The best-remembered wartime movie about labor and housing shortages is the hilarious The More the Merrier (1943), directed by George Stevens. Adapted from a 1919 play, the broad comedy Make Your Own Bed (1944) also focuses on topical home front issues, in this case, the labor shortage. Due to the war, frustrated gunpowder manufacturer Walter Whirtle (Alan Hale) can't find anyone willing to work as his butler or maid, and hatches a crazy plan to remedy his situation. He hires the lovable but foolish detective Jerry (Jack Carson) to go undercover as his butler, to protect his wife Vivian (Irene Manning) and look out for the enemy spies he claims to have seen lurking about. Walter then hires some actors to pose as spies - not realizing that they really are spies after Walter's company secrets. When Jerry gets his fiancée Susan (Jane Wyman) hired as an 'undercover maid' the Whirtle household soon becomes chaos. Jerry deduces incorrectly that Vivian is having an affair with her neighbor, Boris (George Tobias), while Susan thinks that Jerry is carrying on with two strange women in the pool house. In the crazy finale, Jerry inadvertently helps the spies by arresting the undercover G-Man sent to investigate. Director Peter Godfrey puts the emphasis on silly slapstick, choice pantomime gags and Alan Hale's comic rage, all in an atmosphere of victory gardens and householders desperate to find help. Reviewers noted that Make Your Own Bed shares subject matter with the same year's Standing Room Only (1944), where Paulette Goddard and Fred MacMurray must pose as servants because of a lost hotel booking. Warner Bros. must have thought that Alan Hale and Irene Manning could become an ongoing comedy team, because they were cast together as another funny man & wife duo in the next year's Escape in the Desert (1945). Denied the meaty roles reserved at WB for Bette Davis and Ida Lupino, to gain career traction Jane Wyman would have to get herself loaned out to Paramount (The Lost Weekend, 1945) and MGM (The Yearling, (1946).

By Glenn Erickson