A 1940 Screwball Comedy film produced by Leo McCarey, directed by Garson Kanin, and starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant. It is loosely based on the Narrative Poem Enoch Arden by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, but with a Gender Flip and Adaptational Alternate Ending.note Strangely enough, it opened just a couple of months after another film based on the same source material, Too Many Husbands.
Ellen Arden (Dunne) has been presumed lost at sea for seven years, so her husband Nick (Grant) has her declared Legally Dead and marries elegant but hard-edged Bianca (Gail Patrick). However, Ellen has actually been shipwrecked on a Deserted Island all this time — coincidentally, with handsome Stephen Burkett (Randolph Scott). Ellen and Stephen are rescued and come back on the very day of Nick and Bianca's wedding—but only after the ceremony itself. Hilarity Ensues.
Remade in 1963 as Move Over, Darling, with Doris Day, James Garner, and Polly Bergen in the lead roles.note
The film provides examples of:
- Accidental Adultery: Accidental bigamy of the Thought You Were Dead variety.
- Adam and/or Eve: Stephen and Ellen's nicknames for each other when they were on the island.
- American Accents: Ellen recites a poem for her children in a Southern accent. This gives her the idea to pose as a Southern friend of the family who has just arrived for a visit.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Nick can't bring himself to tell Bianca that Ellen has returned, due to her Hair-Trigger Temper/Hysterical Woman tendencies. She's very confused about why he's suddenly avoiding her on the flimsiest of excuses.
- Contrived Coincidence: Ellen would come back into Nick's life on the same day he marries another woman.
- Disposable Second Wife: Bianca.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Nick treats Bianca pretty shabbily, considering they've just been married. Fortunately, she's so unsympathetic that audiences aren't likely to care much.
- Mistaken for Cheating: The clerk at the honeymoon hotel is highly disapproving when Nick books a room for Ellen and spends more time there than with his new wife. (Given the circumstances, it's not entirely a mistake.)
- Mistaken for Gay: Nick is either this or simply Mistaken For Crazy when he and Stephen stop at his home to get some clothes for Ellen after she falls in the pool. Bianca has called in a psychiatrist, who looks at Nick quite suspiciously as he picks out a couple of outfits, explaining, "It's for a friend. He's downstairs in the car."
- Never Found the Body: Ellen was last seen when a wave swept her overboard as she tried to board a lifeboat to get off a sinking ship.
- Oops! I Forgot I Was Married: Half the premise.
- Real Men Eat Meat: Subverted; Stephen is a vegetarian.
- Remarrying for Your Kids: Discussed. Ellen suggests to Nick that this is the reason he married Bianca, and he leaps on the suggestion a little too enthusiastically. She isn't fooled, but she lets it go when he tells her unhesitatingly that she's the wife he wants.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: The other half of the premise.
- When Ellen returns, her children (who do not recognize her) tell about how her their mother was drowned and how they put flowers on her grave every Easter.
- Her mother also tells her that her funeral was "Lovely—Dr. Blake preached a wonderful sermon."
- Reunion Kiss: Nick and Ellen have a joyful one in the hotel lobby.
- Rip Tailoring: Seeing the old dress she's wearing is now unfashionably long, Ellen goes into the hotel ladies' room and reemerges with the dress shortened, presumably in this manner.
- Rule of Pool: When Nick and Stephen start arguing over who has more right to be with her, Ellen tries to make a grand exit but falls into the swimming pool instead.
- Shirtless Scene: Stephen is first seen doing some flashy dives at the athletic club swimming pool.
- Shout-Out: Nick Arden's name is a reference to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem Enoch Arden, on which the story is loosely based.
