The Bigamist

The Bigamist (1953) is an American drama directed by Ida Lupino, available to watch online on iFILM. Harry Graham keeps two lives running at once: a wife in San Francisco and a second family in Los Angeles.

Harry and his wife Eve, who is also his business partner, are trying to adopt. The agency sends the meticulous Mr. Jordan to vet them, and he turns up a Los Angeles address where Harry has another wife, Phyllis, and a baby son. Cornered, Harry lays it all out himself. The film never appoints a villain; it just watches three people and refuses to pass sentence.

Ida Lupino was the only woman directing in 1950s Hollywood, and here she became the first to direct herself on screen, playing Phyllis. Joan Fontaine takes Eve, Edmund Gwenn the dogged investigator. A small, humane melodrama that treats bigamy not as scandal but as the dead end of a weak man. Stream The Bigamist (1953) online on iFILM.