In 1940, RKO brought out My Favorite Wife with one of their big stars, Irene Dunne, and two great male leads, Gary Grant and Randolph Scott. It's about a man (Grant), an apparent widower, who marries a woman because he believes his first wife (Dunne) died while on an expedition to the Pacific some seven years before. In fact, Dunne had spent those seven years on an island with another man (Scott), but claims that she was not unfaithful to Grant with Randolph. Grant spends most of the movie trying not very hard at all to explain the situation to his new wife, with whom we are to imagine that he has not had conjugal relations. There are some funny scenes, but it stretches things out far too long, and has other weaknesses.
Two Many Husbands, released by rival studio Columbia in that same year, is centered around one of their big female stars, Jean Arthur, who marries a man (Melvyn Douglas), because she believes, after only six months, that her first husband (Fred MacMurray), was lost in Africa. Complications ensure, more or less, as Arthur tries - but not very hard - to choose which man she wants to be married to.
MFW has a weak script, but the one for this movie is a lot weaker still. As is the direction by Wesley Ruggles.
There's nothing particularly wrong about this movie, but it doesn't have much pep, and the end is a real copout. Paramount's Design for Living (1934), based on a play by Noel Coward with Miriam Hopkins, Gary Cooper, and Frederick March, dealt with a similar situation much better.
In the end, I prefer Irene Dunne to Jean Arthur and Cary Grant to Fred MacMurray, so TMH seemed that much weaker to me.
On another hand, I found it interesting how both TMH and MFW flirted with homosexual innuendos in the depiction of the two men's plight, even though the Hayes Code was in force by then.
All six actors made much better movies, and had much better scripts, elsewhere.
Two Many Husbands, released by rival studio Columbia in that same year, is centered around one of their big female stars, Jean Arthur, who marries a man (Melvyn Douglas), because she believes, after only six months, that her first husband (Fred MacMurray), was lost in Africa. Complications ensure, more or less, as Arthur tries - but not very hard - to choose which man she wants to be married to.
MFW has a weak script, but the one for this movie is a lot weaker still. As is the direction by Wesley Ruggles.
There's nothing particularly wrong about this movie, but it doesn't have much pep, and the end is a real copout. Paramount's Design for Living (1934), based on a play by Noel Coward with Miriam Hopkins, Gary Cooper, and Frederick March, dealt with a similar situation much better.
In the end, I prefer Irene Dunne to Jean Arthur and Cary Grant to Fred MacMurray, so TMH seemed that much weaker to me.
On another hand, I found it interesting how both TMH and MFW flirted with homosexual innuendos in the depiction of the two men's plight, even though the Hayes Code was in force by then.
All six actors made much better movies, and had much better scripts, elsewhere.