(This blog post about Two of a Kind contains spoilers.)
The narrative starts with Brandy Kirby at the State Reformatory for Boys. She is meeting with Father Lanahan about one of the reformatory’s former tenants, an orphan named Michael Farrell. Father Lanahan remembers Michael well because he was a bit of troublemaker and well-liked. Brandy wants to find him, and Father Lanahan tells her that Michael left the reformatory the same day that Coney’s Colossal Carnival left town. When Father Lanahan got an anonymous postcard from the carnival, he was almost positive he knew what happened to Michael Farrell.
Brandy’s next stop is the carnival, where she meets Minnie Mitt. Minnie tells Brandy that Michael did indeed join the carnival and helped her with her psychic act. He got into some trouble with the law, however, so he joined the navy. Brandy goes to Washington, D.C., and learns that Michael served with distinction in the military, but his off-duty record was spotty at best. He returned to Los Angeles when he was discharged. Brandy started looking for Michael in Los Angeles and she now returns to Los Angeles.
How did Brandy learn of Michael in the first place? He isn’t all that hard to find once she decides to look for him in particular. People remember him—and fondly it seems, in spite of his faults. But it’s never very clear why Michael was chosen in the first place. Brandy is not looking for Michael because she is related to him or because she cares about him at all. She needs a stand-in for a fraud scheme, and Michael Farrell is the best candidate. Millions of dollars are at stake, which explains her persistence.
Brandy is having an affair with Vincent Mailer, a lawyer for the McIntyres, a rich couple who lost their son years ago. Brandy and Vincent are looking for someone to impersonate the son. When Brandy finds Michael, she offers him a deal, and she is blunt about it:
• Michael: “All right, let’s see how deep the water is. What do you need me for?”
• Brandy: “I don’t need you, but maybe I can use you.”
But before Brandy tells him any details, she offers him a thick wad of cash and asks him to go along with the initial steps of the plan. Brandy convinces Michael to let her shut her car door on the pinkie finger of his left hand so that he can match the son’s missing pinkie finger down to the first joint. Michael complies: He lets Brandy slam her car door on his finger to make it look like an accident. Then he calmly heads to the emergency room.
Brandy shows up after Michael is discharged from the hospital. She has rented a beach house that comes well stocked with provisions, including Todd, who was with Brandy on the night she and Michael met. Michael can recuperate at the beach house with Todd for company, and the two of them begin to bond.
The tone of the film begins to lighten a bit at this point. For example, Michael’s recuperation includes a scene showing Todd giving Michael a manicure and buffing the end of his left pinkie so that it looks like he injured it years ago instead of days ago. My description makes the scene sound gruesome, but Edmund O’Brien can play it for laughs and it works.
It is several weeks before Michael learns about Vincent Mailer, and he learns about him when Brandy introduces him in person at the beach house. Vincent tells him more details of the story: A wealthy Pasadena couple lost their son many years ago, when the boy was three. His mother fainted on a street in Chicago, and when she came to, the boy was gone. Vincent Mailer is the McIntyres’ attorney. He’s the one who has been looking for the McIntyre boy and the one who came up with the scheme to swindle the McIntyres. If Vincent and Brandy can convince someone to impersonate the son, the son will be able to inherit the McIntyres’ fortune, which he will split with Brandy and Vincent. And maybe Todd? It’s unclear whether the split will be four ways or if Todd is more of a contract worker.
Michael will meet the McIntyres’ niece Kathy first. Brandy will do the introductions because she knows Kathy socially. She and Michael show up at the McIntyre home unannounced, but Kathy is too busy to go out. Later, Michael shows up alone to meet Kathy, but she is still too busy. Michael tries again, this time pretending to be a burglar. He assumes that Kathy will be a bit frightened by his intrusion, but she sees it as a big adventure. Kathy offers some additional comic relief with her decision to devote herself to reforming Michael instead of giving him up to the police.
Michael returns to the beach house very late after spending time with Kathy McIntyre. Vincent, Todd, and Brandy are unhappy that he disappeared without telling them what he was doing or where he was going. But his explanations clear the air because he is advancing the plan as outlined by Vincent and Brandy. Something unexpected has developed, however: Brandy is jealous of Kathy, and Vincent is jealous of Michael.
Kathy brings Michael to meet her uncle, Will McIntyre, after she learns of Michael’s missing fingertip. McIntyre will put investigators on the case, which is fine with Michael. He tells McIntyre the truth about his past. Michael moves into the McIntyre house and will live with them until the investigation is complete. Vincent conducts an investigation for Will McIntyre and lays out all the evidence against Michael Farrell. But Michael has told Mr. McIntyre the whole story already, and the McIntyres are happy to accept him.
The fraud scheme is going as planned, but once again Brandy, Vincent, and Michael have to contend with an unexpected development. The McIntyres believe that Michael is their son, but Mr. McIntyre won’t put him in the will. Vincent then decides that McIntyre has to be killed before his estate can be disbursed to the charities mentioned in his will. Todd will do the job, and he will make it look like an accident. Brandy and Michael are opposed to Vincent’s new plan. They’re grifters, not murderers. And Michael has grown to like Mr. McIntyre.
The film seems to be returning to its noir beginnings. The romantic entanglements and the little bits of humor are overshadowed now by greed and betrayal. Vincent wants the money, and Michael and Brandy know too much to abandon the plan now. Two of a Kind is a short film, but even at this point, it still has some surprises. Some of the most surprising twists occur in the last fifteen minutes or so.
I enjoy films and books that can surprise me, and Two of a Kind is full of surprises. I enjoyed all the plot twists, and it was a lot of fun to see Lizabeth Scott and Edmund O’Brien working together on such an outlandish caper, as Michael Farrell calls it. By the end of the film, I almost forgot that I was watching a film noir, which is hard to believe considering the lengths to which both Brandy and Michael are willing to go to swindle an elderly couple.
Michael and especially Brandy are let off the hook too easily by the film’s end. Their respective characters start out tarnished, and the narrative is gritty at first, but the film ends more like a romance. One of the characters tells Brandy that she shouldn’t have gotten mixed up with Vincent Mailer in the first place. Is it because she is the lone woman involved in the scheme? But she was more than willing to go along with his plot to steal millions from the McIntyres. And Michael is asked to join another con of sorts when Mr. McIntyre asks him one more favor. It’s true that this one is offered with benevolent intentions, but technically it’s still a con. Brandy’s and Michael’s absolution is part of the film’s somewhat quick wrap-up, and yet it’s oddly satisfying. It allows the characters to stay true to themselves.
In my last blog post about Between Midnight and Dawn, I noted that Edmond O’Brien gets the girl. And he does in Two of a Kind, too. That’s what I love about film noir: You can never really be sure what’s going to happen until it’s over. Sort of like baseball according to Yogi Berra. You know what I mean. (“It ain’t over till it’s over.”)
June 29, 1951 (New York City), July 1951 (general/wide) release dates • Directed by Henry Levin • Screenplay by Lawrence Kimble, James Gunn • Based on the story by James Edward Grant • Music by George Dunning • Edited by Charles Nelson • Cinematography by Burnett Guffey
Edmond O’Brien as Michael (aka Lefty) Farrell • Lizabeth Scott as Brandy Kirby • Terry Moore as Kathy McIntyre • Alexander Knox as Vincent Mailer • Griff Barnett as William McIntyre • Robert Anderson as Todd • Virginia Brissac as Maida McIntyre • Claire Carleton as Minnie Mitt • J. M. Kerrigan as Father Lanahan • Louis Jean Heydt as the navy chief petty officer • Emory Parnell as the deputy officer
Distributed by Columbia Pictures • Produced by Columbia Pictures
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