Review of The Two Mrs. Carrolls

I am afraid, I do not buy Bogart as an artist. Worse yet, a British artist. He is horribly miscast in this film, yet he gives a pretty good performance. Barbara Stanwyck, of course, is tailor-made to play the sickly woman with a husband who wants to kill her (see Sorry, Wrong Number). Little Miss Carter is excellent as the precocious young daughter (unfortunately, she will most likely inherit nutcase genes). Alexis Smith, always a B actress or secondary role actress, gives a very good performance as well. The storyline and acting are superb. But the casting of Bogart is lethal. The obvious casting should have been either George Sanders or Claude Rains, either of which have excellent English accents and were far more likely to be artists than Bogart (Sanders in The Moon and Sixpence and Rains in The Phantom of the Opera (as a composer). Bogart never did any of these types of roles. The film holds up on its own, however it could have been much better. I agree with some of the critics, who, at the time, panned the film, but only in one or two areas. Bogart as a Brit and Bogart as an artist. The rest is fine.