Warner Bros.
Starring: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains
Directed by: Irving Rapper

Synopsis: Musician Christine Radcliffe (Bette Davis) is ecstatic to find her former lover, celloist Karel Novak (Paul Henreid) safe and living in New York, having believed he was killed in a concentration camp during World War II.  She marries him without revealing that her American benefactor and teacher, the eclectic composer Alexander Hollenius (Claude Rains), was also her lover.  Fueled by jealousy, Hollenius seems determined to destroy the newlyweds, but Christine is afraid it will do more than just harm their relationship but will destroy Karel’s fragile mind, and she is determined to protect him at any cost.

Kitty Cameo: Hollenius lives in an extravagant home and owns a parrot and a Siamese cat.  The Siamese is seen in several scenes with him, sitting on a pillow by the piano and then on the composer’s bed.

Claude Rains holds the cat as he speaks with Paul Henreid in one scene, but the cat doesn’t seem particularly comfortable being in the movie.  In fact, it seems to disappear halfway through each of its scenes.

In the first instance, Claude Rains picks up both the cat and the pillow and sets them down on a couch behind him, only the cat is not there when the couch is seen moments later (neither is the pillow!)  And when Bette Davis confronts Claude Rains in his bedroom the cat is sitting on a pillow on the bed.  At one point Bette hurls her fur coat at Claude.  We don’t see how this sudden action affects the cat, who is just offscreen, but the cat is no longer sitting on the pillow during the rest of the scene (or seen at all for the rest of the movie.)

Final Mewsings: And now presenting . . . the case of the disappearing cat.

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