My Favorite Wife

Originally planned for Leo McCarey, but a car accident intervened. Directed by the mercurial Garson Kanin, it remains a relatively formulaic (though beautifully produced) bedroom comedy, with Grant as the husband whose wife, presumed dead after a shipwreck, returns to their Californian home only to find him remarried. Grant's habitual skill at playing the faint-hearted prig is such that one can almost overlook the moments of mawkish sentiment and gentle complacency about the country club milieu. The film was remade in 1963 as a Doris Day/James Garner vehicle (Move Over, Darling): some indication, perhaps, that it never really achieved the satirical bite of Adam's Rib (scripted by Kanin) or the giddy sexual risk-taking of Grant and Ginger Rogers in Once Upon a Honeymoon.