A dead man walks so his rival can steal his wife—WWI melodrama at its wildest.
Captain Bob Hayworth, his brother Lieutenant Gilroy Hayworth and Captain Derek Marbury are in a World-War 1 trench on the front-lines in France. Bob Hayworth resents Marbury greatly as the latter had married the girl, Lucy Neville, Marbury was courting in pre-war London. Ordered to go on a night patrol, the cowardly Gilroy committed suicide rather than face his fear. Bob and Derek arrange it to appear that Bob had been killed by a shell-burst, and Derek, with his face camouflaged, takes the patrol posing as Gilroy. While on patrol, Derek is hit by a shell-burst and found by the German Red Cross, who turn him over to a family of French peasants.
Acting
Ralph Forbes commits to playing two men playing each other.
Production
Depression-era trench sets that somehow still slap.
Writing
Pre-Code audacity: suicide, stolen identity, horny grief.
Director
Roy Pomeroy
Ralph Forbes
Derek Marbury
Gwenllian Gill
Lucy Neville
Monroe Owsley
Bob Hayworth
Reginald Sharland
Captain Peabody
Douglas Walton
Gilroy Hayworth
Alex Courtney
Alan Neville
David Holt
Rickey Marbury
Billy Bevan
Meadows
Clyde Cook
Hawkins
Charles Coleman
Colonel
Colin Campbell
Orderly
Mary Forbes
Lady Heatherly
Olaf Hytten
Adjutant
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Director Roy Pomeroy won a special Oscar for engineering on Wings (1927) before pivoting to this chaotic melodrama.
This 1934 release captures the last gasp of pre-Code permissiveness before strict enforcement began that July—note how casually it treats suicide and adulterous obsession.
US
