I wrote about Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison that it was a rom com without much of either. Well this one rectifies that by being both very funny (including at least two pratfalls that had Jami busting a gut) and swooningly romantic. It re-pairs Jean Arthur (an acquired taste that we have certainly acquired, who gets to model amazing 40's haircuts and some surprising midriff-baring outfits) with the reliably great Charles Coburn (last seen together in The Devil and Miss Jones) and adds hunk-o-manhood Joel McRea. It's set in wartime (because it actually was wartime) Washington DC, where, as the visiting Benjamin Dingle (Coburn) is often heard to remark, there are eight women to every man. This is illustrated in the tongue-in-cheek opening, which also reveals how ridiculously overcrowded it was at the time, something that led to a call for patriotic apartment-owners to sublet any spare rooms. Jean Arthur's Connie Milligan has taken this on board and placed an ad, something that Dingle responds to because he is two days early for the hotel room that some senator (Dingle is a rich bigwig who has been brought in to help fix the housing crisis) rented for him. He gets there early, but still finds a huge crowd of people waiting outside. Taking on board the slogan he has seen on some local statuary (another thing that he repeats ad nauseam) he damns the torpedoes and goes full speed ahead, which in this case involves pretending to be the landlord and informing everybody else that the apartment has been rented. When Connie shows up (packed in with three other young women in a very natty little roadster)
she is alarmed to find that the person who insists he is taking her room is a man. But Dingle is used to and adept at getting his way and bulldozes her (at least temporarily). She does, however, insist on a very rigid breakfasting schedule, that involves an intricate back-and-forth between bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen and front door (to get the milk) and is timed to the minute. Dingle tries gamely but cannot manage it, at least the first day.
However, while he is convincing her to let him stay the night before, he also berates her for not being married, something that makes her bridle and retort (despite the fact that, we later find, she has been engaged for 26 months) that perhaps she doesn't want to get married. Well, as Dingle is leaving the house the next morning, he spots a man carrying what appears to be an aeroplane propeller wrapped in brown paper towards the place. This is, of course, Joel McCrea, who is a soldier called Joe Carter, but whom Dingle keeps calling Bill, because he once knew a soldier call Bill Carter. At any rate, Dingle has quickly sized him up and decided that this is a man well suited for Connie, and contrives to bring them together by the means of sub-subletting his room to him. Of course he knows that Connie would never go for it, and there is a hilarious sequence where he manages to keep each from seeing the other (Carter thinks Dingle is the only other inhabitant of the apartment) when everyone comes home and Connie and Joe each take turns in the bathroom,
each thinking each time they are replacing Dingle in there. Finally they do cross paths, and Connie (who at this point has a face covered with cold cream) attempts to eject both men,
but is blocked from doing so because she can't reimburse Dingle's rent, having spent it on a hat, and he can't reimburse Joe's, having spent it on telegrams. So we witness another morning's routine, this time even more complicated. However, they quickly settle in,
and in fact we get to see all three sunning themselves up on the roof, along with half of DC, it would seem. The boys' jibes drive Connie down (she tires of them acting out the Dick Tracy cartoons from the paper) but she leaves her diary behind. Despite Joe's warnings, Dingle reads it, and is caught doing so, which is the final straw: this time they really are ejected. Or at least Dingle is: Joe is still packing when Connie comes home, and on hearing he's going to be posted to Africa in just two days, she relents and lets him stay. This leads to a very fast thaw, to the extent that both are hoping that Connie's fiance (Charles J. Pendergast, owner of a truly terrible toupee, and workmate and sparring partner of Dingle in his housing role) will work late and not call at eight to take her out to dinner, so that Joe can. It looks like they've made it and are heading out the door, when a troublesome kid neighbor of Connie's insists on buttonholing her about his quandary about whether or not to be a scout. While talking to him, she surreptitiously removes the phone from its cradle so Charles can't call, something Joe sees with pleasure, but the annoying kid spots it, replaces it, and Charles calls. What's more, the obnoxious brat spots Joe watching them leave out the window with his binoculars, and accuses him on spying, to which he, irritated, responds that he's a Jap and chases the kid out. However, it turns out that the place that Dingle has invited him out to dinner is also the place that Charles and Connie are at, and Dingle takes Charles away to work to clear the path for Joe to romance Connie. And so he does, in ways that, while chaste enough, are hot enough, one would have thought, to tiptoe to the very edge of the Hayes' Code.
McCrea and Arthur have genuine chemistry, despite the characters they play being rather ill-suited to each other. In what remains we manage to cram in a visit from the FBI (thanks, annoying neighbor kid) and a lighting trip to South Carolina, courtesy of Dingle, and some apartment modifications performed by same while the couple is away. Some critics decry that the film lapses into sentimentality at the end, but I don't think that's fair. It certainly accents the romance towards the end, but you never lose sight of the comedy, and Coburn is always a steadying presence. Overall, an absolute corker. Well done George Stevens, who also directed Shane, Giant and The Greatest Story Every Told!
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