My Favorite Wife (1940)

Director:

Garson Kanin

Writers:

Bella Spewack (story) &
Sam Spewack (story) ...

Release Date:

17 May 1940 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Romance

Tagline:

The funniest, fastest honeymoon ever screened!

Plot:

Ellen Arden arrives 7 years after being given up for dead in a shipwreck, to find her husband Nick just remarried to Bianca...

Plot Keywords:

Revelation | Nose Bleed | Rescue | Shipwreck | Love

Awards:

Nominated for 3 Oscars.

Cast

Irene Dunne	...	Ellen
Cary Grant	...	Nick
Randolph Scott	...	Burkett
Gail Patrick	...	Bianca
Ann Shoemaker	...	Ma
Scotty Beckett	...	Tim
Mary Lou Harrington	...	Chinch
Donald MacBride	...	Hotel Clerk
Hugh O'Connell	...	Johnson
Granville Bates	...	Judge
Pedro de Cordoba	...	Dr. Kohlmar
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Joseph E. Bernard	...	Reporter (scenes deleted)
Frank Ellis	...	(scenes deleted)
Edward Emerson	...	Reporter (scenes deleted)
Bruce MacFarlane	...	Reporter (scenes deleted)
Frank Marlowe	...	Photographer (scenes deleted)
Cyril Ring	...	Contestant (scenes deleted)
Brandon Tynan	...	Dr. Manning (scenes deleted)

Runtime:

88 min | Germany:75 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Victor System)

Certification:

Canada:G (video rating) | Finland:S | Sweden:15 | UK:U | USA:Approved (PCA #5974)

Filming Locations:

Ahwanee Hotel, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, California, USA

Company:

RKO Radio Pictures

Trivia:

Cary Grant wears a leopard print smoking jacket throughout much of the last third of the film. He was just coming off the huge hit Bringing Up Baby (1938) in which the titular character is a leopard.

Goofs:

Errors in geography: The judge mentioned that Ellen was shipwrecked off the coast of Indochina. Nick mentioned that he went to Bangkok to interview survivors which makes sense if the shipwreck happened near Indochina. However, Ellen mentioned that she was located at Latitude 12, Longitude 128 which is 200 miles east of the Philippines and more than 1000 miles away from the closest part of the Indochina peninsula (which would be Vietnam). The nearest large city to that location would be Manila and not Bangkok.

Quotes:

[Ellen speaking with her children, whom she hasn't seen since they were babies]
Chinch: Are you a lady or a man?
Ellen Wagstaff Arden aka Eve: Well, I used to be a lady...
Tim: Are ya a sailor?
Chinch: A lady sailor?
Ellen Wagstaff Arden aka Eve: Well...
Tim: My mother was practically a sailor - she went down in a shipwreck.
Chinch: Oh, he's always boasting.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Parent Trap (1998)

Soundtrack:

Jingle Bells

Who's Two Timing Who

Cary Grant's got a real problem on his hands. He thinks his wife was killed in a plane crash seven years ago. So he goes to court with Gail Patrick who he now intends to marry after getting the judge to declare Irene Dunne legally dead.

Wouldn't you know it, Dunne turns up the day of the honeymoon and puts Cary in an awful pickle. He's a lawyer and he's busy trying to work out all the ramifications of what's happened.

I've thought about it for a while and I came to the conclusion that it's Grant's professional training that prevents him from just confessing to one and all what's happened. Where a lot of the laughs come in is Grant trying to avoid marital consummation with Patrick until he can work it out.

Another factor comes into play when Grant learns that Dunne spent several years on the desert island with hunky Randolph Scott. Grant starts to feel a little less guilty then.

The whole mess is dumped on the judge who originally declared Dunne legally dead, Granville Bates. His role as the judge gives him some of the best lines in My Favorite Wife.

I do feel sorry for Gail Patrick though. Usually she plays a lot of bad girls and other women in movies. But she really is the wronged party here.

Dunne and Grant worked well together in another marital comedy, The Awful Truth and they were just as bright in My Favorite Wife as they were in the first film.

One interesting footnote it was a remake of this film Something's Gotta Give that Marilyn Monroe did not complete. Eventually it was made over with Doris Day and James Garner.

That one was good, but this one is great.