Guest Wife

Director: Sam Wood Sam Wood

Overview

This screwball comedy stars Claudette Colbert as Mary, the wife of bumbling but likeable banker Chris (Dick Foran). Foreign correspondent Joe (Don Ameche) Chris' best friend, is in danger of losing his job because he's not married (his boss insists that all his employees be married-and remember, bosses could get away with this in 1945!) Mary magnamimously offers to pose as Joe's wife, leading to all sorts of comic misunderstandings-the silliest of which finds Mary being accused of living in sin with her real husband. As one critic put it, "It's oh-ho time!" Guest Wife might have even been funnier had it not been hampered by the stringest censorship of the era.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/24/2013
UPC:	0887090073301
Original Release:	1945
Rating:	NR
Source:	Olive
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[B&W, Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:30:00
Sales rank:	20,167

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Don Ameche	Joe
Claudette Colbert	Mary
Richard Foran	Chris,Chris
Charles Dingle	Worth
Grant Mitchell	Detective
Wilma Francis	Susy
Chester Clute	Urban Nichols
Irving Bacon	Nosey Character
Hal K. Dawson	Dennis
Edward Fielding	Arnold
Daniele Amfitheatrof	Composer

Technical Credits

Bruce Manning

John Klorer

Jack H. Skirball	Producer
Sam Wood	Director
Bruce Manning	Screenwriter
John Klorer	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Guest Wife is an enjoyable little comedy; what keeps it from being much more so is fairly easy to spot from the summary of its plot: Sly reporter convinces wife of best friend to pose as his own wife in order to fool his boss into thinking he's married. This is the kind of set-up in which the viewer is bound to spend a considerable amount of time watching the interplay between the reporter and his fake wife, and therefore there better be some chemistry between the two or the viewer is going to get bored. But if there's chemistry between the two, the viewer is going to want the two of them to get together in the end, which would not be acceptable to the censors active in 1945. And so viewers are frustrated because the chemistry between Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche has to be toned down somewhat, but not so much that one still doesn't root for them and feel cheated when Colbert goes back to her (perfectly nice) husband. Had it been made a few decades later, there could have been changes that would have solved this problem: Colbert could indeed have left her husband for Ameche. Or Ameche's character could have been shown as gay, in which case the audience would have been free to enjoy their interplay without wanting them to become romantically involved. Or there could have been a more in-depth look at the characters and their desires, whatever the eventual outcome. Without any of these options, Wife ends up as mildly entertaining but not memorable, despite a wonderful performance from Colbert and very fine work from Ameche and a solid supporting cast.