Lainavaimo

This film is your average Roz Russell farce from this era, yet it's something completely different at the same time. Obviously ANY follow-up to His Girl Friday would be significantly weaker, but that isn't a fair comparison, Hired Wife to HGF, because HIS GIRL FRIDAY. COME ON.

Roz does her usual (I mean that in a good way), Brian Aherne is take him or leave him, Virginia Bruce is okay as the other (eventual, of course) woman, and the rest of the cast is okay too. For a comedy, this film doesn't have many laughs, despite starring one of the silver screen's finest deadpan comediennes, our girl Rosalind.

The plot of this one is that business executive Stephen Dexter (Aherne) asks his secretary, whose name is Kendal Browning (with just one L) to marry him, in name only, because he doesn't want to be taken over and lose his finances by a rival company...who want to take over his business and aren't afraid to be hostile about it, either. However, Kendal eventually falls for Stephen, despite the fact that he doesn't love her and is perfectly happy to carry on with another woman named Phyllis (Virginia Bruce). But Kendal, being as Rosalind Russell character, refuses to give up her man and engages in all sorts of schemes to keep him married to her. He decides that she isn't so bad after all.

Brian Aherne is sort of like a poor man's Leslie Howard meets Melvyn Douglas, and he's not making a //huge// effort to break out of that mold here. In fact, even Leslie Howard would have been better in Aherne's role. Virgina Bruce's role isn't as well-developed as I'd have liked it to be, but you can tell that this comedy was sort of thrown together in a rush.

Rosalind Russell makes almost everything better (she couldn't save She Wouldn't Say Yes, Mourning Becomes Electra, or Picnic, but that was just bad writing mostly), and she brings a sort of level-headedness to her role, even if she's given her stock part of "Right hand (wo)man to the big boss who gets enlisted to do some sort of task, and is also fiercely in love with the big boss, but we don't know that until later".

A slight recommendation, but be aware that the pacing stinks and all of the cast have done better- even together. If you liked My Sister Eileen, watch this one, but be aware that it's not as good as MSE.