MY FAVORITE WIFE, one of 1940’s bright farces, reteamed Cary Grant with Irene Dunne, three years after The Awful Truth. That 1937 winner was directed by Leo McCarey, who cooked up the story for this one, intending to direct. A severe auto accident prevented that, so while McCarey served as producer, Garson Kanin took on director duty. The framework was inspired by Tennyson’s 1864 poem “Enoch Arden”, the screenplay done by the husband & wife team Samuel & Bella Spewack. Made for $921,000, its $4,100,000 gross placed 30th for the year, one stocked with good comedies, including two classics with Cary, The Philadelphia Story and His Girl Friday. 88 enjoyable minutes.*

On his honeymoon in Yosemite, ‘Nick Arden’ (Grant) gets a surprise that brings happiness, confusion, jealousy and a choice. Seven years before his wife ‘Ellen’ (Dunne) was lost at sea in a shipwreck. Ellen having been declared legally dead, Nick has a new bride in ‘Bianca’ (Lee Patrick), who will become mother to the two children he and Ellen had, babies at the time she went missing. But Ellen has been rescued, is alive and ready to pick up where they left off. Caught between Ellen and Bianca, Nick gets another surprise when he meets ‘Stephen Burkett’ (Randolph Scott), who shared a deserted island with Ellen for those seven long years. Just the two of them. And,as fate would have it, Stephen, who Ellen nicknamed ‘Adam’ (to her ‘Eve’) is handsome, athletic and charming. What to do? Who with? How?

Fast-paced but smooth rather than frenetic, it’s funny all the way, the 88-minute running time just enough to keep the plot hook going and not wear it out. Patrick has to handle the unenviable role of accidental interloper (understandably upset with the curious behavior of her husband on their honeymoon) while the interplay between the three stars sparkles. Dunne lights up any scene she’s in, Grant of course couldn’t be bested as a farceur, and Scott has fun playing up his fitness. The two kids, Scotty Beckett and Mary Lou Harrington, are thankfully adept and amusing, the ever-exasperated Donald MacBride shows up as the front desk clerk in Yosemite and Granville Bates gets some good deadpan laughs as the judge who has to sort out the quadrangle.  Topped by a delightful finale.

The Story, Art Direction and Music Score pulled Oscar nominations. With Ann Shoemaker, Chester Clute, Pedro de Cordoba, Murray Alper and Howard McMahon.

Donald MacBride, perturbed as usual

* The title takes on a whole new meaning when you factor in the gossiped-to-ribbons personal relationship between Grant and Scott. They met eight years earlier on Hot Saturday (make what you must with that), which had Grant’s first lead role, a pre-Code dramedy where they also played two guys pursuing the same gal, played by Nancy Carroll. The movie only lasted  71 minutes but Cary and Randy hit it off, and were ‘house-mates’ on & off from then until 1944. Does it matter? No. Should it? No.

Granville Bates as the judge

My Favorite Wife arrived several months after the similarly themed Too Many Husbands with Jean Arthur, Fred MacMurray and Melvyn Douglas, and was remade in 1963 as Move Over, Darling, with Doris Day and James Garner. It was a big hit that time around, #8 for the year, though there were the expected remake carps owing to fondness for the original and it had to carry the burden of being the rescue effort of the intended remake, begun as Something’s Got To Give, with Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin, abandoned after Monroe’s death.