My Favorite Wife

A search of the blog suggests that I haven't done a full-length review on My Favorite Wife before. I see that it's coming up on the TCM schedule, at 4:30 AM tomorrow (although since TCM's broadcast day generally begins at 6:00 AM, they'd say it's on tonight at 4:30 AM). Since I've got a copy of it on DVD as part of a TCM Cary Grant box set, I decided to put that DVD into the player and watch the movie to do a review on it here.

Grant plays Nick Arden, a lawyer who at the beginning of the movie is appearing before Judge Bryson (Granville Bates). It seems as though Nick's first wife Ellen was shipwrecked seven years ago and has been presumed missing ever since. Seven years is (or at least was back in those days) the amount of time somebody had to be missing before you could declare them legally dead, so Nick is now going through the motions of having Ellen declared dead. It's something that should be straightforward enough, but somehow, it's turned into fodder for comic relief here.

The reason why Nick is filing the paperwork to have Ellen declared dead is that, while searching for Ellen, he met another woman, Bianca Bates (Gail Patrick). She'd be a good mother to the two Arden children, so Nick wants to marry her, something he can't do if his first wife is still legally alive. Eventually, the judge figures out what's going on and performs the marriage ceremony, leaving the couple to go off on their honeymoon at a resort in the mountains where Nick and Ellen went on their honeymoon back in the day.

After Nick and Bianca leave for their honeymoon, a woman shows up at the Arden house looking for Nick. She's a stranger to the two children, although she seems to have some idea who they are. It's only when she goes inside the house that we learn that this woman is one Ellen Wagstaff (Irene Dunne), who married Nick all those years ago. She went on a scientific expedition in the Pacific when the ship sank and she wound up on a deserted island for seven years. Now, you'd think that news would have gotten out about her rescue from the ship that picked her up, and that would have been some weeks before she shows up at her old home. But no, nobody seems to know anything about her having been rescued.

When her mom tells her about Nick's new wife and where they went on honeymoon, Ellen immediately heads up there herself, surprising Nick. Nick, for some reason, can't bring himself to tell Bianca the truth about who this woman is, even though again, you'd think Bianca might have seen photos of Ellen. Ellen, for her part, isn't telling Bianca who she is, because reasons that make no sense to the plot.

Meanwhile, Nick learns from Ellen that she wasn't alone on the island, but that one other passenger survived on the same raft and washed ashore on the island, one Stephen Burkett (Randolph Scott). He, having spent seven years alone with Ellen, has fallen in love with her, and would like to marry her. Now, the fact that she's legally dead ought to mean that her marriage to Nick has been dissolved, leaving Stephen free to marry Ellen. Somehow, however, Nick is declared a bigamist.

There's an interesting dilemma at the heart of My Favorite Wife, one that naturally presents a bunch of opportunities for comedy. But as I was watching, I couldn't help but think of all the plot holes. Also, I found myself thinking of what I've often called the "comedy of lies", where a character has to tell a little white lie for some reason and is thereafter unable to bring himself to tell the truth, resorting to ever bigger lies. My Favorite Wife has that in spades, and I just wanted somebody to smack some sense into Cary Grant's character and have him tell his second wife the truth. For me, the movie grew increasingly less funny and more grating.

Other people, however, have rated My Favorite Wife much more highly, so it's definitely another movie you should watch and judge for yourself.