Too Many Husbands (1940)

This is the better-known story from My Favorite Wife, gender switched (also 1940, but which actually post-dates this film.)

In this case, it's a first husband (Fred MacMurray) who is stranded in a desert island and declared dead who only shows up once his 'widow' (Jean Arthur) has married his best friend and business partner (Melvyn Douglas.)

Due to an unexplained legal technicality the five-year waiting period is able to be shortened to a mere six months; and no fault whatsoever is found in the double-bride.

The dynamic this creates is akin to that achieved by the Popeye/Olive/Bluto love triangle, not specifically in any one of the cartoon shorts, but cumulatively over the entire animated series (From the Fleischer shorts on to the modern era) with not only an obvious choice (why doesn't Olive simply choose Popeye?) but also stressing Olive's inability to make her decision once and for all (an issue which this film openly addresses again and again.)

This makes for a tension which is not only maintained the entire length of the film but which, in a conclusion strangely reminiscent of the perverse ménage à trois from Luis Buñuel's Viridiana (1961) survives even beyond the end credits.

The premise of the polyamorous wife, by passing the test of a judicial court is able to eat its cake and have it too. It's rare that a vintage American film (even pre-Code) is this subversive.

The issue of sex is the elephant in the room: No one talks about it, and the answer to having both husbands under the same roof is to have sex with neither, which brings up the obvious solution: Divorce both and start from scratch, but even this simple answer evades her. While it's quite obvious neither husband was perfect, she finds that she immensely enjoys the sudden, simultaneous attention from both. So, why should she choose?

What if she chose the first husband only to find out she's pregnant from the second? Nah. That would be going much too far.

The cast is uniformly great; but Douglas' remains an odd character who seems like a strangely bland choice in the film's unresolved romantic rivalry, (he resorts to cheating; gives up much too easily and needs to be convinced by her to get back in the game, he also seems strictly to be in the friend zone; but then at the end he inexplicably is able to turn a loss into a triumph much to MacMurray's discomfort.)

My Favorite Wife fares better in the formidability of its two cast male rivals.

Of the Screwball Comedies in the collection we are currently screening this is the one that most approximates my idea of what one is: Role reversal (even though it's obvious that it's the woman who must make the final decision, again and again the responsibility is laid upon the men who, no matter how much they try, can't resolve the situation,) physical comedy (MacMurray is particularly dexterous,) miscommunication, clever word play, etc.

Also with Harry Davenport, Dorothy Peterson (as a red herring lovestruck character with no resolution,) and Melville Cooper