I never expected to see Ginger Rogers so enamored with pot, yet 1954’s Beautiful Stranger has her spending a great deal of time throwing clay pots, firing them in a kiln and glazing them.  Wait, what did you think I was talking about?

I always like scenes in movies where characters discover joy in some sort of new artistic endeavor.  Ginger Rogers finds more happiness in working with clay than in the accoutrements of wealth provided by sugar daddy Stanley Baker.

She simply thinks he is a titan of industry.  She also thinks his wife (Margaret Rawlings) wants a divorce.  I think the average viewer is astute enough they will immediately realize she is wrong on both counts.

Rogers swoons when Baker unveils a model of the yacht he has had built for her.  He has her setup in a luxurious house on the French Rivieria.  She wears many large pieces of jewelry he has bought her.  Rogers even has the letters “JV” embroidered on many clothing items.  I was hoping that meant she was in junior varsity.  Obviously, those are her initials, but I was surprised the “J” stands for Johnny.

I suspect Baker’s character was involved in a few different illegal activities, but the only one we see here is the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit gold sovereigns.  His right-hand man in the operation is Eddie Byrne, a brutal thug who manages the associates who sell these.  One of those is Herbert Lom, who has neither the money nor the sovereigns when Byrne comes to collect.  He will pay up eventually, with an incredible ostentatious bracelet which Baker recognizes as having gifted Rogers earlier.

This puts into motion an additional layer of intrigue, as Baker believes Rogers is cheating on him with Lom.  Actually, she is two-timing him with Jacques Bergerac, the artist who taught her the joy of pot.  Really, why does that keep sounding so odd?

The meet-cute between those two is unexpected and unique.  Rogers find her car stuck on the precipice of a cliff when she had been recklessly driving.  She walks up to the nearest house and the only light we see from within suddenly goes dark.  She obviously reconsiders for a split second before entering a pitch black room…which suddenly bursts into light and noise, as a great many people within think she is the guest of honor at a surprise birthday party.

Lom’s connection to Rogers is he used to be her manager when she was a showgirl.  Another client is the unseen “Susan”, his wife who has an unspecified ailment requiring expensive care at a sanatorium.  When we first see Lom, he intercepts Rogers at a casino when she’s having a winning streak.  He begs for some money for Susan’s care.  She gives him enough money for several months.  As soon as she is out of sight, he is handing it over the cashier in exchange for chips.  As if that isn’t cold enough, she had also surreptitiously slipped him a bill when he conveniently couldn’t pay for their drinks at the bar.

The bracelet he steals from Rogers to pay his debt to Baker was kept in a safe in her house.  Lom keeps spying on her in the house, though his interests seem to be entirely financial.  Still, there’s an interesting moment when he sees Baker slap her and Lom touches his own cheek, perhaps in empathy.  Also, how Lom had discovered the safe is because he had straightened the painting which covers it.  I was surprised he did that, as I hopefully wouldn’t think to straighten a picture if I ever broke into a place.

Beautiful Stranger is satisfying melodrama with just enough moments to make it above average.  I especially liked a scene where Baker confronts Rogers about her infidelity and each happens to be talking about a different man without either realizing the mistake.  I also liked the interaction between her and Bergerac, her real-life husband at the time.  Once again, I liked the moments of her being introduced to art, with him telling her, “It is exciting to make something.  To put a bit of yourself into it.”  To think that was enough to start her pot addiction.

Dir: David Miller

Starring Ginger Rogers, Stanley Baker, Herbert Lom, Jacques Bergerac

Watched on Network UK (region B) blu-ray