I Married a Woman

An American comedy; A story about a mild-mannered advertising executive who finds that his life has added complications after he marries the glamorous model from his beer commercial. The script was lame and unfunny, and the direction fails to make the distant signals of humour work, relying on narration to overfill the gaps. Diana Dors, as a pouting beauty trying to rescue her marriage, has to call on her charm and sparkle because, on paper, the film doesn't work well. Dors was matched with George Gobel, who failed to come up with the required robust persona that would make a tale about a neglected wife stick. Only John Wayne, who shows up in a cameo role, produces a genuine laugh. Angie Dickinson, similarly in a brief appearance, is creditable.

This is probably more fun now than it was when it came out.

It's a bit of black and white nostalgia now. Then, it was a showpiece for George Gobel, improbably married to sexbomb Diana Dors -- I guess that was the "joke."

Jessie Royce Landis is fun, as always, and the supporting cast supports very well.

It's by no means awful. It's kind of a man's fantasy about being a wimp who's adored by a gorgeous girl -- not unlike the better and better known "Seven Year Itch."

I guess George Goebel was a popular enough as a TV comedian that it was worth a try at seeing what he could do on the big screen. But outside of the peculiarities of his show, such as constantly turning to the audience and explaining what he's thinking, or anticipating what's to follow in a skit he's in, he is as generic a comic actor as could be. This story is equally generic, and typically of late RKO films and perhaps Hollywood comedies of the 1950's, a generally safe, monotonous atmosphere prevades. Goebel is cast as an advertising man with an overstated, mountain out of a molehill problem of writing some ad copy, and a similar problem with his marital relations. Though he struggles through endless rewrites and sleepless nights, his job problem seems easily accomplished to us non-ad men. If it weren't for needless, plot extending meddling by his boss, the story could have been halved. Goebel is married to georgeous blonde Diana Dors, which would seem unlikely on the face of it, considering how mild-mannered and less than he-man a catch George would be, but Diana herself always seemed quiet and mild and ladylike in most every film or guest appearance on TV I've ever seen, despite the sexy, bombshell exterior. Maybe it's her British reserve. She's beautiful but calm. She plays a scatterbrain, running on impulse power, making petty schemes to con George into doing or buying things, assisted by her equally devious mother. She instigates a twist in the story to make Goebel jealous, while his boss is setting him up in an ad campaign he doesn't know he's in, and it's all handled in so dull a way it makes one think how much livelier it would have been if it were compacted into the short space of a TV program, where this story really belonged. An interesting gag in it was getting John Wayne to play in an imaginary movie scene playing in a theatre, that's in color, whereas the rest of the film, i.e. the "real life" scenes are black and white. Later, George and Diana meet John Wayne, and he's still in color, though now NOT on a movie screen, until his wife shows up, and they go to half color, half black and white, then he too, joins her in the all black and white world. I speculate what that means, if there's supposed to be a message about percieved "reality" of film, or the debilitating conseqence of marriage?

"I Married a Woman" is a most unusual movie in 1956...in addition to having a pretty dumb title. After being made, it sat on the shelf for two years before ultimately being released. Usually this means the film is god-awful and the studio is afraid to release it. But in this case it happened because the studio, RKO, was in a financial crisis and suspended production on everything! And so, they sat until eventually some deal was made to have Universal Studios release the films.

In "I Married a Woman", George Gobel plays a very boring man, Mickey Briggs, who is married to a knock-out wife, Janice (Diana Dors). Despite this, he seems mostly indifferent to the woman and thinks mostly about work....even though most men would envy him for having such a pretty wife. For instance, in one part of the film, she wants to go see a romantic film...and Mickey acts as if he's being forced to eat glass when he goes with her! And, again and again, Janice laments that Mickey is so indifferent to her...and she wishes he was like he used to be when they were dating. It's so bad that Janice even tries to make him jealous...just to get SOME sort of reaction! Later, she thinks Mickey's indifference is because he's been cheating on her...mostly because she's been egged on by her awful mother! This is an interesting reversal...something audiences probably didn't expect! What's next? See the film....and see just how bad the Briggs marriage become.

So is this any good? Well, yes and no. I like the general idea of the film. But I also must say that after a while I felt a bit annoyed by the film, as the characters seemed like jerks. Mickey was a very inattentive husband. Phyllis was a very annoying wife. And Phyllis' wife needed a good kick in the pants! I don't normally feel this way when I watch a film....and I think the writers didn't quite hit the mark and they should have softened the characters a bit. As a result, the film felt more like a sitcom than a movie. However, I did enjoy John Wayne's cameos...particularly the one at the end of the picture!

An alleged comedy starring George Gobel and Diana Dors' cleavage, this TV-style sitcom asks us to believe 1) George would win Diana, 2) they'd live in what looks like a $10 million Manhattan duplex on his salary as a junior ad executive, 3) she would never, never get the chance to tell him she's expecting, which would essentially end the movie, 4) he'd put up with Jessie Royce Landis's endless henpecking (cue the mother-in-law jokes), and 5) the ultimate symbol of screen urbanity, sophistication, and chivalry is… John Wayne. The writing is barely television level, and director Hal Kanter (later a TV mogul, responsible for "Julia" and other notable sitcoms), barely knows where to point the camera. The story's so thin that even at 85 minutes it feels padded. Diana, always good to look at and not an incapable actress, deserved better than this.