (and frightening) as the villains. Well worth catching. A perfect example of how you can make a great movie on a small budget.

Joseph H. Lewis was one of the finest directors of film noir. This is surely his best. It doesn't have some of the standard features of what we now call film noir. Though American-made, it is set entirely in England. It lacks gangsters. It lacks a femme fatale. It does not lack crime. The title character answers an ad. She is overjoyed that she'll be making some money as a secretary. Instead, she wakes up days later as the pawn in a frightening plot. Only a very strong person could survive such a terrifyingly unsettling ordeal. And Nina Foch gives the sense of a strong woman as Julia. Part of the excitement comes from casting against type: Ms. Foch has an elegant manner. She is no screaming, cowering victim. She is actually a bit icy and patrician, albeit impecunious. This makes her character's plight all the more believable. Surely the single most fascinating element is the casting of Dame May Witty. She was (and is) probably most famous for the charming title character in "The Lady Vanishes." She has a sweet manner and a harmless, slightly dithering manner. But here she is far from a heroine. George Macready is excellent as her extremely troubled son. The whole cast, in fact, is superb. It seems that this famous and brilliant movie was made almost by accident. Undoubtedly the director knew exactly what he was doing. But he did it on a low budget. That is the thrill and charm of film noir, the real film noir: It is small, convincingly lowlife, and, in this case, unforgettable.

Nina Foch delivers a surprisingly strong performance as the title character in this fun little Gothic nail-biter. She accepts a position as secretary to a London society dowager (played imperiously by Dame May Witty) and her creepy son (the effete and bothersome George Macready). Before she knows it, she awakens to find herself in a seaside manor she's never seen before, where Witty and Macready are calling her Marian and trying to convince the servants and the nearby townspeople that she's Macready's mad wife. Of course this pair can only be planning dastardly deeds, and even though we know Julia has to eventually escape her trap, director Joseph Lewis builds real suspense in answering the question of just how she'll manage it. "My Name Is Julia Ross" has nothing stylistically to set it apart from any number of films that came out at the same time period, but I was surprised by how well it held together despite its shoe-string budget and B-movie pedigree. There are quite a few moments that just may have you on the edge of your seat, and I found myself really rooting for Julia as she caught on to the scheme underfoot and began to outsmart her captors. In any other Gothic thriller, the heroine would have swooned, screamed and dithered, waiting for her hero to come and save her. So I can't tell you how refreshing it was to have the heroine in this film use her brain and figure out how to save herself. Well done. Grade: B+