You Can't Fool Your Wife

The beginning of "You Can't Fool your Wife" shows us Clara and Andrew Hinklin's yearbook photos, and their wedding, where the Chaplain advises the groom "You might as well make up your mind from the start - You Can't Win!" We see that time passes, and they are having their fifth anniversary, and thats when the trouble starts. In one of Lucy's first lead roles, we see the typical husband and wife misunderstandings and mistaken identity that would become usual fare for Lucy and Ricky fifteen years later in "I Love Lucy". When this film was made, Lucy had been in movies for about seven years, but mostly uncredited, deleted, or minor roles. Lucille Ball and James Ellison had worked together in "Next Time I Marry" in 1938. Robert Coote is the client Mr. Battincourt, who gets Andrew into all sorts of trouble at home. Emma Dunn is the blustering, interfering mother in law, stirring up the pot. The cast list on IMDb shows Charles Lane, scenes deleted, which is a shame, since he was a great character actor from the 1930s and 1940s. The sound effects play a role here... the toaster and the rocking chair add the only comedy in the first half of the film. Virginia Vale plays a supporting role "Sally". Vale has an interesting bio on IMDb - she had won a contest to come to Hollywood, but it appears she retired from movies at the ripe old age of 25 and didn't appear in films after 1945? In the plot, Battincourt cooks up a scheme that may or may not get Hinklin out of all his troubles... and all neatly wrapped up in a 68 minute RKO shortie. The whole way through the film, it borders on being a comedy, but no-one cracks jokes or falls down - it's a situational low-key comedy that's really more of a love story. This one does NOT appear to be a remake of the 1923 film of the same name.

Half the problems in the marriage of James Ellison and Lucille Ball are due to the fact there's the mother-in-law from hell living with them in the person of Emma Dunn. I could identify with that, my parents had one of the grandmas living at home and it wasn't pleasant for the odd one out.

Taken partly from The Guardsman and partly from The Awful Truth, You Can't Fool Your Wife is an amusing domestic comedy showing some of the talents of Lucille Ball in that direction. She plays a dual role here, Jimmy Ellison's who fears the marriage has gone stale after a year and a South American bombshell. No need for a voice coach to get the accent right, she had the best teacher in the world in that newlywed husband she had at home.

Also in the cast is Robert Coote playing a droll English visitor who runs the London office at Ellison's business. The man likes to party hearty and wants a companion to share the romping with. He really unknowingly starts all the marital discord.

The last 15 minutes with the two Lucys at a masquerade party has a lot of good laughs in it.

You Can't Fool Your Wife holds up pretty well after almost 80 years.

Strictly a B-film programmer, YOU CAN'T FOOL YOUR WIFE would have more accurately been titled YOU CAN'T FOOL YOUR HUSBAND, because it's the hubby who has the wool pulled over his eyes by a plan that backfires when his wife attempts to disguise herself as a Latin beauty.

It's one of those light-hearted romantic comedies with a screwball touch that LUCILLE BALL got to do during her RKO days. And fortunately, although he has a rather thankless role, JAMES ELLISON has good chemistry with her and is a bit less bland than usual in a role that reveals he had a flair for this kind of romp.

EMMA DUNN has the kind of mother role that was a forerunner of the parts THELMA RITTER would play in the '50s--quick with the sarcastic one-liners that have her treating her son-in-law like a bum. ROBERT COOTE has a fine time as a gentleman who comes up with the scheme to save Ellison's marriage.

It spins its tale in just a little over an hour and ends up with a rather bittersweet ending on a false note, and much too abruptly.

Lighthearted and engaging. Special notice to actress Emma Dunn who plays Mother Fields, funny and gifted. Highly recommended!!! A chance to see a movie that is from the golden age of films. Lucille Ball plays 2 characters towards the end and is highly engaging.

This RKO second feature stars Lucille Ball and James Ellison, starts out amusingly -- particularly the scene where Ellison is hung over and the toaster is very noisy -- but ends in very predictable fashion. The leads can't hold this fluff together: Ball is unconvincing and Ellison is too montonous. Robert Coote, in support, is excellent.