My Favorite Wife **** (1940, Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Gail Patrick, Randolph Scott) – Classic Movie Review 1,279

Director Garson Kanin’s 1940 screwball comedy film My Favorite Wife brings the absolutely splendid teaming of Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, who are on top form as a married couple who find themselves in an unusually tricky predicament.

Dunne is supposedly drowned at sea, so seven years later Grant gets her declared legally dead and gets himself re-married – to Bianca (Gail Patrick). Fair enough, but just then Dunne abruptly returns home to her husband and children after several years from what turns out to have been a shipwrecking on a tropical island and now finds her home life wrecked too. Randolph Scott co-stars as the man Grant’s wife had been trapped with on the island.

The story is an adaptation of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s 1864 poem Enoch Arden, and the main characters’ last name is Arden in tribute. Written by Sam and Bella Spewack and the film’s producer Leo McCarey, this is a hilarious version of this farcical theme, finding fresh fun at every turn. Grant and Dunne are delightful company, my favorite movie husband and wife couple (well one of them). In real life it was Grant and his other co-star Randolph Scott who lived together.

During the 1930s, Scott was roommates with Grant in a beach house known jocularly as Bachelor Hall. The close friendship between Scott and Grant and the steady stream of women into and out of Bachelor Hall have fed the rumour mills for years.

Scott met Grant, another young Paramount contract player, on the set of Hot Saturday in 1932 and they immediately moved in together. Their on-and-off living arrangement would last until 1942. Scott married and divorced wealthy heiress Marion DuPont [Mariana duPont Somerville] in the late 1930s (from 23 March 1936 till 1939). He then married actress Patricia Stillman (from 3 March 1944 till his death on 2 March 1987) and they had two children.

He remained close friends with Grant until the day he died. When he heard of his old friend’s death in 1986, he reportedly put his head in his hands and wept.

At the time of his retirement from acting Scott was considered for the role played by Chuck Connors in the Doris Day comedy Move Over, Darling (1963). It was to have been a reprise of the role he played in My Favorite Wife.

In 1962, the 20th Century Fox studio started to shoot a remake of My Favorite Wife as Something’s Got to Give, directed by George Cukor, and starring Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse. It was beset by problems mostly through Monroe’s failure to show up on time for work and she was fired, while Martin backed out when the studio tried to replace Monroe with Lee Remick.

After Monroe’s death in August 1962, Doris Day and James Garner were cast, and the new version, faithful to the old one, was released by Fox as Move Over, Darling. A re-creation of surviving footage cobbled from the unfinished Something’s Got to Give exists, along with some scenes reshot with Remick.

My Favorite Wife was a big hit, making $500,000 profit for RKO, and it was nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Story, Best Score (Roy Webb) and Best Art Direction by Van Nest Polglase and Mark-Lee Kirk.

Grant and Dunne previously starred together in The Awful Truth in 1937 and went on to team up for Penny Serenade in 1941.

Producer Leo McCarey signed up Cary Grant and Irene Dunne without a script after the great success of The Awful Truth, intending also to direct, but had a near-fatal car accident and Garson Kanin took over. McCarey recovered enough to visit the set a couple of weeks into filming and was able to edit the film after the shoot.

Gail Patrick is delightful and Scott is fine, but Granville Bates is outstanding in support as Judge Bryson, whose funny role was written up and expanded by McCarey in a one-reel post-production shoot, allowing McCarey to re-edit the film to keep it funny throughout.

The cast

The cast are Irene Dunne as Ellen Arden, Cary Grant as Nick Arden, Randolph Scott as Stephen Burkett, Gail Patrick as Bianca Bates, Ann Shoemaker as Nick’s mother Ma, Scotty Beckett as the Ardens’ son Tim, Mary Lou Harrington as the Ardens’ daughter Chinch, Donald MacBride as hotel clerk, Hugh O’Connell as insurance adjuster Johnson, Granville Bates as Judge Bryson, Pedro de Cordoba as Dr Kohlmar, and Chester Clute as shoe salesman.

http://derekwinnert.com/the-awful-truth-1937-irene-dunne-cary-grant-classic-movie-review-1247/

http://derekwinnert.com/penny-serenade-1941-cary-grant-irene-dunne-beulah-bondi-ann-doran-edgar-buchanan-classic-movie-review-2339/

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