IMDb RATING
7.7/10
19K
YOUR RATING
A married couple file an amicable divorce, but find it harder to let go of each other than they initially thought.A married couple file an amicable divorce, but find it harder to let go of each other than they initially thought.A married couple file an amicable divorce, but find it harder to let go of each other than they initially thought.
IMDb RATING
7.7/10
19K
YOUR RATING
- Director
- Writers
- Viña Delmar(screen play)
- Arthur Richman(based on a play by)
- Sidney Buchman(uncredited)
- Stars
Top credits
- Director
- Writers
- Viña Delmar(screen play)
- Arthur Richman(based on a play by)
- Sidney Buchman(uncredited)
- Stars
- Won 1 Oscar
- 3 wins & 5 nominations total
Videos1
Claud Allister
- Lord Fabianas Lord Fabian
- (uncredited)
Asta
- Mr. Smithas Mr. Smith
- (uncredited)
Al Bridge
- Motor Copas Motor Cop
- (uncredited)
Wyn Cahoon
- Mrs. Barnsleyas Mrs. Barnsley
- (uncredited)
Ruth Cherrington
- Minor Roleas Minor Role
- (uncredited)
Dora Clement
- Minor Roleas Minor Role
- (uncredited)
Kathryn Curry
- Celesteas Celeste
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- Viña Delmar(screen play)
- Arthur Richman(based on a play by)
- Sidney Buchman(uncredited)
- All cast & crew
- See more cast details at IMDbPro
Storyline
Before their divorce becomes final, Jerry and Lucy Warriner both do their best to ruin each other's plans for remarriage, Jerry to haughty socialite Barbara Vance, she to oil-rich bumpkin Daniel Leeson. Among their strategies: Jerry's court-decreed visitation rights with Mr. Smith, their pet fox terrier, and Lucy doing her most flamboyant Dixie Belle Lee impersonation as Jerry's brassy "sister" before his prospective bride's scandalized family. —Paul Penna <tterrace@wco.com>
- Taglines
- A classic screwball comedy, a memorable night's entertainment
- Genres
- Certificate
- K-16
- Parents guide
Did you know
- TriviaIrene Dunne later recalled the scene where she pretends to be Cary Grant's ill-bred nightclub performer sister, which was written over a weekend and handed to her on the morning she was scheduled to film it. She was supposed to do a burlesque bump in the middle of her musical number, a move she was never able to do. Leo McCarey told her to just say, "Never could do that" when she got to that moment. She did, it stayed in the film, and Dunne found it "a choice comic bit."
- GoofsLucy introduces her music teacher "Armand Duvalle" as "Armand Lavalle."
- Quotes
Armand Duvalle: I am a great teacher, not a great lover.
Lucy Warriner: That's right, Armand. No one could ever accuse you of being a great lover.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Hollywood: The Great Stars (1963)
- SoundtracksMy Dreams Are Gone With the Wind
(1937) (uncredited)
Music by Ben Oakland
Lyrics by Milton Drake
Performed by Joyce Compton (dubbed)
Reprise by Irene Dunne
Top review
We're In On the Joke
This movie is exquisitely directed and acted. The "fourth wall" is gone; the movie rides so high and smart that we as audience can be subtly acknowledged throughout and made complicit in the production, while we continue to believe in the characters and care about what happens to them.
Much of the important dialogue is "throw-away" dialogue, in a sense. It's clear to the hearing, but lines are often spoken by the characters to themselves, for their own (and our) amusement, or delivered in very deftly choreographed "simultaneity," each speaker maintaining an independent point of view in rapid-fire repartee. Implications are understated. We are expected to expect the unexpected, to listen to every line.
The plot is composed like a piece of music. Each scene takes moment from the time-line established by the impending day and hour and minute at which a husband (Cary Grant) and wife (Irene Dunne) become legally divorced, and the movie ends at precisely the stroke of midnight which marks that moment. They clearly want each other back, but will they cleave together or cleave apart as the clock strikes midnight?
One extended "movement" of the movie lets Cary Grant charmingly undermine his wife's new relationship. In corresponding scenes later, Irene Dunne brilliantly plays a dumb floozie, pretending to be the husband's sister and demolishing in one evening his reputation and his prospects for marriage in respectable society. In these later scenes, in another of the movie's nice compositional touches, she does a reprise of a hoochie musical number performed earlier by a girlfriend of her husband's, and then falls into her husband's arms, apparently drunk. He gestures for her to look back and say goodnight to the horrified guests (and to us) as they do a wonderful little wobbly dance out the door, having burned their bridges behind them.
I found the opening few scenes of the movie unlikable, but with the entrance of Irene Dunne, the movie gets us on board. There's so much great understated visual and verbal double entendre (in the best sense) that I want to go back and see if there's more that I missed. In one scene, Cary Grant has brought to Irene Dunne's new fiancé the paperwork on a coal mine the divorcing couple still own. Interrupted by a visitor while advising the fiancé on where it would good to sink a shaft (har!), he explains that he and the fiancé (brilliantly played by Ralph Bellamy as a very successful bumpkin businessman) are transacting a business deal. The movie moves along briskly and doesn't play up the point, but we catch, for a fraction of a second, Irene Dunne squirming as she finds herself looking like the business transaction in question. The movie moves through moments like this quickly, with high respect for our intelligence and our capacity to get in on the joke.
Much of the important dialogue is "throw-away" dialogue, in a sense. It's clear to the hearing, but lines are often spoken by the characters to themselves, for their own (and our) amusement, or delivered in very deftly choreographed "simultaneity," each speaker maintaining an independent point of view in rapid-fire repartee. Implications are understated. We are expected to expect the unexpected, to listen to every line.
The plot is composed like a piece of music. Each scene takes moment from the time-line established by the impending day and hour and minute at which a husband (Cary Grant) and wife (Irene Dunne) become legally divorced, and the movie ends at precisely the stroke of midnight which marks that moment. They clearly want each other back, but will they cleave together or cleave apart as the clock strikes midnight?
One extended "movement" of the movie lets Cary Grant charmingly undermine his wife's new relationship. In corresponding scenes later, Irene Dunne brilliantly plays a dumb floozie, pretending to be the husband's sister and demolishing in one evening his reputation and his prospects for marriage in respectable society. In these later scenes, in another of the movie's nice compositional touches, she does a reprise of a hoochie musical number performed earlier by a girlfriend of her husband's, and then falls into her husband's arms, apparently drunk. He gestures for her to look back and say goodnight to the horrified guests (and to us) as they do a wonderful little wobbly dance out the door, having burned their bridges behind them.
I found the opening few scenes of the movie unlikable, but with the entrance of Irene Dunne, the movie gets us on board. There's so much great understated visual and verbal double entendre (in the best sense) that I want to go back and see if there's more that I missed. In one scene, Cary Grant has brought to Irene Dunne's new fiancé the paperwork on a coal mine the divorcing couple still own. Interrupted by a visitor while advising the fiancé on where it would good to sink a shaft (har!), he explains that he and the fiancé (brilliantly played by Ralph Bellamy as a very successful bumpkin businessman) are transacting a business deal. The movie moves along briskly and doesn't play up the point, but we catch, for a fraction of a second, Irene Dunne squirming as she finds herself looking like the business transaction in question. The movie moves through moments like this quickly, with high respect for our intelligence and our capacity to get in on the joke.
helpful•8512
- stmichaelsgate
- May 17, 2004
Details
Box office
- Budget
- $600,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 30 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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