Seine Frau ist meine Frau

Guest Wife (Sam Wood, 1945) reunites the stars of the brilliant romantic comedy Midnight, as happily married Claudette Colbert ends up spending an inordinate amount of time posing as the wife of her husband's best friend (Don Ameche) in a bid to save the guy's job. It's OK, but the comic situations are often more stressful than funny, and the usually reliable Ameche is both cartoonish and flat. Still, Colbert does her best with the material, while character comedians Charles Dingle and Grant Mitchell work wonders in their supporting parts. Dozens of familiar faces crop up in small roles, including Irving Bacon, Harry Hayden and Chester Clute, playing a town gossip accused of voyeurism. The climactic sight gag is the best joke in the film.

What a fantastic premise, and a great experiment to try in real life - if you're very brave. In Guest Wife, Don Ameche plays a fast-talking newspaper man who had put across the lie that he's a happily married man. When his publisher sets up a dinner party and invites Mr. And Mrs. Ameche, Don panics. Claudette Colbert is his best friend's wife, and when she gets "loaned" to Don for the party, it brings up a lot of emotions. It brings out her husband's loyalty and trust, it brings out Don's selfishness, and it brings out Claudette's hatred for Don! Or does it...?

This screwball comedy is hilarious, and since I don't normally like that genre, it must be good. It's interesting, and true to life, that you can be the best of friends with someone and not be able to stand his/her spouse. It also makes you think about marital security. Just because you're married, does that mean you can stop working on your relationship? By pretending to be someone else's spouse for a weekend, can you really get to know them? This movie argues yes, and whether or not you end up agreeing (I did), you'll certainly enjoy the ninety minutes it takes to explain it.

This is one of those patented situation comedies that are repeatedly used in the movies or television. So and so has a job, and his boss is a believer in the sanctity of marriage. Somehow the boss learns that so and so is married, and has a nice marriage. When he gets an opportunity, the boss invites so and so and his wife to spend the weekend at his home...which panics so and so because he really is not married, but circumstances (ah, those perennial circumstances) have led to his having claimed he was married. Now his job and his future are on the line...what should he do?

Why, borrow the wife of his best friend, of course!

Variations appear everywhere: Christmas IN CONNECTICUT, for instance, has Barbara Stanwyck usurping the home of her friend Reginald Gardiner to impress her sanctimonious boss Sydney Greenstreet (who has another great "rounded" fat name - Alexander Yardley). On television a failed series in the middle 1960s was OCCASIONAL WIFE, which had an executive in a baby food company requiring a fake wife for the happiness of his employer. He uses his neighbor two floors beneath his apartment (the hero and heroin frequently have to meet on the fire escape of the apartment between theirs, leading to a running joke of the reaction of the man who owns that apartment. About the same time Jack Lemmon made his film GOOD NEIGHBOR SAM, where a married man has to help his neighbor (Romy Schneider) inherit her wealth by pretending he is her husband (Mike Connors). Connors reciprocates by pretending to be married to Lemmon's real wife Connie Stevens (leading to some complicated incidents of both men purposely making each other jealous -and almost driving neighbor Robert Q. Lewis crazy in the process).

Despite it's repetitive use it is not a bad plot, and in GUEST WIFE it was well handled. Here Ameche is a reporter for a newspaper - magazine chain, who has had to make up his marriage to make his copy more relevant. It has made Ameche a major news figure, and his boss (Charles Dingle, pleasantly using his pompous threatening characterization to comic use - and quite well) wants to meet the little woman, who behaved so bravely in the Far East. As Ameche has based her on Claudette Colbert (the wife of his best friend Dick Foran), he goes to Foran to get permission to borrow Claudette for a few hours (for dinner with Dingle). Foran is willing, but Colbert is tired of the number of times Ameche has somehow manipulated Foran into doing things for Ameche that were not in the interest of either Foran and Colbert.

But she goes along, until she finds that Dingle has become more plans for them in the coming weekend. Ameche, for fears for his job, willingly expands the time that Colbert is with him, but this slowly gets the formerly subservient Foran to resent his friend more and more. This leads to some nice pieces of comedy with hotel detective Grant Mitchell and with nosy neighbor Chester Clute. And Colbert, sensing an opportunity she won't miss, takes advantage of the situation to keep turning up the heat on a flustered Ameche. It turns out to be a nice little comedy, well worth viewing and even watching again.

Guest Wife is directed by Sam Wood, written by Bruce Manning and John Klorer, and stars Claudette Colbert (Mary), Don Ameche (Joe) and Dick Foran (Chris). The story tells of a journalist, Joe, who claims to his boss that he is married because the company would like their employees to be as such, and Joe wants to take some vacation leave. But he happens to still be single. Something that's now a major problem since his boss requests the company of Joe and wife for the weekend! His pal Chris lends him his wife Mary so as to bluff his boss into agreement, however, things start to get complicated.

Obviously hampered by the strict censorship that existed at the time of its making, Guest Wife none the less is a cheeky little comedy that boasts fun acting and a safe and solid script.. Tho referred to as a screwball comedy in some quarters, I feel that doesn't quite do the film any favours. Yes the gags are breezy enough, but they are hardly of the whirlwind scattergun variety. The interplay between the wonderful Colbert and the charming Ameche is spot on, even if the heavy cloud of censorship tone downs stops the material from being fully realised into a classic comedy must see. There's an itch about just who we are supposed to root for since Chris is a nice guy and Mary clearly loves him, and of course Joe is a bit of a cad when one considers his deception. Yet we are in the company of Mary and Joe for the most part, which although it be a fake marriage, it's a nice coupling. So either way come the end some viewers will be left disappointed.

Safe and tidy, with the film as a whole more likely to leave you with a smile more than a beaming grin. 6.5/10

"I can tell more about a woman by looking at her feet than by looking at her face". Luckily "Mary" (Claudette Colbert) doesn't wear Wellington boots in this sometimes rather confusing comedy. She is happily married to docile bank manager "Chris" (Dick Foran) who, in turn, just happens to be best pal with writer "Joe" (Don Ameche). This latter chap has a problem. He has won an award - and an $1,000 honorarium, but he needs to acquire a wife in an hurry. Who better than "Mary"? She's none too keen on "Joe" nor on this wacky idea, but for the sake of a peaceable life she agrees. Imagine the confusion that causes at home when his boss sees his wife in the newspapers married to an altogether different man! Tongues will wag and there might even be a run on the bank! Well, enter onto the scene the redoubtable Charles Dingle's "Worth" and then add a dose of mischief from a "Mary" who has decided she is going to have some fun, and we are set fair for a standard screenplay that delivers predictably, but that also showcases Colbert's engaging talent with this flighty and amiable character and an Ameche who is on good form, too. The plot does recycle itself once or twice and the scenarios do contrive the humour a little, but this has enough different about it to avoid the usual "love triangle" type of scenario, there are a few enjoyable twists, and ever since her "Cleopatra" in 1934, Colbert can do little wrong in my book.