 Cotten then reunited with Hitchcock and Ingrid Bergman in "Under Capricorn" (1949) as an Australian landowner with a shady past; it was a box office disappointment.So too was "Beyond the Forest" (1949) with Bette Davis at Warner Bros.

Cotten co-starred with Joan Fontaine in "September Affair" (1950) for Hal Wallis.Selznick loaned him to 20th Century Fox for the dark Civil War Western "Two Flags West" (1950), then to RKO for "Walk Softly, Stranger" (1950, shot in 1948) which reunited him with Alida Valli from "The Third Man".