Garson Kanin | My Favorite Wife / 1940

the man on the flying trapeze

by Douglas Messerli

 

Bella and Samuel Spewack (screenplay, based on a story by Leo McCarey, Garson Kanin, John McClain, and Bella and Samuel Spewack), Garson Kanin (director) My Favorite Wife / 1940

 

     In some respects related to Leo McCarey’s brilliant 1937 comedy The Awful Truth—particularly in its last scenes—Garson Kanin’s 1940 film My Favorite Wife, produced by a wheelchair-bound McCarey, who planned to direct it until he suffered an automobile accident in late 1939, uses Cary Grant’s bisexuality to subvert the moralistic concerns regarding sexuality required, evidently, by the Production Code and the studios.

     On the surface, of course, Grant as Nick Arden is portrayed as a virile heterosexual: having lost his first wife, Ellen Wagstaff Arden (played by Irene Dunne), to a shipwreck, he is in the process as the movie begins of marrying for a second time. In these first scenes, some of the most humorous of the film, we discover that Ellen, an anthropological photographer, apparently has been drowned seven years earlier when the ship on which she was traveling sank, leaving behind the husband and her two young children behind. After much judicial confusion, the judge declares the first wife dead, freeing Nick to marry Bianca Bates, who has spent most of the proceedings narcissistically peering into a pocket mirror.

      Soon after, we discover that Ellen, his first wife, is not only still living, but has been rescued from a deserted island by a Portuguese freighter. Notably, she is dressed in men’s clothing, in quite the opposite manner from the femme fatale Bianca; indeed, her children wonder aloud whether she is a lady or a man. As if we needed further evidence of Bianca’s character, Ellen’s mother-in-law, after announcing that Nick has again married, admits to disliking her son’s new wife. The sexually neutered Ellen, who has been “running wild,” as she later admits, is clearly a more appropriate partner than the selfish catlike Bianca—a woman whose major complaint seems to be that Nick will not wear the tasteless leopard housecoat for which she has spent “all afternoon” shopping!

      Given the hypocritical moral values of the film industry, wherein sex is perceived as being linked only to marriage, Ellen can still save the day if she prevents the connubial couple from bedding down together. Off she rushes to Yosemite Inn—the same hotel where she spent her first married night—to reveal herself and in so doing restore her lawful rights. Indeed, the comic high jinks which follow produces much of the desired effect. Upon discerning that Ellen is still alive, Nick refuses the advances of his new bride as he attempts to escape their conjugal nest. However, we soon discover, Nick is also quite terrified of her “high-strung” personality—presumably meaning her temper—and has a difficult time in breaking the news that his former wife has returned from the dead. Although he avoids sex—the couple drive back without stopping until they arrive home, presumably in Los Angeles—he has been unable to extricate himself from Bianca’s clutches.

      In short, the writers, Bella and Samuel Spewack, have separated the two women through the comic use of a series of sexist stereotypes. Bianca is not only a beautiful woman, but represents all women: Like the younger daughter in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (a character which the Spewacks would revisit in their 1958 musical with Cole Porter, Kiss Me, Kate) she is a young, cunning, bitchy, selfish woman. Ellen Wagstaff Arden, on the other hand, in her devotion to a career—she has, after all, left her children alone to pursue her vocation—in her use of her maiden name, in her hyponymic first name (Ellen, Allen), along with that first costume, compared by the writers to a man, and in her sensibility which is, we gradually discover, closer to Nick himself, we almost immediately perceive she is related to the male being which we begin to perceive Nick is more comfortable. We soon discover, moreover, that Ellen shares Nick’s verbal abilities—Nick is a lawyer—and, just as he has not yet told his new wife the truth, she has held a secret from her ex-husband.

     An inexplicable late-night visit from an insurance agent who has heard, through the grapevine, more about Ellen than Nick has, reveals that his ex-wife’s deserted island was shared with another man whom she called Adam and, who in turn, called her Eve. So begins the “true” story of My Favorite Wife: Nick’s fall from connubial grace and his expulsion from the proverbial garden—the forest Arden.

     From Nick’s first moment of knowing of the man in Ellen’s “deserted” life, Stephen Burkett haunts him. In the context of the literalized heterosexual comedy, of course, the haunting appears to take the form of jealousy. But more careful observers will immediately perceive that there is something deeper going on here. The joke that poor Adam is a kind of neutered being who hangs out at the YMCA (code for “pansy”) is somewhat dispelled when Nick discovers he is living in the swank Pacific Club. Upon a visit to that establishment where he pages his prey, Nick encounters instead a stunning hunk of a male—a nearby woman admirer asking Nick if the man about to acrobatically leap into the pool is Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller—of whom, as Grant’s eyes pop out in wonderment, his entire body rising up as if in sudden erection, he too is clearly in awe. The fact that the actor playing this superman, Randolph Scott, had been Grant’s roommate and rumored lover for eight years by the time this movie was filmed—the two men would continue to live together for two more years after the film, representing a ten-year relationship—and that two can be seen wearing matching pinky rings throughout the movie may not have been perceived by the audiences of the day, but was certainly an issue in the film’s remaining conceits. *

     For almost immediately after this encounter, Nick’s mind is consumed by Burkett, transforming even his vision by the constant presence of an acrobatic figure, like an angelic putto, floating before his eyes. His wife’s attempt to further deceive him by trotting out a nebbish shoe salesman claiming to be Burkett, results in a series of activities in which the two attempt to get even with one another.

     He suggests lunch at the Pacific Club, where Burkett-Adam reveals himself, and Ellen Wagstaff Arden is bested, her hopes of reclaiming Nick becoming “all wet” as she falls into the pool.

     In need of clothes, Ellen insists the two men—whose companionship is necessitated, in terms of the heterosexual comedy, by their refusal to leave the other alone with Dunne—return to Nick’s house to retrieve them. There looms the jilted Bianca, who has hired a Freudian psychiatrist to explain her husband’s condition.

     “The love impulse is often confused,” he proclaims, evidenced, clearly, by his observation of Nick posing before the mirror in a woman’s hat and a woman’s dress held up against his bodily frame. “It’s not for me, but for my friend. He’s waiting in the car!” Nick as Grant explains, while the character of Burkett, Grant’s real-live lover waits below.

 

      Like the writers of Bringing up Baby, who telegraphed Grant’s homosexuality in his donning of a feathered robe, the Spewacks use the possibility of a man (or men) in drag as representing a sexuality of which the movie itself cannot speak.

     Again, it hardly matters, given the terms imposed upon the film, that the gender will be corrected in time for the last frame, for the observant audience members already now know “the score.” Bianca—the epitome of “womanhood”—is no longer in the picture. The battle for both husband and wife is now between the handsome hunk (Scott)—who, if we are to literally believe Ellen’s story, that he did not engage in sex with her for their seven years of island existence, even more clearly brings his sexuality into question—or a figure of somewhat confused sexuality (either Grant or Dunne). To ease the necessary story back upon its track, Burkett is sent scurrying on his way to the paradise of isolation he left behind.

     But even the plot’s attempts to return Nick to his rightful location in a bed next to his wife’s bed (a requirement, once again, of the hypocritical prigs of the day) demands that he be transformed from Nicholas the man into Nicholas the Saint, as he dons the holiday costume of Santa Claus. Presumably, since the two have already produced their beloved and loving children, they shall remain happily chaste ever after.

 

* Another minor clue that Grant is somehow connected with Scott shows up in Ellen/Dunne’s choice of an explanation for her remaining in Bianca’s house; she explains that she is an old friend of the family from Virginia, and for several scenes puts on an exaggerated accent that supposedly represents her upbringing in the South. In truth, Dunne was born in Kentucky; Randolph Scott was a Virginian.

 

Los Angeles, November 10, 2003

Reprinted from Green Integer Blog (August 2008).

 

Joseph Baken | Mailman / 2021

special delivery

by Douglas Messerli

 

Joseph Baken (screenwriter and director) Mailman / 2021

 

The young US mail carrier, Phil (Joseph Baken) loves his job and attempts to live up to the cliches written into his job description. But what he really wants to be is a writer, although he is not yet sure just what kind of writer, and spends much of free time trying to churn out his first sentences.

      Many days, he stops by the home of Mrs. McGillicuddy (Jack Plotnick in drag) to share coffee, and, on this particularly day, birthday greetings from the loveable old lady who complains that her son and daughter-in-law never keep in touch with her and are just waiting for her to die so that they can inherit her modest home.

      Phil’s only other friends seem to be is fellow postal carriers, Tanya (Miatta Lebile) and Earnest (Paul Vogt). To Tanya, his best friend, he attempts to describe his “novel”: “It’s about a writer, but it’s not really about him being a writer. It’s kind of about solving climate change, but it’s a comedy, though it is a drama. I guess at the end of the day I just want it to be kind of a good old-fashioned story, so think ‘Game of Thrones,’ does that make sense?”

      Although, the mixed and contradictory genres might indeed define the film itself, which gradually moves from its comic postman story to a dark comic drama that includes possible murder in which its major characters, when not involved in their postal duties become detectives who sing cute musical ditties—all before they become involved with the underground secret Order of the Red Baboon, whose members like to rub their extended asses together—Tanya is nonetheless not at all sure it makes sense.

      Even Phil’s mentor, who just happens to be Mrs. McGillicuddy, suggests that he write more about something related to his own life, Phil replying no one would be interested in the life of postman. Meanwhile, for his birthday she has knitted a long blue scarf which he hardly gets the opportunity to wind around his neck before observing the arrival of car to the old ladies’ house, from which a man jumps out, leaving within a crying woman. Are these the son and daughter-and-law of whom Mrs. McGillicuddy has made reference?

      Not really connecting the pieces, Phil tells Tanya of his new image: a woman in tears. To get his mind off writing, she invites him over to house to meet Ronnie (Navaris Darson), a boy she’s convinced might be right for Phil, since she, like Mrs. McGillicuddy is convinced Phil is gay—that is until he makes it clear that he is not at all gay, singing what might be described as a kind national anthem for the many new queer individuals who live in a world, as Phil puts explains, in which “Sexuality…has evolved, it’s not like putting people into binary boxes, like gay or straight.”

 

I’m not gay, I can’t be gay

Because gay is a construct, and anyway

Labels are ideas, they are not human beings

My generation evolved to do away with these things.

 

We’re pan-poly-fluid-non-bi.

Sex for us is not about a girl or guy.

…..

 

But I’m not gay, I can’t be gay

Because gay is not a person, just a word you say.

Name one thing in nature that is just this or that.

I can’t be gay because gay is old hat.

 

     Meanwhile, the very next day on his visit to his elderly mentor, Phil is met at the door instead by Carl (again Jack Plotnick) who explains that, while baking Phil’s birthday cake, one end of his  mother’s pink-knitted scarf fell into the garbage disposal that “somehow got turned on,” and you know? —he makes chocking sounds.

     Slowly it dawns on the slow-minded carrier, “She’s dead?”

     “A Tragedy. A bizarre way to go.”

   Phil needs a repeat of the explanation, which Carl supplies in marvelously black comic song beginning with the lyrics: “She was baking the cake…a red velvet cake was the cake that she baked, she leaned over the sink to get a drink, a drink from the sink that’s indeed what I think….”

     Carl explains that he and has mother had mended things, and now sadly she is dead.

     Phil returns to his truck and breaks down into tears, perhaps realizing his own sorrows or perhaps in imitation of Carl’s wife the day before. Why was she crying before Mrs. McGillicuddy’s death, he wonders? Phil’s nemesis, the delivery dude, Kyle Kooter (Derek Petropolis), who works for a company like UPS, catches him in the act suggesting that if he wants to talk….he’s there—the presumption being that nobody could be happy working for the USPS.

     Phil also observes Carl entering the yard to bury Mrs. McGillicuddy’s pink scarf before performing a strange dance in which sticks out his butt and waves it in empty space.

     That evening he shares his suspicions about the old lady being murdered with his friend Tanya and Ronnie, Tanya particularly skeptical about Phil’s scenario.

     Nonetheless, she and Ronnie join Phil on a trip in the dark to the old woman’s house, where she continues to admonish Phil for his unfounded suspicions, all reminding us of how everyone attempted to dismiss Jeff’s interpretations of what he has seen from his window in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).

      Having to pee, Tanya goes behind the car and discovers there the old lady’s pendant upon which they discover a listing of a location, tangents in space: 118.23 W and 34, 13 N.

      Suddenly the mailman’s life wherein, as he sings “He always played it safe,” is now filled with complications. He finds himself attracted to Ronnie, also he still refuses to admit that he might get an erection for a male as opposed to a female.

    On his route he runs into Zoe (Lauren Burns), Carl’s wife, who openly flirts with him, perhaps also trying to make him forget her crying episode. She demands he come to help her lift up a sculpture of female torso in bright red legs (reminding us somewhat of the Red Baboon incident early in the story), afterwards, bending down to recite a strange, gibberish chant. Carl comes downstairs with a stack of mail fliers he’s received, including an add for “Moon Boy,” about which Zoe especially concerned, asking Phil to take them back, suggesting that all important mail these days aren’t delivered by “snail mail,” a statement which triggers a response in Phil as well.

      Alas, it is almost at this moment when the charming dark musical grows dark, with Phil first writing a fiction about the events but absolving the couple under suspicion. Excited to share his first novel with his friends, he is hurt and frustrated by their criticisms about a story in which, as they observe, ultimately nothing happens. And he accuses Tanya of having no commitment to anything.

      Finally realizing that he has not truly resolved the situation about his elderly customer, Phil revisits the empty lot in Glendale designated by Mrs. McGillicuddy’s necklace and, falling asleep, is awakened by the voices of Carl and Zoe, who admit to themselves that on this night before the lunar eclipse, they have buried the blanket (the offering from Mother Earth), charged the crystal, and cleared the space of all iconography. Now, as the Red Baboon cult has predicted, Karl must impregnate the granddaughter, Zoe, of the recently died head of the group under the lunar eclipse to bear their future leader; the only problem is that Karl is impotent, and as Zoe puts it, “we’re doomed.”

      Phil makes a quick cellphone call to Tanya, begging her to please not hang up, that he believes Mrs. McGillicuddy is perhaps not dead; Tanya hangs up and, at that very moment, Karl and Zoe stand over him, Karl with a huge bat in his hand which he quickly lowers upon Phil’s head.

      He awakes tied up in the back of a small truck, face to face with his old customer who cannot comprehend how he could come to be there. They consider throwing him into a trash compactor or into an incinerator, but Zoe finally suggests that he may be from the Santa Cruz chapter. Phil insists he is a member, and to prove it, he sticks out his butt and shakes it around, Zoe now convinced that he is a real Baboon.

      McGillicuddy’s kindness, she admits, was merely and act like the many others as the queen of the cult she is forced to play. Since he, a Leo, may now have to take over for Karl, they again demand to know what his sexuality is, poor Phil trying to sing a soulless reprise of his “I’m not gay” song. The old lady insists that he’s going to help them complete the ritual if she has to milk him herself.

      Now back in the house, McGillicuddy performs a sprechstimme work about the cult’s tradition and history. She hands each of the disciple’s a large plastic dildo which they wave at Phil’s face, setting one large black dildo upon his head like a jester cap.

 

    Zoe seats herself upon him, but alas Phil can’t get an erection. Theoretically, he admits he’s into “polyamory, group stuff, I’m supportive of it. I just can’t….” I’m not a gay boy, he insists, I’ve never done anything!

     Suddenly discovering that Phil is a virgin they realize that they might take the alternative method, “the virgin sacrifice.”

     Just as McGillicuddy is about to put the knife into his heart, Tanya and Ronnie burst through the door announcing “Special Delivery,” before they can help his escape, they too are subdued, strung up, and trapped in a small space. There Phil finally admits that he was afraid of saying he

 was gay because he has never been a joiner, and he felt he would suddenly “have to do musicals or something like that.” But now it looks like he will only be “hypothetical” gay who life ends, appropriately, in a closet.

 

     Ronnie kisses him and Phil, not quite sure of what he feels, asks him to it again, Phil deciding most definitely that he likes the experience and deeply engaging in their kisses.

      Bringing the trio out into the center of the room, the baboon group prepare to kill them. But at that very moment, the doorbell rings. It is the Delivery Boy, Kyle with a box. It is a record by “Moon Boy,” presumably the record album by rapper and singer Yung Bleu with guest appearances from John Legend, H.E.R., Moneybagg Yo, Kodak Black, Kehlani, Big Sea, Jeezy, Drake, Gunna, Chris Brow, 2 Chainz, Davido, and A. Boggie Wit da Hoodie, which was released the same year as this film, 2021.

     Its existence sends the Baboons into such a frenzy that Tanya, Ronnie, and Phil escape. Soon after, Phil and Ronnie obviously a pair, the mailman finishes his story, but with mention of the Baboon cult. He now realizes, expressed again in song, that “the investigation has to be an inventory of the things that make you you.”

      Tanya has taken up with Kyle, their rather stupid savior, and is now taking courses in paleontology.

 

Los Angeles, November 30, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2023).