Too Many Husbands **** (1940, Jean Arthur, Fred MacMurray, Melvyn Douglas) – Classic Movie Review 9528

Director Wesley Ruggles’s attractive 1940 black and white screwball romantic comedy Too Many Husbands [My Two Husbands] stars Jean Arthur, Melvyn Douglas and Fred MacMurray.

Columbia Pictures assembles a special cast to raise lots of laughs from W Somerset Maugham’s play Home and Beauty about a supposedly widowed wife, Vicky Cardew/ Lowndes (Jean Arthur), who remarries to publisher Henry Lowndes (Melvyn Douglas) when her husband Bill Cardew (Fred MacMurray) is reported drowned.

Of course old Fred isn’t really dead, otherwise there would be no movie. But, when he returns from a desert island to claim his wife back, he has to compete with Douglas in wooing her as Vicky finds attention from two husbands competing for her favours a delight. So, the question is, WHICH ONE?

Superb playing brings out the best in the witty screenplay by Claude Binyon. Harry Davenport is a scene-stealer as Vicky’s dad, and so is Melville Cooper as the butler.

It is remade as Three for the Show (1955), a Technicolor musical remake with Betty Grable, Jack Lemmon as the missing husband and Gower Champion.

Also in the cast are Dorothy Peterson, Tom Dugan, Sam McDaniel and Edgar Buchanan.

Too Many Husbands [My Two Husbands] is directed by Wesley Ruggles, runs 80 minutes, is made and released by Columbia Pictures, is written by Claude Binyon, based on the play by W Somerset Maugham, is shot in black and white by Joseph Walker and is scored by Friedrich Hollaender [Frederick Hollander] with Art Direction by Lionel Banks and Costume Design by Irene.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9528

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