My Name Is Julia Ross 1945

In London, Julia Ross [Nina Foch] goes to a new employment agency, desperate for work. When Mrs. Sparkes [Anita Sharp-Bolster] learns that she has no close relatives, she arranges for Julia to take a live-in position as a personal secretary to a wealthy widow, Mrs. Hughes [May Whitty]. Mrs. Hughes approves and insists that Julia move that very night into her house. Two days later, Julia awakens to find herself a prisoner at an isolated seaside estate in Cornwall.

All her possessions have vanished, and she is told she is really Marion, the wife of Ralph Hughes [George Macready]. The staff have been told that she has suffered a nervous breakdown; as a result, they ignore her protests, and her attempts to escape are foiled.

Julia writes a letter to Dennis Bruce [Roland Varno], her only close friend and admirer, and cleverly leaves it where it can be found. The Hugheses substitute a blank sheet of paper and allow her to post it, unaware that Julia has anticipated them and written a second letter. That night, Julia discovers a secret passage to her room and overhears Ralph Hughes confess to his mother that he murdered his wife in a fit of rage and disposed of her body in the sea. When a “doctor” arrives in response to a fake poisoning attempt, she blurts out her plan to him, only to discover that he (with Mrs. Sparkes) is in on the scheme. Dr. Keller [Evan Thomas] is dispatched to London to intercept the letter. When the real doctor shows up, Julia thinks he’s also a fake and refuses to see him. The doctor recommends she be taken to a hospital immediately, but Mrs. Hughes persuades him to come back in the morning.

The captors must make it look like she has committed suicide before the doctor can take her away.

Julia throws her gown out the window, making it look like she has thrown herself to her death, then hides in the secret passage. When the doctor drives up, Mrs. Hughes delays him so that Ralph Hughes can reach the body first. Ralph Hughes, and is stopped by Dennis and a policeman, who had been alerted by the letter. (The fake doctor had been apprehended in London when he tried to intercept the letter.) When Ralph tries to flee, he is shot down. Later, Julia and Dennis drive away and talk about getting married.