Columbia. Director Wesley Ruggles; Producer Wesley Ruggles; Screenplay Claude Binyon; Camera Joseph Walker; Editor Otto Meyer, William Lyon; Music Frederick Hollander
Jean Arthur
Fred MacMurray
Melvyn Douglas
Harry Davenport
Dorothy Peterson
Edgar Buchanan
Too Many Husbands is a light, fluffy and amusing triangle with complications set up when a woman finds herself with two husbands on her hands as the first turns up after reportedly drowning a year previously in boat cruise. Picture is studded with explosive dialog and situations, with the two husbands pitted against each other in highly amusing episodes, while the wife becomes bewildered while enjoying the love and attention showered on her from two sides.
Husbands is very light in texture but keeps going at a merry pace mainly through deft direction by Wesley Ruggles and intimate dialog and situations provided by scripter Claude Binyon [from play by W. Somerset Maugham]. Finish is rather inconclusive with windup unable to provide a climax to the merry mad mixup of dual husbands displayed throughout.
Jean Arthur, Fred MacMurray and Melvyn Douglas are excellent in the three leads, each taking advantage of individual opportunities to score. Harry Davenport is fine as the wife's father, while Melville Cooper is a bewildered butler.
(B&W) Extract of a review from 1940. Running time: 80 MIN.
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