Perfect Strangers (1950 film)


Perfect Strangers is a 1950 American comedy-drama film directed by Bretaigne Windust. The screenplay for the Warner Bros. release by Edith Sommer was based on an adaptation of the 1939 Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur play Ladies and Gentlemen by George Oppenheimer. This 1939 play was based on an earlier Hungarian play, Twelve in a Box written by.

Plot

Terry Scott, who is separated from her husband, and unhappily married David Campbell, the father of two children, meet when they are selected to serve on the jury of the Los Angeles trial of Ernest Craig. The defendant is charged with murdering his wife when she refused to grant him a divorce. While sequestered during the lengthy proceedings, Terry and David get to know each other and fall in love. Some dramatic tension is added to the plot by juror Isobel Bradford, a snobby socialite who tries to sway the panel to vote for the death penalty.

Cast

Unbilled
In his review in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther described the film as "modest entertainment" and "an obviously hacked out affair which turns on a bit of terminal plotting that is flatly mechanical and contrived". According to Crowther, "the limits of plausibility are unmistakably stretched"; "Miss Rogers and Mr. Morgan are pretty dreary throughout the film. However, their fellow jurors are a remarkably entertaining lot, picturesque in theatrical fashion, and the minor salvation of the show."