It wasn't just that Charlotte Greenwood was tall--after all, Ingrid Bergman and Lauren Bacall were also around 5'9"--but those actresses had a knack for occupying their bodies with restrained grace. Greenwood, on the other hand, no matter how lovely her gowns or coiffed her blonde hair, swung her long limbs around the screen like a spider monkey in an evening gown. It was that big, irrepressible, slightly unnerving wildness that made her a perfect fit for this, the first sound adaptation of a 1916 musical about two women who swap their dissatisfied husbands in order to prove how they married right the first time. Unlike the silent version (made in 1920 and starring Colleen Moore), this time moviegoers enjoyed Greenwood's warbling of new Grant Clarke/Harry Akst songs like "My Strongest Weakness Is You".

By Violet LeVoit