Cary Grant and Irene Dunne together are fantastic. She plays his supposedly dead wife who was shipwrecked 7 years ago. She just happens to reappear on the day he marries his new wife, who is very snobbish and cold. Watching his facial expressions, it always amazes me how he could use them better than any actor in history. The look on his face when he sees her as the elevator door is closing is worth the watching of this movie alone. The hotel clerk and the judge are also both hilarious in their limited scenes with Grant. Even Randolph Scott, who's character was stranded with Grant's wife's character, is very amusing in his bickering with Grant. But the real kicker is the ending and watching Cary Grant fidget and stress over how to choose his REAL wife in their cabin. This movie is everything a comedy should be and one that any Cary Grant fan or classic movie lover should definitely see! My grade: A+.

Or, as Irene Dunne says, "the Mulligan stew", which gets a laugh in court as she reveals she is the wife who came back to life after being declared legally dead when her husband (Cary Grant) went off and married another woman (Gail Patrick). In the same year as the sexually reversed "Too Many Husbands" (which is about just what the title indicates), "My Favorite Wife" is the more remembered of the two, probably because it has a fast moving and funny screenplay where everything comes together perfectly.Those who have seen this film's Doris Day/James Garner remake ("Move Over Darling") first will have little trouble recognizing the same structure which only changes at the end. The story opens with Grant in court going through the legal procedure of having the long-missing Dunne declared dead just so he can immediately marry the somewhat temperamental Patrick. Dunne shows up immediately afterwards, encountering her two children and mother-in-law, then heading off to the hotel where she and Grant initially spent their first honeymoon to create a bundle of confusion. It continues when Grant and Patrick arrive home and Dunne is there, posing as the daughter of an old friend of Grant's mother (Anne Shoemaker). Grant discovers that his missing wife wasn't quite so alone on her island stay, with the handsome Randolph Scott present as a man whom she nicknamed "Adam" to her "Eve".This is both combination of family and screwball romantic comedy as the desire to reunite the family torn apart by no fault of their own, and it is brilliantly written and acted. You can tell when Patrick breaks down crying that those are indeed crocodile tears as she is way too tough (both in her character and in our memory of her previous screen performances) to be willing to break down so easily. Character performances by Donald MacBride as a befuddled hotel clerk and Granville Bates as a befuddled judge add to the delight of this story. Dunne and Grant are an easy-going romantic team who in three films had the sophistication and wit of Powell and Loy, Tracy and Hepburn, and Lombard and Gable. How I wish they had done more!

I played this to myself on a long flight back from a winter sun holiday and the near 90 minutes it took up simply (pardon the pun) flew by. I love the screwball comedy "genre" and will be endeavouring this Christmas holiday to seek out as many examples as I can, but I doubt many of them will beat this Leo McCarey production directed by young hot-shot (at the time) Garson Kanin.The premise is as daffy as you would expect but boy do Cary Grant (at his effortless best) and one of his most supreme comic foils Irene Dunne run with it.I laughed out loud many times in the first thirty minutes and anxiously looked at my watch wondering where the story and laughs were going to come for the next 60 minutes but it just kicked on with Dunne's hilarious attempt to hoodwink Grant as to the hunkiness (or lack of same) of her seven year companion on their desert island and the easy introduction of Randolph Scott as the All-American athlete she actually hunkered down with.The timing of all concerned, particularly the leads of course, is near perfect throughout, the comedic situations hilarious (bookended by a courtroom scene with a great turn by Granville Bates as an incredulous judge - an idea so good that Peter Bogdanovich lifted it almost wholesale for his 1972 homage "What's Up Doc") and climaxing in a homage of its own to the one that started it all, the famous "Walls Of Jericho" scene in Gable & Goddard's "It Happened One Night" and of course its own Grant / Dunne predecessor "The Awful Truth".I keep coming back to Grant and Dunne as the keystones to the film's success. Both separately (Grant in his interplay with the hotel manager during extended avoidance of new, wholly undeserving bride Gail Patrick, perhaps the only actor in the film who fails to catch the arch mood of the piece) and Dunne (when she affects accents of contemporaries Hepburn and Davis to devastating comic effect) but especially together - these two play off each other to the manner born.Even the scenes with their kids don't grate, there's admirably little recourse to the use of traditional slapstick and the way this sex-farce pushes the envelope out at the censor (especially Grant's preening himself with women's clothing and that ending when you know he's about to become literally "Bad Santa") just takes the biscuit.A sheer delight, from start to finish.

This is not my favourite screwball comedy of all time or anything, but I did really enjoy it. It is compared to The Awful Truth, and I will say I do prefer The Awful Truth, and while people may find this blasphemous I preferred 1963's Move Over Darling too.Where the film doesn't quite succeed is that it felt a little too short, the film's end takes a little too long and felt misplaced and there are some moments in the middle where the film drags a bit.However, it looks good, is well directed, is well scored, while the story is great, the screenplay a lot of fun and the performances from Irene Dunne, Gail Patrick and especially Cary Grant are fun. In terms of casting, the only weak link is Randolph Scott, not that he was terrible or anything but he is very underused seeing his role feels I agree more of a cameo than a fully-fleshed out character. So overall, good but not great, worth seeing for Grant. 6.5/10 Bethany Cox