My Favorite Wife (1940)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Garson Kanin

Writers:

Bella Spewack (original story) &
Sam Spewack (original story) ...

Release Date:

17 May 1940 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Romance

Tagline:

The funniest, fastest honeymoon ever screened!

Plot:

Ellen Arden arrives 7 years after being given up for dead in a shipwreck, to find her husband Nick just remarried to Bianca...

Plot Keywords:

Jealousy | Shipwreck | Island | Trial | Stranded

Awards:

Nominated for 3 Oscars.

Cast

Irene Dunne	...	Ellen Arden
Cary Grant	...	Nick Arden
Randolph Scott	...	Steve Burkett
Gail Patrick	...	Bianca Bates
Ann Shoemaker	...	Ellen's mother
Scotty Beckett	...	Little Tim Arden
Mary Lou Harrington	...	Little Chinch Arden
Donald MacBride	...	Hotel Clerk
Hugh O'Connell	...	Johnson - insurance investigator
Granville Bates	...	Judge Bryson
Pedro de Cordoba	...	Dr. Kohlmar - psychiatrist
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Joseph E. Bernard	...	Reporter (scenes deleted)
Frank Ellis	...	(scenes deleted)
Edward Emerson	...	Reporter (scenes deleted)
Bruce MacFarlane	...	Reporter (scenes deleted)
Frank Marlowe	...	Photographer (scenes deleted)
Cyril Ring	...	Contestant (scenes deleted)
Brandon Tynan	...	Dr. Manning (scenes deleted)

Runtime:

88 min | Germany:75 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Victor System)

Certification:

Canada:G (video rating) | Finland:S | Sweden:15 | UK:U | USA:Approved (PCA #5974)

Filming Locations:

Ahwanee Hotel, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, California, USA

Company:

RKO Radio Pictures

Trivia:

Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, "Enoch Arden," about a fisherman presumed lost at sea who returns to find his wife remarried, was the basis of five prior films: Enoch Arden (1914), Die Toten kehren wieder - Enoch Arden (1919), and D.W. Griffith's Enoch Arden: Part I (1911), Enoch Arden: Part II (1911), and Enoch Arden (1915). Those films adhered to Tennyson's poem. But in My Favorite Wife, Something's Got to Give (1962), and Move Over, Darling (1963), only the basic idea of a spouse who returns is kept, with the spouse presumed lost now being the wife. However, in all of these films, the surname of the couple in question remains "Arden."

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Nick first tries to sleep in the bed in the attic of the cabin, he pulls a toy cannon from under the bed and throws it across the room. When he does this, the doll on the night stand falls over. You can see the trip wire swinging behind Nick. In fact, the pin at the end of the wire lands on Nick's head.

Quotes:

[Dr. Kohlmar walks in on Nick holding a dress in front of himself with a lady's hat on his head]
Nick Arden: Do you think this goes together? Blue ought to go with blue, right?
Dr. Kohlmar: Yes, I suppose.
Nick Arden: It's for a friend.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Move Over, Darling (1963)

Soundtrack:

The Skaters Waltz (Les patineurs)

A Shakespearian masterpiece of farce.

Garson Kanin's best films are so bright, fast and funny, and have been plundered by so many pallid, feel-good imitators, that it's easy to overlook how courageously critical they can be, of prevailing social norms, for instance, what society takes to be normal - 'natural' - about crucial concepts like family, gender, marriage etc. In 'My Favorite wife', Kanin takes the idea that a particular social order is natural, and tears it apart, by putting civilisation on one side, nature on the other, and revealing that there's nothing remotely natural about civilisation, or our places in it; that these things are man-made, and so can be questioned, negotiated, even changed by man (or, as is more usual in Kanin's world, woman).

'Wife' opens with an elaborate sequence showing the structure of civilisation at work in its most intrinsic form - the legal system. The hero is a lawyer, and is trying to declare his missing first wife dead so he can marry another. There are a few things we notice here: the judge is hilarious, a cantankerous old buffer, testy, capricious, and not at all rigorous, or even knowledgeable in his application of laws which, after all, structure people's lives, and which, we learn, are constantly overturned by the Court of Appeals, so that something that should be inviolable is shown to be provisional. there is room for manoeuvre, but there is also room for corruption.

More important for Kanin's purposes are two incidental details. The wife has been missing for seven years, a fairy-tale or mythical number in a site of legal process, undermining its claims to ultimate, 'official' reality. The hero's name is Arden, which might remind us of Shakespeare's Forest ('As you like it'), and the spirit of play that will inform the film, with people assuming and discarding roles, putting on costumes, using props, putting on 'plays' or performances to deceive, enlighten or outmanoeuvre others.

On one level, this warns us against accepting appearances in a civilised world that depends on appearances (all the talk about respectability); on another, it shows that certain roles - like being a mother, or husband - aren't God-given, but roles which have to be constantly rehearsed and refined. Play can be subversive - the way Ellen Arden dresses up as a man, breaks up a marriage, or tries to conceal a possible adultery - but it is also seen as a necessary process of socialisation: the children learn to imitate their parents, as they theatrically make their lost mother 'perform' her confession. They learn that society is fluid, not fixed; they also learn to lie. (the hero winds up in an Attic (as in Greek comedy), but that might be taking the analogy to far!)

Hitchcock once said that he often used Cary Grant because he wanted to work against his established image. But the figure of masculine immaturity and insecurity so richly realised in Roger O Thornhill ('North by Northwest') is already fully-formed here in a 'hero' who jumps at any chance to avoid making difficult decisions. Kanin, like Hitchcock later, makes brilliant, ironic use of Grant's most famous previous roles: 'Topper', another story about a professional flustered by a 'ghost'; and, especially, 'Bringing up baby', not just in the comically ghastly leopardskin bathrobe his second wife buys him, but in the animal imagery used throughout (kids going to the zoo; Steve as Tarzan etc.), contrasting with his civilised world that is making him desperately unhappy, his identity and masculine certainty fragmenting. (knowledge that Grant used to live with Randolph Scott adds further comic potency to their scenes)

This conflict between Nick's civilisation and the 'natural' order is typically complicated - Nick clearly married Bianca for her sexual prowess; Ellen and Nick are compatible because of their intellectual superiority to everyone else (which gives a streak of cruelty to their games, and makes one feel genuinely sorry for BIanca).

'Wife' is a masterpiece of farce, of shared rooms, opening and shutting doors, frustrated sexuality, mixed identities - but what makes it a true classic are the flashes of whimsy - the Steve diving sequence that results in some the most bizarre, incongruous, and sidesplittingly funny visions ever seen on film.