Nina Foch insists that "My Name is Julia Ross" in this 1945 film noir also starring Dame May Witty and George Macready. It's short, and because it is, the film suffers. It could have stood to have been a good fifteen minutes to a half hour longer.
When I was growing up, Foch was a fixture on television, playing a neurotic woman, the wife with the cheating husband, the nervous wreck. She became one of the great acting teachers in Los Angeles. Here, she's a pretty young ingenue playing the title role. Julia answers an ad for a secretary and is hired immediately by Mrs. Hughes and her son Ralph. Little does she know - though we learn immediately - that the employment agent is a front, set up to get just the right woman for this assignment, a woman with no family and no boyfriend.
It's a live-in situation; once Julia gets to the house, she's drugged, and when she wakes up, she's told she's Mrs. Hughes and not allowed to leave.
The acting is very good. Low budget but still entertaining - some things, particularly at the end, happen way too quickly, which is why I said the movie is too short. Nevertheless, I recommend it.

In A Woman Under the Influence Mabel goes crazy, but I can see why she does go crazy. If I lived the kind of life she lived with the family she has I would go crazy too. Everyone in her family is off their rocker and not completely with it. She is constantly surrounded by people yelling at her and telling her what is best for herself and people that aren't the sharpest knifes in the drawer.
To start with the one person closest to her in her life, her husband, Nick, is a little off his rocker. He is always yelling at her when he is home telling her how to live her life and to stop acting like an imbecile. The rest of the time he is working long hours at his job and he isn't there to support her when she needs support. The one person in her life that should always be there for her is never there and if he is, he is just making her feel worse. She relies on him for support and always goes to him first when she feels she is acting wrong and he does nothing to support her. When she comes home from the hospital all he does is tell her how to act, instead of comforting her, he just yells at her and tells her what to do.
The other major people in her life are her parents. Her parents do nothing in her life for her. Mabel basically runs their lives because they are afraid to stand up to her and stand up for her. In the end she even asks her father to stand up for her and he doesn't understand, and when he does get it he still does nothing. They do nothing to help Mabel recover or to keep her from going crazy because they do nothing for her period. The only person that tries to do something for her is Nick's mom. Nick's mom is adamant about having Mabel committed. She doesn't want to have Nick deal with it so she has the doctor commit her. It seems as though everyone is against Mabel and they feel that having her committed is a good idea because then they won't have to deal with it anymore. They all want to live their own lives and do nothing for Mabel except for yell at her and make her feel like she is doing something wrong when she really isn't. That is why she went crazy, and why she had to be committed, it was her family's entire fault.