Businessman's wife, widowed for one year before marrying her deceased husband's best friend, finds out her first husband is still alive; he was believed by the Coast Guard to have drowned after the sinking of his ship, but instead was rescued off an island. Although based upon a play (by W. Somerset Maugham!), "Too Many Husbands" now resembles Cary Grant's 1940 comedy "My Favorite Wife" with a sex-switch (this film actually beat "Wife" into theaters by a scant two months, but was not as popular). Jean Arthur is enjoyable, as always, but her choice of men is rather depressing, and there isn't any fun in her predicament when the hubbies are this selfish and childish. Fred MacMurray's returning spouse comes on like an overgrown Boy Scout (and the actor's smug condescension towards everyone else on-screen is rather off-putting); Melvyn Douglas is a smoother fit for Arthur, but he's been directed to be boorish, with lots of heavy sighs and eyeball rolls (it's clear whom we in the audience are supposed to root for). Disgruntled characters harping on one another isn't usually the stuff of laugh-out-loud comedy, and this one palls with an hour left to go. ** from ****
Review of Too Many Husbands
