My Favorite Wife (1940) and Too Many Husbands (1940)

This week we have a "Husbands and Wives" double feature -- two classic screwball comedies from 1940 with similar plots and fantastic comedic acting. Despite their strikingly similar storylines, these two movies approach the marriage muddle in different ways so you can watch both without any repetition in the action.

My Favorite Wife:

Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Gail Patrick

Directed by Garson Kanin

Available to stream on Prime Video

Wife Irene Dunne, missing for seven years, reappears just after husband Cary Grant's wedding to another woman.

Gail Patrick, Cary Grant, Irene Dunne in "My Favorite Wife"

Too Many Husbands:

Jean Arthur, Fred MacMurray, Melvyn Douglas

Directed by Wesley Ruggles

Available to stream on YouTube

Husband Fred MacMurray, shipwrecked and declared dead, returns to find that wife Jean Arthur is married to his business partner Melvyn Douglas.

Fred MacMurray, Jean Arthur, and Melvyn Douglas in "Too Many Husbands"

Why we love them: Both of these films are great examples of what made the 30's and 40's famous for romantic comedies that were full of crazy antics in addition to the romance. The actors are all masters at "screwball" comedy and they play their parts to perfection.

In Too Many Husbands, Fred MacMurry and Melvyn Douglas compete with each other for Jean Arthur's attention with tricks and stratagems and reactions to each other's antics while Jean Arthur makes the most of two men adoring her. She doesn't really want to get rid of either of them because she's having too much fun. The ending seems quite modern. Watch the funny scene below where Jean Arthur's father (Harry Davenport) insists that she choose just one husband:

My Favorite Wife is full of Cary Grant's comedic reactions at finding himself in the situation of having two wives, then finding out that his wife spent seven years on an island with handsome Randolph Scott. See the original movie trailer below:

Fun Facts:

• Both stories are loosely based on the poem Enoch Arden by Alfred Lord Tennyson about a fisherman who gets lost at sea and comes back to find his wife married to another man.

• My Favorite Wife gave a nod to the poem Enoch Arden by giving Grant and Dunne's characters the last name of Arden.

• Too Many Husbands premiered in March of 1940 and just two months later in May of 1940 My Favorite Wife was released.

From "Screenland" 1940

• Irene Dunne and Cary Grant became a popular onscreen couple when they made The Awful Truth (1937) together so audiences were thrilled to seem them paired up again for My Favorite Wife.
  

• Too Many Husbands is adapted from a 1919 play "Home and Beauty" by Somerset Maugham. The Production Code objected to Maugham's play being made into a movie because of its "apparent lack of any respect for the sanctity of marriage; its farcical treatment of the subject of bigamy; and its very frank and detailed discussion of the unsavory subject of divorce by collusion." The producers were somehow able to get around the Production Code, and the resulting film is a delight, but also a bit risqué for the time it was made.

From "Screenland" 1940

• My Favorite Wife was nominated for three Academy Awards -- Best Art Direction, Best Score, and Best Screenplay.

• Too Many Husbands was nominated for one Academy Award -- Best Sound Recording.

• Too Many Husbands was later remade as a musical Three for the Show (1955) with Jack Lemmon and Betty Grable. My Favorite Wife was remade with Doris Day and James Garner as Move Over, Darling (1963).

From "Photoplay" 1940

For more reviews and articles from the time go to the Fan Magazine Reviews page for My Favorite Wife and Too Many Husbands.

Featured Cocktail:

Bacardi Cocktail

After Prohibition this modified daiquiri was very popular in the US. However, Bacardi claimed that some bartenders were making “Bacardi cocktails” with other rums. Bacardi went to court and the New York Supreme Court upheld their claim in 1936. So, if it isn’t made with Bacardi rum, it’s a fancy daiquiri made with grenadine instead of sugar—still delicious.

2 oz (60 ml) Bacardi light rum

1 oz (30 ml) lime juice

1 Tbsp (15 ml) grenadine

Shake with ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a maraschino cherry speared on a toothpick laid across the rim of the glass.

Cheers to the Classics!