Too Many Husbands

This delightful comedy falls just short of being one of the classic screwball comedies of the era. It's a story of a woman whose husband disappears in a boating accident and is presumed to be dead. The woman then marries her late husband's business partner. When the first husband turns up alive after a year on a desert island, the woman has two legal husbands. The plot evolves around the woman's decision about which husband to keep. Jean Arthur is a delight, as always, and McMurray and Douglas could hardly be better.

It's a stage-bound film, however, clearly a filmed version of a play. There are really only six characters, including the butler. Columbia didn't want to spend much money on the production. In one scene, upstairs in the woman's family home, you can twice see the set walls shake when doors are shut. Still, the movie is great fun and should not be missed by serious students of film.

When I first heard the premise;a spouse declared dead comes back home after months alone on an island , only to find his beloved wife has re-entered marital bliss with his best friend, I thought 'it'll be interesting to see if they come anywhere near the brilliance of "My Favorite Wife"' And I also presumed this had to be a rather blatant rip-off of the Cary Grant-Irene Dunne classic released ,incidentally, in the same year. Boy was I wrong! For starters this appears to have been released months earlier and the screenplay,comic timing,and acting are easily in the same league as the best of the so-called 'screwball comedies'. When Jean Arthur is "on" there is no actress who can beat her and she looks about as good in this rarely shown film as she ever has . Fred MacMurry and Melvyn Douglas hold up their end, but the surprise, for me, was good old Harry Davenport who gets many lines , many chances to display bravado mugging and line readings, and never fails. This is a Jean Arthur film that needs immediate release on the DVD market!!

Vicky Lowndes (Jean Arthur) leads a normal life with her husband of less than a year. Hank (Melvyn Douglas) does his best to avoid the subject of Vicky's previous husband, his best friend Bill Cardew (Fred MacMurray). However, when Bill comes back from the dead via a boat from the island he'd been shipwrecked on, the happy Lowndeses become a strange threesome. It is up to Vicky to choose which husband she prefers, but it isn't as simple as it sounds. She can't very well hurt the man she loves in order to be with the other man she loves.

Each cast member is adept at screwball comedy, which is what this film essentially is. However, there is a deeper vein too. Because both men are likable, it is suspenseful waiting for Vicky to choose a husband. This predicament triggers an emotional response as well. Arthur is reminiscent of Irene Dunne in her teamings with Cary Grant, but slightly funnier. Douglas and MacMurray couldn't be more different from each other, so that adds a new spin on the situation.

This movie is very much like My Favorite Wife starring Dunne and the incomplete Something's Got to Give starring Marilyn Monroe, but this film gives the wife two husbands, not the other way around. It is interesting to see how she handles the situation and how the men schmooze themselves silly to get into her good graces. In this way, it is quite a bit funnier.

Fred MacMurray is the long lost husband who returns to the scene to find that his wife, Jean Arthur is married to new husband, Melvyn Douglas. Arthur's character must choose which husband to keep. The viewer is compelled to want both men to win Arthur's hand; they are both charming. The plot is simple but the fun, witty dialog and situations that develop are very entertaining. I loved MacMurray and Douglas' tails and top hats. The ball gowns were lovely to look at. It's amusing to watch the dancing style in the party scene; lively, silly and fun. A fine, light movie to enjoy with popcorn and the family or champagne with a friend.

Too Many Husbands is a prime example of the screwball comedy. All the usual elements are in place -- romance out of whack, a collection of goofy but likable characters, frenetic, sometimes slapstick action, fast-delivery, witty dialog, a ridiculous situation, class satire, and the cops further gumming up the works -- all breaking off in unexpected directions like the baseball pitch the genre is named after.

A flighty rich dame (Jean Arthur) finds herself married to two different men at the same time, and she loves both of them. She is not an intentional bigamist. Hubby number one, sexy but ever wandering Fred MacMurry was lost at sea and declared legally dead, so the lonely widow marries his best friend, reliable, hard-working smoothie Melvin Douglas. When hubby number one shows up alive after all and ready for action with his beautiful wife, the fun ensues. Poor Jean, she just can't make up her mind which husband to choose. With one a reckless adventurer and the other a neglectful workaholic no sensible woman would want either, but this is Jean Arthur! She's having a whale of a time as the two compete to show her more attention than either ever had in the past. She may just take forever to make up her mind!

Jean Arthur, who was reportedly a serious dingbat in real life, seems perfectly cast in this type of role. MacMurry and Douglas are in their element here, too. The three bright stars, all at their peaks, make this one a delight all the way through. Good support comes from Henry Davenport, another mainstay of the screw-baller, as Jean's harried father, and Edgar Buchanan, looking younger than you thought he ever was, as a suspicious cop.

Too Many Husbands is a bit of a slow-starter, but give it a chance. Under Wesley Ruggles' sure direction, it soon picks up steam, getting wackier and funnier as it goes along. The great acting, gorgeous, luminous, old nitrate black and white cinematography and smooth editing you have come to expect from big studio productions of the 'thirties and the 'forties make this one a pleasure to watch. Smooth, glossy entertainment from Old Hollywood's Golden Era.