Guest Wife is a cute comedy from the 1940′s I recently had the pleasure of watching. Starring Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche, the film is sort of reminiscent of the classic film It Happened One Night.
Christopher Price played by Richard Foran is happily married to Mary (Claudette Colbert). On the eve of their second honeymoon, Chris’ best friend Joe Parker shows up to request a huge favor.
Joe (played by a very debonair and young Don Ameche) has been working abroad. While away, Joe has been writing letters back home to his boss about his wife and their harrowing adventures. Naturally, Joe’s boss wants to meet Joe’s Mrs. However this proves problematic as Joe does not actually have a wife.
Joe and Mary pretending to be married for Joe’s benefit.
Under protest, Mary agrees to pretend to be Joe’s wife for the benefit of Joe’s boss. While pretending to be married, Joe’s boss and a hotel house detective see Mary and Chris together and mistakenly believe they are having an affair. As things get more out of hand- Mary decides to turn up the heat herself to teach both of them a lesson by pretending to have fallen for Joe.
Chris and Mary the “real” happy couple.
Guest Wife is light and funny and I enjoyed it. If you are a fan of Claudette Colbert or Don Ameche this movie is worth an hour and half of your time. The back of my movie box, says “Comparable to ‘It Happened One Night.’” Well- yes it is comparable, if you mean a romantic comedy starring Claudette Colbert. However, It Happened One Night staring Clark Gable and a ten years younger Colbert, is a much better film and is considered one of the best romantic comedies of all time. That film also won all five Academy Awards it was nominated for and was a big hit at the box office in 1934. As I said, Guest Wife is reminiscent of It Happened One Night due to some similarities but it certainly is not as good. If you are in the mood for a couple of black and white romantic comedies, this weekend rent them both as they both are entertaining.
Okay, so why was the guy writing letters to his boss about the adventures he and his imaginary wife were having? Why did he need to invent a wife?
That detail alludes me- I am trying to remember why. I think it was because marriage was supposed to mellow a guy out or something… the boss seemed really taken with the whole idea of Joe being married, although “the boss” was a life long bachelor. Sometimes details of the plots in old movies escape me, because I am too busy looking at the cars, the makeup, the jewelry, or the decor… especially art deco. If the film is shot in any sort of art deco locale- you can pretty much guarantee I won’t remember a word of the dialogue.
I have an Art Deco book. Muhahahahaha.
Sorry what was that you say “a book”… I can only read text if it has light behind it. For example on a computer monitor or the drive up menu at Taco Bell. ;oP
That’s too bad. It has lots of pictures.
I’m looking at plenty of pictures right now- of gravy and turkey stuff like that. Does it have pictures of Art Deco stuffing?
Holy scrap batman- I just found the British Monarchy on Twitter- I am outta here!
“Charles is that you baby…” tweet tweet “Ditch that old broad Cammi!”
I have an Art Deco book too, vintage DECO
I am going to paste these movies into my notebook, the non Arty Decos Vintage one at Yha HOOO HOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
( remember when they always yelled out Yahoo ?? ) It just does not seem as much fun anymore. Makes me want a pretend Google wife
I remember when they used to yodel Yahoo-oo! Yeah, Google’s no fun. Bing is a little bit more fun, though. Bing! Bing! Bing!
I thought you did have a pretend google wife with that talking bra thingie.
Okay than, I will look for this movie on AMC, they usually have great classics like this!
Oh, I like It Happened One Night… but I haven’t seen this one. I’ll bear it in mind. Incidentally, I watched The Good Night the other day… it wasn’t very good. The ideas in it were excellent but the execution wasn’t that good (actually it might have seemed like a better film if the ideas hadn’t been good, but it just meant you could see how good it could have been!) Thanks for the tip though; all things dreaming are good for me at the moment.
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Jenny I heard that The Good Night was not very good- but I thought I would mention it since I came across it while googling odds and ends about dreaming. I had a rather long and drawn out dramatic dream this morning and when I woke up I remembered it clear as day. I guess all this blogging about dreams is effecting me as well.
This morning I remembered a dream about two presences in the room, one at either end of the bed. One was the writer of my dream; the other was the director! It all felt a bit like a post modern reference to how much writing about dreaming I’m doing at the moment!
That’s a really weird dream… I have been remembering my early morning dream with great clarity the last couple of mornings. It must be all this talk about dreams.