Still image from the 1946 film My Reputation.

My Reputation

Directed by Curtis Bernhardt

A widow generates small-town gossip when she falls in love too soon after her husband's death.

1946 1h 34m Romance TV-PG

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CAST
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0

Curtis Bernhardt, Director
15018|34468
Curtis Bernhardt
Director

3

Warner Anderson, Frank Everett
3971|154001
Warner Anderson
Frank Everett

4

Lucile Watson, Mrs. Kimball
202707|101996
Lucile Watson
Mrs. Kimball

5

John Ridgely, Cary Abbott
161657|86740
John Ridgely
Cary Abbott

FULL SYNOPSIS

After her husband Paul dies in 1942, Lake Forest, Illinois society woman Jessica Drummond is left alone to rear her two sons, Kim and Keith. Family friend Frank Everett advises Jess that although Paul set up a trust fund for their sons' education, her income will be reduced. As Frank is leaving, Jess's mother, Mrs. Kimball, arrives. When Jess announces that she doesn't intend to wear mourning, her mother warns her that people of their class must wear it. She, herself, has worn black since the death of Jess's father twenty-five years earlier. Jess has been left on her own for an evening when the boys are invited to a party the night before they are to leave for boarding school. Jess meets her friend, Ginna Abbott, for lunch and frets about living alone. Later they are joined by George Van Ormand, the husband of another friend, who offers to drive Jess home. When he attempts to kiss her, Jess rebuffs him, and hurriedly leaves to spend the night with Ginna. Ginna advises Jess to be herself for a change and invites her to join her and her husband Cary on a ski trip to California. On the slopes Jess meets Major Scott Landis, who quickly becomes attracted to her. Still distraught over Paul's death, however, Jess sends him away and returns home to Lake Forest. With the boys away, Jess becomes lonely, and when Frank drops in, she invites him for dinner. While they are eating, Ginna telephones to tell Jess that Scott is in town and suggests that she and Frank join them at t...


VIDEOS
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Ben Mankiewicz Intro...
Hosted Intro
(Movie Ciip) Who Steals My Pu...
Movie Clip
Women On The Loose
Movie Clip
(Movie Ciip) Just Forget The ...
Movie Clip
Original Trailer
Trailer

ARTICLES
When her beloved husband dies after a long illness, Jessica "Jess" Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck) finds herself struggling with the narrow social role allowed her as a widow among her conservative, wealthy Lake Forest friends. Friends' husbands make passes at her, her girlfriends gossip about other unmarried local women and her days are spent alone in her enormous suburban estate in the Warner Bros. melodrama My Reputation (1946). With her two young sons away at school, Jessica becomes desperately lonely and takes a much needed ski vacation with her fun-loving friends Ginna (Eve Arden) and Cary Abbott (John Ridgely) in Lake Tahoe. There, Jessica meets a handsome, charming Army Major Scott Landis (George Brent) who is reluctant to marry and settle down. Back in Lake Forest, the gossip mill works overtime as friends and Jessica's straight-laced mother (Lucile Watson) view her blossoming romance with Major Landis with suspicion. Jessica's mother wants her to marry their conservative family lawyer Frank Everett (Warner Anderson). But when Major Landis is reassigned to Chicago, Jessica finds herself choosing passion and an uncertain romantic future over the thought of a safe, loveless marriage with Frank. Director Curtis Bernhardt (Million Dollar Baby, 1941, A Stolen Life, 1946) directs this moody melodrama with some of the genre's usual undercurrents of social critique. Despite some soap opera tendencies, My Reputation is frank about how women's lives are often harshly ...

ARCHIVES
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 Lobby Cards from the movie 'My Reputation'
My Reputation
Lobby Cards

NOTES

The film begins with a quotation from the William Shakespeare play Othello: "Who steals my purse steals trash...but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed." Hollywood Reporter news items add the following information about the production: Edith Head was borrowed from Paramount to design Barbara Stanwyck's costumes. The production closed down for a week in December 1943 and for another week in January 1944 due to Stanwyck's illness with the flu. This was George Brent's final film for Warner Bros. Barbara Stanwyck and George Brent reprised their roles in a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast on April 21, 1947.

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