So Your Wife Wants to Work

The last of the Joe McDOakes shorts from Warner Brothers has wife Phyllis Coates wanting to work. Hubby George O'Hanlon gets her a job in his firm's accounting department with the boss's connivance that she will be so miserable she'll be anxious to get back to housework. Of course, as with all of this series, O'Hanlon's plans aft gang agley.

There are the usual absurd comedy bits early on, leading to a typically fine entry into the series. However the economics of film making were changing, and short subject production was no longer profitable.If you wanted to make a cheap, 20-minute comedy series, you went to the television producers. Farewell, Joe, and enjoy being behind that giant eightball.

This is included as a DVD extra with James Stewart's film "The Spirit of St. Louis". It's a Joe McDoakes comedy short--and Warner made a bunch of them during this era.

The film starts with a cute scene where Joe is ignoring his wife while eating breakfast. Well, the wife (Phyllis Coates--who played the first Lois Lane on TV) deals with it in a cute way. It seems she wants to go back to work and wants Joe to get her a job at his office. Joe can't stand the thought and so he tries to sabotage her by getting the boss to make her life miserable...as they agree "...us men have to stick together". However, again and again, the wife shows her hubby up and eventually this ends with a clever twist.

This is well written and cute...and you should be sure to watch this as it's actually a lot better than the feature on the DVD!

George O'Hanlon bid goodbye to his character Joe McDoakes in this short subject, So Your Wife Wants To Work. It's unsettling to him when his wife proves better at it than he is.

O'Hanlon is your time serving drone at his office for twelve years and if he has to have a working wife he wants her where he can keep an eye on her. He asks his boss Emory Parnell for a job at his place.

Coates proves such a success at work that in the end Parnell and Hanlon have to make some decisions and it doesn't look good for O'Hanlon.

This is a good short subject and if you want to know how O'Hanlon gets his universe back in order think of the sacrifices that Al Bundy occasionally had to make to keep Peg happy.

So Your Wife Wants to Work (1956)

*** (out of 4)

Joe McDoakes comedy has Joe's wife (Phyllis Coates) wanting to work but her husband isn't too keen on the idea because he believes women should stay at home. He talks his boss into giving her a job so that the two can treat her so badly that she wants to go back home but things don't work out as planned. This is another winning entry in the long-running series that at times was rather hit and miss. This time out we get plenty of strong laughs coming from not only George O'Hanlon but also Coates who manages to give a funny performance. The best gag of the movie happens when she's checking over some old records and determines that Davy Crocket was one of the original members of the comedy. The payoff to this joke is quite funny as is another sequence where the wife has to fix some tax issues, which of course were messed up by the husband. This here was the final of sixty-two films in the series.

A brief look at a time when women were really devalued. In this one, the tables are turned and the hapless husband ends up playing second fiddle to his wife, who turns out to be an amazing business manager. He is in cahoots with his boss, who totally blows the whole gig. Of course, he is that sort of Dagwood Bumstead piece of deadwood that has managed to exist for 12 years in his position. Unfortunately for our ineffective husband, her salary comes out of his salary and the boss keeps raising that salary. Some of the dialogue is so sexist, but the final message is quite heartening. The final scene is quite classic. Sometimes we bite off much more than we can chew. Also, don't take unsolicited advice from a fellow male.