Rent My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)
3.6 of 5 from 64 ratings
1h 5min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- The morning after Julia Ross (Nina Foch) takes a job in London as secretary to wealthy widow Mrs. Williamson Hughes (Dame May Whitty), she wakes up in a windswept Cornish mansion, having been drugged. Mrs. Hughes and her volatile son, Ralph (George Macready), attempt to gaslight Julia into believing she is Ralph's wife, Marion. Her belongings have been destroyed, the windows barred and the locals believe that she is mad. Will Julia be able to escape before she falls prey to the Hughes sinister charade? And what happened to the real Marion Hughes?
- Actors:
- Nina Foch, May Whitty, George Macready, Roland Varno, Anita Sharp-Bolster, Doris Lloyd, Joy Harington, Leyland Hodgson, Olaf Hytten, Marilyn Johnson, Queenie Leonard, Charles McNaughton, Harry Hays Morgan, Leonard Mudie, Ottola Nesmith, Milton Owen, Reginald Sheffield, Evan Thomas
- Directors:
- Joseph H. Lewis
- Producers:
- Wallace MacDonald
- Writers:
- Muriel Roy Bolton, Anthony Gilbert
- Aka:
- The Woman in Red
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama, Thrillers
- Collections:
- Cinema Paradiso's 2024 Centenary Club: Part 1, A Brief History of Film...
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 18/02/2019
- Run Time:
- 65 minutes
- Languages:
- English LPCM Mono
- Subtitles:
- English Hard of Hearing
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Full Screen 1.37:1
- Colour:
- B & W
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Commentary by noir expert Alan K. Rode
- Identity Crisis: Joseph H. Lewis at Columbia - The Nitrate Diva (Nora Fiore) provides the background and an analysis of the film
- Theatrical Trailer
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Reviews (1) of My Name Is Julia Ross
Budget Noir (spoiler). - My Name Is Julia Ross review by Steve
This is a minor studio production which has become a B film legend. Nina Foch takes a job as a secretary to a family of nutcases who abduct her and lock her up on a remote estate in Cornwall (shot in California). They need her to stand in for the woman who was murdered by her psychopathic husband (George Macready).
They parade their prisoner as the dead wife for the benefit of local witnesses, claiming her protests are part of her psychosis. OK, it's a crazy story, though no more than many other golden age mysteries. It succeeds because director Joe Lewis stages it so well. No screen time is wasted, and there's a brilliant noir house-of-shadows.
Foch is plausible in the difficult title role, but the crazy kidnappers make a bigger impression. May Whitty is the eccentric but ruthlessly pragmatic mother of the simple-minded Macready. He is splendidly menacing as the killer who relishes their plans for the stand-in, while also enjoying having her as his wife, for a while.
It is set in England where, in the minds of Hollywood producers, these things happen. Like Gaslight. Critics like to flag up the doomed males of film noir as a key postwar motif, exploited by predatory females. But there are many women like Julia too; lonely, vulnerable and manipulated. This is among the most typical and successful of these woman-in-peril films.
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