Please don't spend money on this.

Absolutely the worst movie.

A Major Disappointment

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Anytime a married man with children and a professional no less goes astray, it is for another woman. Even if it was for drugs, gambling or alcohol it is still considered the other woman. The pull and the push of temptation is no respecter of persons and this movie delivers that message well enough. There is dialog that comes later on the movie from both parties involved in this potential no win situation that mirrors human nature so well and gets rather specific using a type of regret language. Parts were acted out well and believable so that in the end, we get closure. Listen carefully to the agreement made between the two parties in the end. It has a bitter sweetness and a touch of fate tied to it. For those that are not satisfied with their lives and believe the carrot out there is the way to go, this movie will teach you well to be careful what you ask for because you just might get it. Don't be thrown by the slow start. It is necessary to set up the whole movie. After a few minutes, the dots will appear and just a few moments later you will be connecting them with great interest. Notice the separate beds in the bedroom as well as the separate Hotel rooms and draw your own conclusions about life in the forties. Have snack and tasty drink with this one

This B movie melodrama of love and the tragedy of mistaken identity is a quagmire of improbable twists and turns. Kent Smith, an actor with no screen charisma, plays a doctor and solid family man who falls for nightclub singer Ann Sheridan. There is no heat in their coupling; he courts his new love like a dispassionate doctor making a routine house call on a patient. After some initial snappish, flirtatious interchange with the doctor, Sheridan presents her character as refined and lady-like, not a nightclub flame that sets men afire with self-destructive desire. And self-destruction is what lies in wait for the doctor. Not an example of the noir genre, this is a tepid movie, grim and dour.

This story started out very promisingly, deftly depicting the psychopathic side of a clean-cut family man who falls for a showgirl.It went seriously downhill when the straight-laced doctor impulsively acts on a cockamamie scheme to fake his own death and run away with his hottie.The movie then goes from dumb to dumber when the physician, who has become an unshaven alcoholic, allows himself to be convicted of his own murder without a fight -- reasoning that being put away for life will be easier for everyone involved. Sorry, but the self-sacrificing martyr role doesn't jibe with the narcissist eager to throw everything away for sex.But the movie was certainly compelling as long as courtly Dr. Talbot was pursuing the sultry Nora. How cool it was when he told her he was working on a paper about the heart. "A paper?" she shot back. "I could write a book about that." Dunno about anyone else but I kept mistrusting this lady, though she proved far more ethical than the doctor. It was more a movie about him than her, so the movie's title should have reflected that. But I suppose Ann Sheridan's bigger name in movies accounts for her billing.

The rap on Kent Smith was that he was duller than dried cement. Probably that's why he was cast here as the emotionally repressed doctor. The doc is so colorless and unemotional in the early scenes, we see why wife Lucy (DeCamp) has withdrawn into her own bubble. Then too, his household appears to run on the proverbial dime, with only daughter Bunny (Hendrix) showing any real spark. Of course, all of this is necessary background to his eventual transformation once he meets sexpot Prentiss (Sheridan). From dutiful husband to reluctant philanderer to obsessed lover and finally to repentant criminal, Smith brings off the stages in low-key effective fashion, and I expect more than a few married spouses left the theater unsettled by what they had seen lurking under the doctor's calm exterior.All in all, it's a grim little film, depicting a civilized man's descent into emotional darkness. I'm not sure why it's titled after Prentiss since the doctor is for all intents and purposes the main character. But Sheridan does get to show a lot of leg and mature appeal, although her character seems not very plausible once the doc becomes a burden. Someone called the movie a "woman's noir", and with its soap-operish overtones, the description seems to fit. Then too, noirish elements surface in those dark entrapment scenes, especially in the hotel room, (but why do they have separate rooms after they've run away together?). And especially noirish is heart patient Walter's existential lament amidst the big city-- if he dies, he wonders, who would know or care. The scene passes quickly, but is chillingly revealing.The movie's underrated, probably because of Smith and the unrelentingly grim atmosphere. I just wish someone had scrubbed Alda's smarmy nightclub owner. He's totally unbelievable and compromises what could have been a memorably atmospheric very last shot. Nonetheless, it's an engrossing little morality tale, as long as you're not feeling too depressed.