Post by rmichaelpyle on Aug 10, 2009 4:19:48 GMT -6
Watched "Too Many Husbands" (1940) with Jean Arthur, Fred MacMurray, Melvyn Douglas, and Harry Davenport. This is another on the new release "Icons of Screwball Comedy, Volume One". It's very funny if you've never seen it, and it is just the opposite problem from the same year's "My Favorite Wife". This time a husband gets stranded on an island and his wife, after he is declared dead, marries again. Of course, the first husband returns, and the show begins... The ending of this one leaves one in limbo, so we know that the situation is NOT resolved. It's both funny and not funny, sophisticated or downright frustrating, depending on one's sensibilities. I love Jean Arthur comedies, although I've seen three in the last week she made at Columbia, and I must admit that I've finally seen for myself that the budget in a Harry Cohn film many times dictated whether the film would be complete enough to be utterly logical. Two of the three I watched had some logic problems. This one made it through the screen, but then Jean Arthur had just completed and released "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", so she had enough clout, no doubt, to get a decent budget for "Too Many Husbands". Fine film.