Move Over, Darling

Ellen, lost at sea five years ago, has survived on a desert island. On the day she comes home her husband has just remarried and is about to leave on honeymoon. She appears, he cannot tell either woman the truth, and it all knots together in a hotel room. Michael Gordon directed. Doris Day plays Ellen, James Garner her husband, Polly Bergen the new wife Bianca. The story is not new: it is a remake of My Favorite Wife from 1940. What matters is how this version came to exist. Fox had begun shooting the same story as Something's Got to Give with Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin. Production stalled over Monroe's absences, she was fired, she died in August 1962 and the film was left unfinished. The studio reshot the project the following year with a new cast. The result fits the sixties studio comedy template exactly: fast dialogue, misunderstanding piled on misunderstanding, the conflict resolved behind a door. Day and Garner's rapport carries it. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Hollywood comedy. Who it is not for: anyone measuring its marital humour by today's standards.