The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940) – A. Hall

Screwball comedy starring Loretta Young and Ray Milland (before he moved over to Noir and after his turn in the much funnier Easy Living, 1937).  Young plays a feminist author (a “career woman”, said with disdain by many in the film, one of its many dated aspects) who is mistakenly thought to have married neuroscientist Milland. Both have other lovers – she has her publisher (Reginald Gardiner) and he has a society fixture (Gail Patrick) – but it turns out that pretending to be married suits them both, despite the fact that they hate each other (naturally). Initially, Milland suggests that he is going along with the scheme simply to help Young write her new book on marriage (to make up for the losses that her earlier feminist books are now suffering) but it turns out that he’s been promoted to a professorship by a dean who values marriage. Nevertheless, they are both desperate to head to Reno for a divorce as soon as possible (despite not really being married).  Of course, the plot takes us in a completely different direction.  Not really laugh-out-loud funny and awkwardly old-fashioned in many places but it fills the bill for this genre if you’ve exhausted the many other better entries.