I thought that we'd exhausted every great classic screwball comedy, but I had literally never heard of this one, which popped up in HBO MAX, despite it having the Thin Man pairing of William Powell and Myrna Loy, so, you know, not exactly obscure. Perhaps it's because it's from the early 40s, which I think of as Film Noir era, rather than the 30s heyday of the screwball, but for whatever reason, there it is, and it's great!
Powell and Loy are Steve Ireland and his wife Susan. As the film starts, Steven is just hopping out of a taxi at his apartment singing the praises of marriage, because it's his 4th anniversary.
When he returns to his apartment (after some foreboding trouble in the elevator, with the elevator operator played by Elisha Cook Jr. in what must surely be the last small role he had before The Maltese Falcon made him widely known) and delivers his gift of a "portable" phonograph (I mean, it is portable, but it's also a full-sized record player) we learn from the back and forth between Steve and Susan that every year they re-create what they did on their wedding day, which requires a four mile walk to the registry office, followed by a long row on the river, followed by dinner at midnight. This year, though, Steve suggests doing everything backwards, in part so they can start with dinner. They've got as far as telling their cook that they don't want dinner at midnight as she was expecting, and furthermore they want dessert first, when the catalyst for all of the mayhem that is to follow arrives in the form of Susan's meddlesome mother. She disrupts everything, including the backwards dinner, because she doesn't want her dinner like that, but is about to leave (to pick up her sister at the train station) finally when she slips on a rug (that I believe was her gift to the couple, and that causes many a pratfall throughout the film) and twists her ankle. She resists Steve's (hopeful) suggestion that she go to hospital and camps out on their sofa. However, she sends Steve out to put her insurance premium in the post,
because apparently it will lapse unless it shows up on the regular. After depositing the envelope in the mailbox in the building foyer, it's back in the troublesome elevator, only this time the third occupant is Isobel, the old flame from whom he separated on not-great-terms before his marriage to Susan. She has since also married, to a painter called "Pinky," but this fact doesn't seem to deter her from aggressively coming on to him. (Isobel is played by Gail Patrick, who certainly had a fascinating life, but apparently was good at playing husseys and harridans, although she just comes across as a modern woman who knows what she wants and isn't shy about pursuing it here.) He is fighting her off when the elevator breaks down properly to the extent that Cook's operator suggests they climb out through a hatch in the ceiling of the elevator. Steve gives boosts to both of them (and Isobel's little dog "Punkin") taking Isobel's high heels first, and Isobel happily steps all over his face laughing about how one of the things he said to her when they separated was that she walked all over him. They are just a few feet below the floor they're trying to get to, so Steve pries open the doors and lets Punkin out. But at that point, in a stunt that genuinely looks perilous, the doors slam shut on Steve's head just as the elevator suddenly starts a descent, leaving him dangling by his neck!
Cook and Isobel manage to stop the elevator and bring it back up, but in so doing they overshoot and ram Steve's head against the top of the doorway (and this after the indignity of Punkin investigating his trapped face). So he's pretty battered and stunned (and his tie is choking him) when they finally all get off the elevator, so Isobel ushers him into her apartment (they're practically neighbors) and plies him with strong liquor.
Pinky isn't there, because he has an attic apartment as a studio and is apparently working on a portrait of a boring old man and won't be back for hours. So Isobel chases Steve around until he makes his escape, unfortunately leaving his hat in the apartment.
Susan and her mother are unsurprisingly curious about what took him so long, so he gives a potted summary of the elevator mishap, albeit omitting to mention Isobel. Isobel's name only comes up when the mother points out his missing hat and takes it upon herself to call up the front desk to ask about the hat. Not only does the elevator operator say that the hat was in Isobel's apartment, he (or his emissary) mention that she wants her shoes back, and also Punkin, who has clearly wandered off in the building (he's never seen again in the film). For some reason this last is taken as particularly shocking (was it slang for underwear?). However, before everything is resolved, Susan has to go out to meet her aunt at the station now that her mother can't pick her up, what with the ankle. This leaves Steve alone in the apartment with his obnoxious mother in law (collecting the cards after she's finished throwing the whole pack into a hat one by one), and he escapes briefly out on to the balcony. There he is spotted by Isobel, whose own balcony below is palatial, and who again presses him to come down. At first reluctant, Steve thinks to himself that going out to a bar for a drink would be harmless enough and suggests that she call up and he'll pretend it's a business thing and that'll give him an excuse. Unluckily for him, the mother in law has been eavesdropping and makes a very smug face throughout the phone call and after Steve leaves to be with his "male" "business acquaintance".
Well, Susan returns before Steve and her mother tells her the whole thing. Determined to make Steve as jealous as she's feeling, she calls up Pinky,
tells him that their spouses are out together, and arranges to meet and have Steve and Isobel see them smooching. He's on board with the plan, but what Susan doesn't realize is that he's in his attic loft, whereas she thinks he's in the apartment on the floor below. She heads down there and, in a second mistake, gets the wrong apartment and encounters a first bewildered and then eager Ward Willoughby, who is practicing archery in a skimpy (for the times) undershirt, because (he informs her) he's a world champion. He gets a bit too fresh
and after chasing round the apartment she escapes out the door, at the same time that Steve and Isobel are arriving. Then Pinky shows up and there's a lot of shouting...
Cut to Steve and Susan alone in their apartment getting ready for bed and Susan is still fuming. However, Steve has just managed to talk her round and they've turned out the light, when Susan answers the phone to a very irate taxi who's been waiting for hours. This is the taxi that Steve ordered purportedly to go see his business acquaintance. The reason he didn't use it was because he and Isobel just walked to a nearby bar, but Susan assumes it's because they stayed at the apartment and, well, you know. (Although looking back, why would they be getting off the elevator then?) This is the final straw, and the next thing we see is Steve arriving at his own lawyer's office where Susan is asking for a divorce. A date is set for a divorce hearing for a month or so and then... Susan vanishes. A distraught Steve is seen calling round detective agencies in every city in the country (and Tijuana) to no avail, until she shows up at a party of some acquaintances the night before the hearing (we find out she'd been in Arizona with her mother, and pursued by Ward Willoughby, who has obviously become besotted). Steve shows up and after Susan makes it clear that she's going through with it, Steve's lawyer (who was the one who alerted him to Susan's presence at the party) gets the idea that the hearing can be postponed if Steve shows evidence of insanity. And thus the second word of the title of the film, and the basis for the second half, for Steve is going to jump in with both feet. However, his stunts at the party (including checking out all the hats and floating them in the pond)
only convince the other party goers that he's drunk (which is why a jovial party-goer pushes him in too). Well, except for one older gentleman, who seems genuinely convinced. Although Steve's case is helped when he's drying off from the pond upstairs at the party and wrapped just in a sheet
then chases a cockatiel that has stolen his watch out on to a balcony, and a tree branch whisks away his sheet to the sound of shrieks from the party goers below. At the hearing the next day the judge seems convinced enough by Steve's antics, but the outraged Susan thinks of a counter-move: to have a hearing before the city "Lunacy Commission" (they didn't mince words back then). Steve and his lawyer work out that it doesn't matter what they say, he's still succeeded in stalling the hearing (Steve is convinced that he can win back Susan if he can only talk to her), so actually doesn't want to convince the Lunacy Commission that he's crazy. But as bad luck would have it, the head of the commission turns out to be the old man from the party, Dr. Klugle.
There then follows some shenanigans at the asylum, the funniest part of which is when Ward comes to deliver a message (and gloat)
but while he's waiting for Steve to come back to the fence (he's parked outside) he practices his bowmanship by doing ludicrous air-shooting. This give Steve the idea to tell the staff that the fellow inmate he was playing Indians with has got over the fence, so they haul Ward in. However, Ward gets his revenge by escaping by getting Steve to hold a tennis net while he uses it as a ladder to climb a tree that's by the fence, and then yanking Steve up by his feet and leaving him hanging there. However, this gives Steve the idea to pull the same stunt on the warden of the asylum and he makes good his escape.
For the final act of the movie (the best part) we're back at the apartment building with Steve scrambling around avoiding the cops with Isobel's help (despite Pinky's presence - the shower scene is particularly good) and finally disguising himself as his own sister (rather well - this requires shaving off the famous Powell pencil mustache and he's surprisingly unrecognizable without it),
fooling everyone but Susan, who simultaneously finds out from her mother that she saw Steve and Isobel walking on the street to a bar that fateful evening, confirming that they were not canoodling in Isobel's apartment. The denouement of the movie is a bit hurried but let's just say Ward runs into the asylum guards again, and this time they think he's Steve.
Top entertainment, and while quite long for the era (nearly 100 minutes) there's never a dull moment. And one has to be impressed at essentially the whole cast, but especially Powell, as there are many quite painful looking pratfalls (that rug!) in this one that certainly look as if they're performed by the actual actors. How had this one escaped our notice for so long?
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