full steam ahead!
by Douglas Messerli
Robert Russell, Frank Ross, Richard
Flournoy, and Lewis R. Foster (screenplay, based on a story by Robert Russell
and Frank Ross), Garson Kanin (uncredited contributor), George Stevens
(director) The More the Merrier /
1943
The preposterous “hero” of George
Stevens’ slightly offbeat wartime comedy, The
More the Merrier, is Benjamin Dingle (played by the noted character
comedian Charles Coborn), a figure who believes—like Captain Farragut of Civil
War history that life should be lived by “damning the torpedoes” and moving
“full steam ahead”—steams through this comedy at such a terrifying trajectory
that he almost succeeds at putting all the other characters under water. Fortunately, the other two leading
characters, Constance Milligan (the incomparable Jean Arthur) and Joe Carter
(the affable and laid-back matinee idol of this period, Joel McCrea) are good
swimmers, standing up to his bullying tactics with surprisingly strong tactics
of survival.
Arriving in the war time capitol of the USA as an advisor on the housing
shortage two days early, Dingle finds his hotel suite unavailable, the
following discussion, typical of his bullying tactics, following:
Hotel Clerk: [looks over
Dingle’s reservation] Senator Noonan engaged
a suite beginning the 24th.
Why, this is only the 22nd. You’re two days
early.
Dingle: Anything wrong with
being two days early?
Hotel Clerk: Why, no, sir.
Dingle: Everybody ought to be
two days early. When this nation gets two
days early we’ll be
getting somewhere.
Hotel Clerk: Yes sir. But
unfortunately this suite won’t be vacated until day-
after tomorrow.
Dingle: Can you connect me
with Senator Noonan?
Hotel Clerk: The Senator’s
out of town.
Dingle: Oh. When will he be
back?
Hotel Clerk: Well, he was due
back, uh, day-before-yesterday, but he’s,
he’s, uh….
Dingle: Two days late.
Hotel Clerk: Yes, sir.
Dingle: Well when Senator
Noonan gets back late, tell him I was here
early.
The early-late motif is played out
for all of its possibilities throughout the film, as the metaphor is extended
not only to time schedules but personal relationships.
What can such a determined speedster do
but to find a newspaper add offering an apartment room, and claim it for
himself against a mob of other good intentioned prospectors? A single woman,
Constance Milligan, has decided to sacrifice her two-bedroom apartment by
sharing it, but before she can even become involved in the rental decision,
Dingle has sent all the others home and declared himself, despite her protests
that she is determined to have a woman tenant, her new roommate.
Constance Milligan: …I’ve made
up my mind to rent to nobody but a
woman.
Dingle: So, let me ask you
something. Would I ever want to wear your
stockings?
Constance: No.
Dingle: Well, all right.
Would I ever want to borrow your girdle, or your
red and yellow
dancing slippers?
Constance: Of course not.
Dingle: Well, any woman, no
matter who, would insist upon borrowing
that dress you got
on right now. You know why? Because it’s so
pretty.
Constance: I made it myself.
Dingle: And how would you
like it if she spilled a cocktail all over it…at
a party you couldn’t
go with her to because she had borrowed it to
go it…in?
But she, in turn, presents him with an
impossible time schedule for their bathroom and kitchen use in the morning, an instant-by-instant
determination of everything from their awakening to their bathroom habits and
their eating patterns—an impossibly intricate interweaving of two individuals
that is doomed to failure, and which punishes poor Dingle by leaving outside
the apartment door in his pajamas.
In part to retaliate, but also just out
of his impetuous personality, he leases his half of the room to Sergeant Joe
Carter (Joel McCrea) who has no place to stay as he waits to be shipped
overseas. Obviously, the action leads to even greater friction between Dingle
and Milligan, and, ultimately, when Dingle reads her diary she
The only difficulty between these two
from their former tenant is that they are not nearly as eager and determined to
act. Milligan is engaged to a high-paid bureaucrat, Charles J. Pendergast
(Richard Gaines), who even by his name we know is not suitable for her breathy,
down-to-earth sensuality. And when Dingle is forced to deal with Pendergast at
a luncheon he dislikes him the moment he sees him, again interceding,
perceiving that Joe would be a far better match.
If this comedy is not quite as hilarious as it wishes itself to be, and
if its predictability sometimes interferes with the screwball antics it would
like to emulate, Stevens’ film still provides a great deal of pleasure, mostly
due to Jean Arthur’s comic acting performed with a voice pitched between
improvident prudence and a petulant purring that is nearly impossible to
resist. Despite the bland appeal of McCrea, he is just handsome enough that we
desire him to fall into the abyss that any “dingle” (the word meaning a small,
deep, concealed dell) might have lured the two into. Finally, the communal
manner of living the movie espouses is perhaps the closest American cinema ever
got to a concept of social(ist) or group love before the late 1960s, as the
intrusive camera moves, like another household guest, winds in and out of walls
and windows, assuring the apartment's tenants little privacy. But then
Washington, D.C., in this topsy-turvy wartime world, is somewhat like living in
a vast dormitory. Men and women encamp at night in hallways. And a simple visit
to a night club leads Joe Carter, in this male-depleted society, to have to
fend off an entire room of swooning women. Marriage is clearly the only thing
two people can do alone, with just the two of them.
Los Angeles, August 28, 2012
Reprinted from International Cinema Review (August 2012).
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