Classic Films in Focus: MY FAVORITE WIFE (1940)

My Favorite Wife (1940) reunites stars Irene Dunne and Cary Grant after their first pairing as a comedic couple in The Awful Truth (1937), and once again there's both love and trouble. Grant plays a husband flummoxed by the return of his supposedly dead first wife on the very day that he marries his second, a situation that creates plenty of laughs as the original pair try to account for themselves and straighten out the mess that fate has handed them. While The Awful Truth might be the more perfect example of screwball comedy, My Favorite Wife has its own peculiar charms, especially in Grant's hilarious jealousy of Randolph Scott, who plays a rival for Dunne's affections.

Grant stars as accidental bigamist Nick Arden, who has his first wife declared legally dead seven years after her ship wrecked so that he can marry second wife, Bianca (Gail Patrick). The original Mrs. Arden, Ellen (Irene Dunne), is very much alive, however, and promptly turns up looking to resume her old life. Chaos reigns as Nick tries to figure out how to break the news to Bianca, who begins to think that Nick is suffering from psychological problems. Ellen, meanwhile, has neglected to tell Nick that she wasn't alone on that island for seven years, or that her companion, Stephen (Randolph Scott), is a paragon of masculinity who also has a romantic interest in Ellen.

The story focuses on the comedic opportunities in this setup, so we get only the faintest hints at the grief Nick must have endured after Ellen's disappearance or the heartache Ellen feels at missing seven years of her children's lives. It can't have been all bad, though, since Ellen and Stephen look more like they spent those years at some cushy island resort rather than scrounging for coconuts on a deserted scrap of sand. It was such a nice island, in fact, that Stephen wants to go back and take Ellen with him. Most of the suffering we really see in the movie is meant to be laughed at, with Nick and his new bride, Bianca, enduring the worst torments. Ellen worries about telling the children that she is their long-lost mother, but she primarily functions as a chaos agent to upend Nick's life and push Bianca out of her usurped position.

Dunne dives into a series of zany antics while Grant reacts to them, and the arrangement serves both of them quite well. Nick's reaction on first seeing Ellen alive is a quintessential bit of Grant hilarity, as is Nick's final bumbling effort to bed down in an uncomfortable attic room when he wants to be in the bedroom with his wife. Nick's jealousy of Stephen is especially funny if you know that Grant and Randolph Scott were great friends who lived together off and on for twelve years (there is some speculation that they were lovers). It's therefore rather provocative, and also truly delightful, to see the image of the scantily clad Scott somersaulting around Grant's head as Nick obsesses over the "Adam" to his wife's "Eve." The only weak link in the quartet is Gail Patrick as Bianca, who isn't nice to enough to feel really sorry for but isn't mean enough to hate, either. We need to see her threaten the Arden children with boarding school or flirt with another man in order to feel that she deserves her humiliation and defeat, but she comes across as a rather ordinary girl baffled by her groom's mad behavior. She never has a chance against Ellen, but it would be nice to see the competition at least be interesting.

My Favorite Wife picked up three Oscar nominations for writing, art direction, and score. Garson Kanin, who directed the picture, was primarily a writer but also directed the very funny Bachelor Mother (1939). For more of Irene Dunne, see Love Affair (1939) and I Remember Mama (1948) as well as her third and final collaboration with Grant, Penny Serenade (1941). Grant was busy in 1940; his other films that year include His Girl Friday and, of course, The Philadelphia Story. Rugged Randolph Scott is best remembered as the star of many Westerns, especially 7 Men from Now (1956), The Tall T (1957), and Ride the High Country (1962). Look for Alabama native Gail Patrick in My Man Godfrey (1936). Scotty Beckett, who plays young Tim Arden, was a popular child star whose other films include Kings Row (1942) and A Date with Judy (1948), but his biography is another tragic tale of early stardom's awful price.

Classic Films in Focus: PAT AND MIKE (1952)

Following Adam's Rib (1949) in the progression of Hepburn-Tracy pictures, Pat and Mike (1952) reunites all of the key players who had made that film such a success; we have our two stars, of course, and also director George Cukor and writers Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, who were apparently inspired to write the story because of Katharine Hepburn's real talent for athletic pursuits. While this outing for the collaborators lacks the snap of the earlier picture, fans of the leading couple will find it worthwhile, although the most enthusiastic viewers will probably be those with an established interest in sports stars of the 1940s and 50s, since many of them make cameo appearances and demonstrate the sports for which they were known. Pat and Mike is not the best of the Hepburn-Tracy movies, but it features several solid performances and reveals a surprisingly quirky sense of humor that most people will appreciate.

Katharine Hepburn plays Patricia "Pat" Pemberton, a widowed university athletics teacher whose talent for sports dissipates whenever her pushy, condescending fiance, Collier Weld (William Ching), is on the scene. Determined to prove herself to herself if not to him, Pat accepts the offer of management from promoter Mike Conovan (Spencer Tracy), even though it's clear that Conovan has a slightly crooked idea of professional sports. They embark on a tour of tennis and golf matches, where Pat performs brilliantly until Collier shows up. Mike's evolving affection for Pat, meanwhile, inspires him to go straight, even though his investors take a dim view of any practice that hurts their chances of making money.

Pat is a different sort of character for Hepburn because of her nervousness around Collier, which is revealed to the audience through Pat's habit of putting an uncertain hand to her lip every time she spots Collier in the crowd. Away from his life-draining effect, Pat is confident and strong, even to the point of upsetting Mike by saving him from his mobster investors. Some viewers will find Pat's weakness irritating, particularly because Hepburn is playing her, but the story means to warn us against yoking ourselves to partners who undermine our abilities instead of nurturing them. We understand that Mike, class differences aside, is a better partner for Pat because he believes in her and wants her to succeed, while Collier only wants her to settle down and be a good little wife.

Hepburn is in particularly fine physical form, displaying her athleticism and looking much younger than she had in the previous year's The African Queen (1951). Tracy, however, appears older than his 52 years, and in this picture the age difference between the pair is at its most glaring. By Desk Set (1957) they would look well-matched again, the seven years between them not really being that much by Hollywood standards. Pat and Mike was their seventh picture together, and reportedly Hepburn's favorite, although most viewers prefer their first film, Woman of the Year (1942), and Adam's Rib (1949), their sixth, as the best of the nine movies they made together. Their last movie, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), is hard to watch because everyone on set knew that Tracy was dying, and the real-life emotions bleed through to give the picture a powerful but almost unbearable pathos.

Classic film fans will appreciate supporting and walk-on performances from Aldo Ray, Jim Backus, Charles Bronson, Chuck Connors, and Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, while sports enthusiasts will enjoy seeing legends like Babe Didrikson and Alice Marble. Gordon and Kanin earned an Oscar nomination for their screenplay, the third nomination for their collaborative work. See more of George Cukor's work with Katharine Hepburn in Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Holiday (1938), and The Philadelphia Story (1940). You'll find Aldo Ray in We're No Angels (1955) and The Green Berets (1968). Look for more of William Ching in D.O.A. (1950) and In a Lonely Place (1950).