The Gay Intruders

The summary to "The Gay Intruders" is not quite right. The psychiatrists are NOT married to each other. Here's a more accurate summary:

John and Maria are very hammy stage actors who have lovely chemistry on stage...but hate each other off stage. This is a serious problem, as the pair are married...to each other. When their agent gets sick of hearing their constant bickering, he suggests they get therapy. On their own, John and Maria BOTH seek out a therapist and each soon come up with an insane idea that no real psychiatrist would agree to do. They each want their therapist to come to stay with them under an assumed identity so they can observe how awful the other spouse is! Not surprisingly, chaos and hilarity ensues (or is supposed to ensue).

It's obvious who ever wrote this knows nothing about therapy or psychiatrists. Instead, the focus is clearly on everyone being kooky...and like caricatures in the process. Badly written and hard to enjoy, this is, at best, a poor time-passer.

John Emery and Tamara Geva are stage stars and married in real life too. People think they are as romantic in life as they are on the boards, but as their latest play closes after two years, as soon as the door on their dressing room closes, the bric-a-brac starts flying. They each think the other is nuts, so they each hire a psychiatrist to analyze the other; Leif Ericskon and Virginia Gregg. They, in turn, get along great, but as their charges do better, they begin to quarrel....

Ray McCarey's last movie -- he would die in December, only 44 -- is a stagey farce with the leads playing flamboyantly theatrical people, full of mistaken identity and, as mentioned above, thrown crockery. It's second-ranked all the way, intended for the lower half of a double bill, but it proceeds at such a good pace that there's no reason to complain. Although McCarey never rose to the heights of his more famous brother Leo, he was a useful director, first of shorts, then of B movies, mostly comedy, one of those many journeymen whose movies came in on budget, kept the audiences in their seats happy, and produced a useful profit for the producer.