He Married His Wife

Not all screwball comedies of the '40s are worth bothering about and this one goes to the top of the list in that category.

Poor JOEL McCREA and NANCY KELLY head a pleasant enough cast, but they have their work cut out for them. The silly script is something about a broad-minded man who's unable to pay alimony to his wife but foolishly goes along on a week-end trip to the country where he tries to play Cupid in getting her together with two men (LYLE TALBOT and CESAR ROMERO) who are crazy about her. If that makes sense, give me a clue.

MARY BOLAND is the country hostess who flutters around like an imitation of her character in THE WOMEN. ROLAND YOUNG has a few wry remarks to make, but NANCY KELLY is almost insufferably coy and arch as the exasperated heroine.

This is supposed to be wildly funny but the situations are all very artificial and most of the punch lines fall flat. The only compensation is seeing the attractive JOEL McCREA at his handsome best, playing it straight and not seeming to mind the hopelessly contrived script he's caught up in. He and CESAR ROMERO have the most luck with their hapless roles.

Only for fans of '40s screwball comedies that are easily amused.

He Married His Wife casts Joel McCrea and Nancy Kelly as a pair of amiable former marrieds who broke up for McCrea's love of the sport of kings. Now McCrea's nags are interfering with his alimony payments and Kelly feels compelled to have him jailed.

Only thing to do is get her married again which McCrea proposes to get Kelly hitched to their friend good old steady and reliable Lyle Talbot. The deed can be done at Mary Boland's place where the whole gang is spending a weekend.

In fact another possible candidate visits Boland, Cesar Romero from South America. This all shouldn't be a problem but complications arise from everyone present even from Roland Young who offers a lot of trenchant observations. Young is McCrea's attorney.

As screwball comedies go this is a mild and pleasant one. Someone with a real comedic touch like Irene Dunne or Carole Lombard might have got this rated higher. Best in this as she is in so many films is Mary Boland who just rises above the human condition into her own little world.

Fans of the leads should like this.

The actors around McCrea in this movie are second or third tier and it gives a chance to see how well, and if, he can carry an entire cast.

McCrea often said he always wanted and needed to have a great actress as the star of his comedies and romances, naming Ginger Rogers and Claudette Colbert as by far the best he ever worked with for the whole package of box office power, acting ability and screen presence. Stanwyck got his vote as the greatest actress he ever worked with but she was never the box office draw that the other two were. It seems like McCrea was quite perceptive about his career since, if you add Jean Arthur & Miriam Hopkins to the list, most of his great movies did have these amazing actresses across from him. This movie would have been much better with any of them instead of Nancy Kelly.

Kelly has a sort of Irene Dunne appeal but her timing isn't too hot and she can't dominate a shot. Her screen presence is slight and she disappears badly when McCrea is on the set. Mary Boland does a kind of Alice Brady schtick from 'Gay Divorcee' and at one point even wears an imitation of Ginger's iconic "Feathers" dress from 'Top Hat.' Lyle Talbot, who had come up at about the same time as Rogers and Colbert and Stanwyck, had already shown he wasn't remotely in their class and had, for some years now, been well down in a movie's casting credits.

At this time Joel McCrea was in the middle of his greatest period, 1937-1944, when he was displaying one of the greatest acting ranges in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Unfortunately, 'He Married His Wife' is a kind of throwback to the kinds of films McCrea was making in 1930 or 1932... decidedly lower quality stuff, this one is closer to 'Kept Husbands' or 'The Common Law' than to his contemporary work, masterpieces like 'Foreign Correspondent' and 'Primrose Path.'

Paulene Kael was an interesting film critic, and occasionally did some first rate research - like her CITIZEN KANE BOOK, showing what the original screenplay was like, and what Herman Mankiewicz brought to the project. But she was not infallible. Her KANE BOOK actually seemed to belittle Orson Welles so much that many have suspected an secret motive to it. In one of her books of collected reviews she added a group of films she called "Guilty Pleasures", and she included this picture among them. She explained that they were not necessarily great movies, but she thought they were all worthy films that she enjoyed (for one reason or another). The films included many forgotten films like LAUGHTER IN PARADISE, an English Comedy about a will with strange bequests in it, or YOUR PAST IS SHOWING, another English comedy (with Peter Sellers, Dennis Price, Terry Thomas, and Peggy Mount) about a scandal sheet and blackmail. To be fair some of the films she lists are worth watching (catch, for example, THE GREEN MAN with Alistair Sim, Terry Thomas, and Raymond Huntley). But some are extremely odd choices. This is one of the odd choices.

When we hear "Screwball Comedy" we think of films with Carole Lombard like MY MAN GODFREY or TRUE CONFESSIONS. We recall fondly the weird situations involving madcap heiresses, dull heroes, and eccentric side characters. And many of these films do still hold up well...but not all of them. HE MARRIED HIS WIFE suffers from a plodding script with only one genuinely comic moment. It begins with McCrae dancing with Nancy Kelly, apparently having a good time, when a process server serves him with papers for failing to keep up with his alimony payments to her. I suspect the writers thought it a funny situation. It wasn't. It beggars the imagination that anyone owing alimony is going to take his or her ex-spouse out dancing. Where is the reality of that? From that false start it continues downhill. There is only one minor moment of actual hilarity in the film. While attending Mary Boland's weekend party, McCrae and Roland Young come across a moose call (a horn you blow if you wish to attract the attention of a moose while hunting). I don't remember why but first McCrae and then Young try blowing it, and we hear very weak efforts for their pain. Then, all of a sudden, we hear the horn blown properly and long. The camera pans back and we see a disgusted Mary Boland handing the device back to the crestfallen Young and McCrae, having demonstrated how to properly use it!

I do not know Roy Del Ruth's worth as director but, on the strength of HE MARRIED HIS WIFE, he seems technically capable, with sound cinematography support from Earnest Palmer. I find it harder to appraise his quality in other departments, not least because of the rather childish screenplay by Sam Hellman and John O'Hara. The joke about Joel McCrea's excessive interest in horses and horseraces wears off in less than 20 minutes and the film pretty much limps on from then on with Nancy Kelly in the enviable if rather cretinous position of collecting generous alimony from ex-hubby McCrea and getting Cesar Romero and Lyle Talbot to fight for her hand, while McCrea's lawyer Roland Young does not seem overly interested, let alone proactive, in his efforts to assist his client.

In a rather muddled ending, the ever likable McCrea, who has always encouraged Kelly to find a new spouse so he can stop paying alimony, ultimately wins by a neck to the sound of a radio commentary. It that does not tell you that this film is a complete waste of time and treats the viewe like an idiot, I doubt anything will. 6/10.