Hochzeit wider Willen

I agree with the other positive reviews here, with one reservation. The film is a very funny, well written and performed screwball comedy. I especially enjoyed the sequence where Miland has to scramble between two adjoining apartments, a situation I've seen lots of times in comedy films; it's delightful here because of Miland's perfect performance and the spot on comic pacing. It's great fun seeing the cutsy-pie, air head performance of Gail Patrick; in her other "other woman" roles ("My Favorite Wife", etc.) she plays it stern and bland, here she's very funny and likable. OK, my one reservation--Loretta Young is miscast; she is off-putting in the first half of the film, seeming a total bitch. Later in the film, as her character softens she becomes a sympathetic character and right for the part. Hers is a role that seems to have been written for Roziland Russel or Jean Arthur; as I watched the film it was very easy to imagine those actresses fitting the part and the dialog to perfection. Occasionally Young seems to be handling her lines as Russel would, including her vocal inflections.

Doctor Takes a Wife, The (1940)

*** (out of 4)

Minor but entertaining screwball-comedy about a feminist writer (Loretta Young) and a doctor (Ray Milland) who meet while on vacation but hate each other from the start. After a mix up the media makes a mistake an announces that they were married so the two must pretend to be so that they can keep their careers. There's nothing overly special about this film but it does contain enough laughs to make it entertaining. It was nice seeing Young play a feminist as she's constantly shouting and holding her head up high while at the same time playing the sweet and loving wife as a joke. Her sweetness mixes perfectly well with Milland's dry humor and he really shines with his comic timing. The only really weak segment of the film comes when Milland is rushing between two apartments while trying to keep his girlfriend from finding out Young is in the other apartment. Reginald Gardiner and Gail Patrick add nice support as the editor and Milland's other girl. Edward Van Sloan has a small, thankless role as well.

Loretta Young (June) has just written a best-selling book about how spinsters can enjoy life without men. She is stuck out of town and needs to get back to her agent and boyfriend Reginald Gardiner (John) to start work on her second novel. Cue Lecturer Ray Milland (Dr Stirling). He has a fiancée Gail Patrick (Marilyn) who he intends to marry once he gets a professorship at his college. He is in the same out of town area and he ends up giving Young a lift back into New York. By some misunderstanding, a "Just Married" sign is attached to his car, and everyone assumes the couple have just got married. Uh-oh, this is bad for Young's career and for Milland's. But, actually, the situation could benefit them both. Watch to find out how…

This film is OK while you watch it but nothing outstanding. I thought Loretta Young was the best character despite being a bit of a horror at the beginning. And I've never been a fan of that wisecracking, screwball comedy quick patter where everyone talks over each other. SHUT UP! This film, annoyingly, has some tedious sections with this contrived device, especially at the beginning. However, once we get away from these, the dialogue is actually quite funny in parts, eg, Loretta's quip to Milland in the car when one of his model heads falls onto the car floor - "Trunk murderer? She asks him directly. Another amusing scene occurs where one of the meat-head College boys is asked a test question and asks for Milland's number and if it's OK to phone him later with the answer.

One last point - how come they cast all the spinsters to look the same? There is a definite spinster look to the women at the start of this film. What the best-selling book really should have told them to do was to get dressed up and go sit in a bar. They should then get sorted with a shag and everyone's happy. The world can be a very simple place if we just take the right attitude.

In a role that was obviously first intended for Cary Grant, Ray Milland through an innocent series of misunderstanding finds everyone with the mistaken impression that he's married to Loretta Young. That would be all right, but the unmarried Young has just written a best selling book that has become a feminist manifesto in its day about how unattached women need not feel inferior. At least one of her readers feels she's a traitor to the breed.

Milland is a doctor, but not of the practicing kind, he's an instructor at a college with hopes of a professorship which is granted to him when the folks in charge of his college think he's now married. He had intended to marry Gail Patrick once again in her typecast part as the other woman. She doesn't like it at all.

On the other hand Reginald Gardiner as Young's publicist is perfectly willing to go with the flow. He's got plans in the wind for a book on the joys of being a newlywed if Young will keep up the charade.

So how will two people who really can't stand each other keep this up? That is the crux of the plot of The Doctor Takes A Wife.

Milland has a drunk scene which he does well and might have led to his casting in The Lost Weekend. He certainly fills Cary Grant's shoes quite nicely in the film. Young also does well as does the rest of the cast.

I also have to single out Frank Sully and Gordon Jones as a pair of amiable lunkhead football players who Milland passes to keep their eligibility. They look to return the favor and see how they do it.

The Doctor Takes A Wife is not a top drawer screwball comedy, but it certainly will amuse.

Unlike some other reviewers who found Loretta Young (as June Cameron) off-putting in the first part of the film, I liked her. It was rather Ray Milland (Dr Timothy Sperling) who came across as a misogynist blockhead. I don't know what attitudes were common in the USA c. 1940, but my guess is that Sperling's crass biologist views about gender roles were pretty marginal even back then. Still, director Alexander Hall evidently intended viewers to agree with the doctor rather than with the successful female author; after all, it is her who changes in the course of the film while Sperling stays the same.

In any case, once you put modern sensibilities aside and suspend disbelief long enough to accept the extremely unlikely setup of the storyline, this is a very good screwball comedy with witty dialogue and some absurdly comical situations. Both Young and Milland have great comic timing. So does Gail Patrick, to my surprise. I have seen here in other comedies (My Man Godfrey, Mad About Music), and while in each case she played quite different types of female roles (cold temptress, anxious mother) she was never really funny. Here she is, and that's great to see. In sum, The Doctor Takes a Wife is an enjoyable comedy that is well-worth watching.