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Too Many Husbands is a prime example of the screwball comedy. All the usual elements are in place -- romance out of whack, a collection of goofy but likable characters, frenetic, sometimes slapstick action, fast-delivery, witty dialog, a ridiculous situation, class satire, and the cops further gumming up the works -- all breaking off in unexpected directions like the baseball pitch the genre is named after.

A flighty rich dame (Jean Arthur) finds herself married to two different men at the same time, and she loves both of them. She is not an intentional bigamist. Hubby number one, sexy but ever wandering Fred MacMurry was lost at sea and declared legally dead, so the lonely widow marries his best friend, reliable, hard-working smoothie Melvin Douglas. When hubby number one shows up alive after all and ready for action with his beautiful wife, the fun ensues. Poor Jean, she just can't make up her mind which husband to choose. With one a reckless adventurer and the other a neglectful workaholic no sensible woman would want either, but this is Jean Arthur! She's having a whale of a time as the two compete to show her more attention than either ever had in the past. She may just take forever to make up her mind!

Jean Arthur, who was reportedly a serious dingbat in real life, seems perfectly cast in this type of role. MacMurry and Douglas are in their element here, too. The three bright stars, all at their peaks, make this one a delight all the way through. Good support comes from Henry Davenport, another mainstay of the screw-baller, as Jean's harried father, and Edgar Buchanan, looking younger than you thought he ever was, as a suspicious cop.

Too Many Husbands is a bit of a slow-starter, but give it a chance. Under Wesley Ruggles' sure direction, it soon picks up steam, getting wackier and funnier as it goes along. The great acting, gorgeous, luminous, old nitrate black and white cinematography and smooth editing you have come to expect from big studio productions of the 'thirties and the 'forties make this one a pleasure to watch. Smooth, glossy entertainment from Old Hollywood's Golden Era.

I wasn't expecting much from this Jean Arthur comedy vehicle, and as a result, I was pleasantly surprised by it.

Arthur plays a woman married to the best friend of her dead husband, who's mighty surprised when her dead husband turns out not to be so dead after all. Now she's got two men fighting over her, a state of affairs she settles back to enjoy, much to the dismay of her father, played by that terrific character actor Harry Davenport.

Jean Arthur is absolutely adorable, even if she is a bit of a brat in this. You want to hug her even as you want to see her kicked in the seat of her pants. Fred MacMurray plays the back from the dead husband, while Melvyn Douglas plays the best friend. I felt MacMurray straining a bit at the screwball comedy antics he was asked to tackle, but Douglas navigates the material expertly and probably gives the film's best performance.

I will say that the film is utterly unpredictable -- I could not guess how it was going to turn out right up until its closing credits.

Grade: B

When I first heard the premise;a spouse declared dead comes back home after months alone on an island , only to find his beloved wife has re-entered marital bliss with his best friend, I thought 'it'll be interesting to see if they come anywhere near the brilliance of "My Favorite Wife"' And I also presumed this had to be a rather blatant rip-off of the Cary Grant-Irene Dunne classic released ,incidentally, in the same year. Boy was I wrong! For starters this appears to have been released months earlier and the screenplay,comic timing,and acting are easily in the same league as the best of the so-called 'screwball comedies'. When Jean Arthur is "on" there is no actress who can beat her and she looks about as good in this rarely shown film as she ever has . Fred MacMurry and Melvyn Douglas hold up their end, but the surprise, for me, was good old Harry Davenport who gets many lines , many chances to display bravado mugging and line readings, and never fails. This is a Jean Arthur film that needs immediate release on the DVD market!!

Over at RKO Studios where My Favorite Wife was being done Columbia was working on Too Many Husbands, a reverse of the same plot premise. That is a presumed dead husband showing up unexpectedly and inconveniently and complicating poor Jean Arthur's life. Of course when your husbands are Fred MacMurray and Melvyn Douglas that's a choice any girl would love being stuck with.

Too Many Husbands as a history going back to a W.Somerset Maugham play and before that to Tennyson's Enoch Arden. In this version Arthur has married her late husband's publishing partner in their firm Melvyn Douglas. But like Irene Dunne who spent several years on her tropical island in My Favorite Wife, Fred MacMurray is only there for a few months. Douglas however convinced he was really dead got him declared so in order that he may marry Arthur.

So now what to do? After all kinds of methods tried the decision is really kind of taken out of their hands. Will the loser bow out gracefully? One never knows in these things.

Jean Arthur was a mainstay over at Columbia Pictures, but her leading men MacMurray and Douglas were borrowed from Paramount and MGM respectively. And instead of a live in mother Arthur has a doting father in Harry Davenport living with her who just wishes things would go back to normal with one man in her life. Presiding over it all is Douglas's butler Melville Cooper whose facial expressions are a throwback to silent era days. But they're all he needs to get his point across.

A remake of this with a military and show business background was done in 1955 called Three For The Show. Even with Betty Grable, Jack Lemmon, and Gower Champion around it's decidedly inferior to this.

Too Many Husbands even got some Oscar recognition with a nomination for Best Sound Recording. Fans of the three leads should be pleased.

Though one might suspect "Too Many Husbands" as being in the same vein as "My Favorite Wife," it's actually based on a Somerset Maugham play. The stars of this 1940 film are Jean Arthur, Melvyn Douglas, Fred MacMurray and Harry Davenport. After her first husband, Bill Cardew (MacMurray) was lost at sea, his grieving, lonely widow Vicky marries his friend and business partner, Henry Lowndes (Douglas) six months later. Boy is she surprised when Bill shows up alive. So is her new husband and her father (Davenport). It then falls to the confused Vicky to decide which husband she wants.

This is a very amusing comedy with terrific performances from all the stars. Melvyn Douglas, one of the truly great American actors, had to do this type of film until he finally reached old age and could show the world how sensational he was. He's very funny, his voice cracking when he's upset. The men act like quarreling children, playing games of oneupmanship and chasing Vicky everywhere. Seeing the frilly guest room, Bill questions Henry's effeminate taste. "What's this fabric?" Bill asks, holding up a piece of curtain. "DOTTED SWISS!" Henry yells in a booming voice. In another scene, Bill impresses Vicky by jumping over furniture, causing Henry to give it a try. He falls flat on his face. Arthur does an excellent job as a somewhat dizzy woman who loves both men, and Davenport is a riot as her sober-faced, worried father. MacMurray has always seemed bland to me, but he holds his own as the returning husband who's been stranded on an island for a year.

Much better than I thought it would be, and Arthur fans will love it.