During Hollywood’s Golden Age, relationships between men and women were usually depicted very romantically. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, and they get married. Under the Motion Picture Production Code, which ensured wholesome content from the 1930s into the 1950s, traditional marriage was upheld. However, the Code permitted filmmakers to explore marital mix-ups, misunderstandings, and mayhem.
In the 1930s and early 1940s, a popular film genre was the screwball comedy. At the time, “screwball” was a slang term for a crazy person, so crazy things happened in screwball comedies. With a lot of misunderstandings and confusion, the humor is usually based on funny or crazy dialogue instead of physical comedy.
What would happen if a woman thought her husband had died and decided to remarry, only for the first husband to turn up again later? Two classic movies deal with this dilemma, “Too Many Husbands,” a 1940 screwball comedy, and “Three for the Show,” its 1955 musical remake.
About the Films
The basic story of these films is very similar. A young woman is married to the business partner of her late husband, who drowned. One day, her first husband shows up after having been shipwrecked on a remote island. First, she has to tell her second husband that her first husband has come back from the dead. Then, she must tell her passionate first husband that his best friend married his wife because they thought he was dead. Neither is happy about the situation, and the two men’s friendship soon turns to bitter rivalry.Friends and family warn her that she must choose one man to be her only husband, since having too husbands is morally and legally questionable. However, the wife is reluctant to give up the enviable position of being ardently pursued by two men. Besides that, she hates to hurt either man, since she loves them both. Will she lose both in her quest to find her perfect match?
In “Too Many Husbands” the main characters are Vicky (Jean Arthur), first husband Bill Cardew (Fred MacMurray), and Henry Lowndes, her second husband (Melvyn Douglas). Harry Davenport plays Vicky’s father, George, and Dorothy Peterson plays Gertrude Houlihan, the secretary who fell in love with both men who married Vicky.
Songs and Stories
Columbia Pictures decided to remake its successful earlier film in a musical version. In “Too Many Husbands,” Bill and Henry own a publishing company together. Vicky is a stay-at-home wife, and her father seems to be retired. To justify the added musical numbers, “Three for the Show” became a backstage musical. Marty and Henry are musical playwrights, and Julie is the leading lady in their hit show. Mike is the mercenary manager, and Gwen is another girl in the show who is close friends with the leads. Mike takes over the role of the father in the original, delivering many of the same lines and enacting similar scenarios.Here, the main characters are the wife, Julie (Betty Grable), and husbands Marty Stewart (Jack Lemmon), and Vernon Lowndes (Gower Champion). Myron McCormick plays Julie’s manager, Mike Hudson. Marge Champion plays a dancer who loves both husbands, Gwen Howard.
One element omitted from the remake was how the wife has been somewhat discontented with both marriages. In “Too Many Husbands,” both husbands have grown indifferent toward Vicky after the honeymoon period, taking her for granted. Bill was a restless adventurer who often left her alone to go on daring trips, and Henry was a workaholic who puts his business above everything else.
In the remake, Marty is an Air Force pilot during the Korean War who was reportedly killed in action, not during a thrill-seeking boat trip. There’s no evidence of any dissatisfaction from Julie toward either marriage. As a result, the wives’ reasons for keeping both husbands in suspense seem very different. Vicky is overjoyed to see how much her husbands really love and want her, and she relishes the opportunity to make them appreciate and fight for her. On the other hand, Julie is characterized as a very indecisive person. She simply loves the idea of having two husbands and wants to milk the situation for all it’s worth.
The biggest change in the remake was making the love triangle a love square. “Three for the Show” took the character of lovesick secretary, Gertrude, who is in only one scene of “Too Many Husbands,” and developed her into a second leading lady. Gwen serves as a friend and confidante for Julie, and she even receives romantic attention from Mike. She has a stake in which man Julie chooses, since she’s determined to snare the loser on the rebound.
Music and Morals
“Three for the Show” is a jukebox musical, with a hodgepodge of standard tunes by the Gershwins and Cole Porter, and comical ballet dream sequences with dramatic classical orchestral pieces. All four stars were musically talented, although Jack Lemmon’s talent as a singer is little known and was underutilized in this film. Betty Grable, the World War II pinup girl with the million-dollar legs, doesn’t shine her brightest in this quirky film. Her costumes are unflatteringly revealing and her character is overly brassy.This is a bigger acting role than Gower Champion was usually given, and he does a decent job. Marge gives a much more settled, believable performance. She and Jack Lemmon provide the only plot stability through their more serious acting. However, moments like the Swan Lake ballet battle between Marge Champion and a very different looking dance double for Julie drag down the whole movie.
When “Too Many Husbands” was being written, the Production Code Administration (PCA), Hollywood’s moral compass, was concerned that the script made a mockery of marriage, joked about bigamy, and made light of divorce. It’s not publicly known what changes were made, but the finished film was PCA-approved.
By 1955, the PCA was beginning to weaken because of an incompetent new director, so “Three for the Show” is much more suggestive and risqué. The National Legion of Decency, a Catholic organization which classified films for decency, originally ranked this film as C for Condemned because of Julie’s ready acceptance of a bigamous situation. After Columbia made a few changes, they lightened the sentence to B, as partially morally unacceptable.
There’s little argument over which of these two films is better. “Too Many Husbands” is a brilliant screwball comedy with three of the finest talents in the genre. “Three for the Show” replaced these comedic geniuses with mainly musical actors, added a slew of musical numbers without extending the runtime much, and turned the tight love triangle into an unwieldy love square.
If you’re a devoted fan of Betty Grable, Jack Lemmon, or the Champions, you may enjoy aspects of this movie. For the most part, it’s a fun, colorful musical that’s enjoyable if you don’t take it too seriously.
