BEFORE: Day 13 of the (M)Archie Madness tournament, and I'm all the way back to 1941. But I'm going all the way back to 1933 before I turn around and come back, to properly position myself for April Fool's Day. I still haven't figured out a proper order after mid-April, the best I can figure is that I'll separate out the Halloween films and the Christmas films, then try to organize what's left.
THE PLOT: Missing for seven years and presumed dead, a woman returns home on the day of her husband's second marriage.
AFTER: There's no more obvious portrayal of a love triangle, or one that turns into a love rectangle. If this film feels familiar, perhaps (like me) you've seen the 1963 remake titled "Move Over, Darling" starring James Garner and Doris Day. And it's probably also been recycled and reworked a few hundred times since. A wife disappears from an oceanography expedition, and survives on a deserted island (not "desert", as some people mistakenly say, because you simply can't survive in a desert), returning on the exact day that her husband has her declared legally dead in order to remarry.
There's nothing about this that doesn't feel contrived - it's nothing but contrivances. Let's start with the fact that the wife was gone for seven years, and turns up exactly on her husband's wedding day. Not that she knew that, of course, so let's say there's a 1 in 2,555 chance of that happening - unlikely odds to be sure.
But together they form a snapshot of exactly what was and wasn't morally acceptable in 1940, at least according to the Production Code. Since his first wife is still alive, sleeping with his new wife would be bigamous and not allowed - so the storyline demands that she go and interrupt the honeymoon before that happens. And then once he sees his first wife, Grant's character hems and haws and can't find the right way to tell his second wife the news - because as soon as he does, the plot's over.
As a result, a conversation that should take 30 seconds - "Hey, my first wife is alive!" instead takes about 30 minutes. So it's delay, delay, delay until someone can find the "perfect time" to have that talk.
(Hey, if Brad and Janet could have made a quick phone call, then the whole plot of "Rocky Horror Picture Show" wouldn't have happened.) Really, this is pretty standard for a bedroom farce - what's unusual is that no one is having sex, because that wouldn't be proper.
In the same manner, once it's revealed that the wife wasn't alone on that island, and that there was a man with her living out a sort of "Adam & Eve" fantasy, she of course denies that anything untoward happened (even though the audience probably assumes it did). Because even if she never expected to see her husband again, we still have to believe that she remained faithful if we want to respect her. (Come on, you know they totally did it...)
I don't know how some people end up remarrying people they split up with previously. Being shipwrecked and marooned is a special case, of course. A modern version of this storyline could involve a disaster like that Malaysian airplane, all of those people are presumed dead, right? But if, say, the plane was hijacked and taken somewhere, conceivably the passengers could be held hostage - they could turn up years later, it's possible.
But this film presumes that people together will love each other, and people separated by disaster eventually have to move on. The simple solution is to just put them back together, but I'm not so sure it would be that clear-cut. How do you overlook your spouse taking another lover in your absence? No problem here, the judge fixes everything - this has been quite a week for appearances by our judicial system.
Another film partially set in a hotel - this is turning into a running theme for the year! Here hilarity ensues when the hotel staff realizes that Grant's character has his wife in Suite C, but is spending time with another woman in Suite A. Finally the hotel manager has to inform him that his apparent bedroom -hopping is not appropriate for such a classy hotel. Sure, like any hotel staff has any right to dictate what goes on behind closed doors - I bet that hotel employees have pretty much seen it all.
NITPICK POINT: After her return, the first wife masquerades as an old friend from the South - similar to the way Grant's character pretended to be the gardener in "The Talk of the Town". This is a story technique that goes back to Shakespeare, and probably before that - but wouldn't you imagine that the second wife would have at least seen a picture of the first wife at some point? I mean, even the kids would probably have recognized their mother sooner, assuming they'd seen photos. And what sort of bastard wouldn't let his kids see photos of their dead mother?
Also starring Irene Dunne (also carrying over from "Penny Serenade"), Randolph Scott, Gail Patrick (last seen in "Stage Door"), Ann Shoemaker.
RATING: 5 out of 10 athletic clubs
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