Try seeing THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE or TRUE GRIT. I hear Wayne's final film, THE SHOOTIST, is also good, but I haven't seen it.
253. The Bigamist [B-]
Ida Lupino is a filmmaker and actress who I had never heard of before seeing this film, which I saw in class (and the 35mm print was in pretty good shape, which was nice), but looking at IMDB she had a long career as a director and an actress, which would be unusual now and is doubly unusual in the even more male-dominated directing field of the 40s and 50s. It features yet another appearance of Ed Gwenn (in addition to a pair of meta-references--once, a character says he looks like Santa, and in another scene, a tour guide points out the house of Ed Gwenn!) and a fine cast (including Lupino).
The genre (social melodrama) isn't one that usually grabs my attention, but I have nothing bad to say about the film (which revolves around a man who secretly maintains two marriages, and then, shockingly, gets in a lot of trouble when somebody finds out). It's well shot (the black and white photography approaches the film noir style, though not quite). I doubt anyone here is a fan of social melodramas of the period, but in that rare case, it's worth the download (it's available for free online).