Too Many Husbands (Ruggles, 1940)
My Fall Movies # 26 [end]
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[Too Many Husbands] seems to have been playing truant from the school of screwball comedy. More likely, it fell in the shadow of RKO’s similarly-themes hit, My Favorite Wife, released the same year. Directed by veteran Wesley Ruggles, from a play by W. Somerset Maughan, the plot turns triangularly on a woman (Jean Arthur) finding herself with two husbands (Fred MacMurray and Melvyn Douglas) when the first turns ip a year after reportedly drowning on a boat cruise. To her increasing delight, they vie desperately for her affections. Kept light and pacey by Ruggles, the comedy sails surprisingly close to the censorship wind with Arthur’s coquettish performance and a strong suggestion of her not being averse to a menage a trois. With hindsight, there is a pre-echo, too, of the more serious actuality of soldiers returningn home from WW2 to find their wives and girlfriends otherwise engaged. (More here.)
