“Decent women don’t wreck us.”

In this 1936 film, Robert Taylor stars as Chris Claybourne (Robert Taylor), the black sheep of a highly respectable, New York based family. His brother Tom (John Eldredge) is a successful physician, and his father (Samuel S. Hinds) is a researcher. Chris, a ne’er-do-well with a gambling habit, is a doctor too, and he’s about to ship out to the jungle to conduct research on a mysterious tick-borne disease. Chris doesn’t take this too seriously, but then life is just one big joke as far as he’s concerned. He’s down to just a few days before he leaves when he loses $5,000 in a New York Casino owned by Fish-Eye (Joseph Calleia). Chris blithely writes a bad check to Fish-Eye expecting that he’ll be able to make it “good” some time in the future.

That night in the casino Chris meets mannequin, Rita Wilson (Barbara Stanwcyk). Instant chemistry, combined with his imminent departure lead to a devil-may-care romance for Chris’s last few days in New York, and the relationship seems to suit both Chris and Rita. It’s all just a load of laughs until it comes to the eve of Chris’s departure, and then the couple realize they’re in love….

His Brother’s Wife examines notions of duty vs. personal desire. Chris and Rita are similar; in the beginning of the film, neither one of them tends to take life too seriously, and they both have a gambling habit. But when their casual relationship turns serious, they enter into a deadly game involving dangerous stakes of revenge and self-destructive one-up-man-ship. This is a great role for Stanwyck. In His Brother’s Wife, she talks tough, and when she has no power and no control, she maneuvers the situation until she’s completely in control. This film is sheer delight for fans of the marvelous Barbara Stanwyck.