Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. I want to be Cary Grant.<br /><br />-Archie Leach<br /><br />I doubt that the above quotation is on Cary Grant's tombstone, but it should be. Just as "On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia" should be on W.C. Fields' stone (unfortunately, it isn't), Cary's quote would make a fitting epitaph to a career that spanned more than three decades. <br /><br />All of which has nothing to do with My Favorite Wife; it's just one of my all-time favorite quotes and I love to use it.<br /><br />What would you do if you declared your wife legally dead after seven years in order to marry another woman, and she came back? Furthermore, what would you do if you found out that during those seven years she was alone on a deserted island with another man? That's the situation facing Nick Arden (Grant), and while some men may relish the idea of having two wives, it nearly drives him insane!<br /><br />Ellen Wagstaff Arden (Irene Dunne) has just returned after seven years to find that her husband Nick has married Bianca Bates (Gail Patrick). Stephen Burkett (Randolph Scott)is the athletic gentleman (check out the way he dives into a swimming pool) who spent seven years alone with Ellen.<br /><br />Both Stephen and Ellen (or "Adam and Eve" as they called each other) insist that nothing happened, but Nick isn't so sure. When Ellen explains that Stephen was out of commission with a broken leg for the first six months, Nick replies, "That still leaves six and a half years." To allay his fears, Ellen introduces a short, bald, shoe salesman to Nick and claims he is Mr. Burkett. The humor in the scene arises from the fact that Nick has already met the real Mr. Burkett at his club. <br /><br />Adding to the mix are the two children Ellen left behind when they were still infants. So now we have two problems: Nick has to tell Bianca that he's already married, and Ellen must tell the children that she's really her mother. <br /><br />Cary Grant was a master of this type of comedy, and the film's screenwriter and producer is Leo McCarey, who began his career making Laurel and Hardy shorts (when McCarey directed the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, he took the title from a 1927 L & H short; Groucho considered him the only first-class director the Brothers ever had). Randolph Scott, whom we usually associate with Westerns, does a fine job as Nick's rival. And Gail Patrick, who played Carole Lombard's snobbish sister in My Man Godfrey, really makes us feel sorry for her. The poor girl had no idea what she was getting into.<br /><br />As implausible as this whole scenario is, a fine cast makes it work.