In spite of Gary Cooper's screen image as an aw-shucks nice guy, in real life he was a sophisticated, sexy bon vivant who cut quite a swath through Hollywood's feminine population. Both sides of Cooper are on display in Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), co-starring Claudette Colbert and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. The film, which put a comedy spin on an old French folk tale about a man who marries multiple times and the woman who sets out to end his marital misadventures, marked the first screenplay collaboration for one of Hollywood's most successful screenwriting teams, Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett.

Wilder, who was Jewish, fled Europe for Hollywood in 1933, and landed a job at Paramount without making much of an impression at first, contributing stories and uncredited bits of screenplays. That changed when the studio paired Wilder with Brackett, an east coast patrician fourteen years his senior. Their unlikely partnership was contentious, but as Wilder noted, "Sometimes we would argue violently, but that was good, that was how we got along. He forced me to think in English, especially when I argued with him, which was a lot...I was excited at the idea of working with Lubitsch. One thing Brackett and I agreed on was Ernst Lubitsch."

The opening scene of Bluebeard's Eighth Wife is a classic "meet cute," classic Lubitsch, and classic Brackett and Wilder. Cooper and Colbert are both shopping for men's pajamas; he wants only the tops, and she wants only the bottoms. Before long, they're sharing more than just pajamas, and a whirlwind courtship leads to marriage. But as in all screwball comedies, especially Lubitsch's, that's only the beginning of complications, misunderstandings, and general comic mayhem. The inspiration for the film was apparently the life of much-married millionaire Tommy Manville, who wed eleven women and had thirteen marriages (he divorced and re-wed one, and stayed married to another). Although the original source material for the film was about a nobleman who marries often and murders his brides, there are no dead spouses in Bluebeard's Eighth Wife . It's played strictly for laughs, as clever Colbert makes sure that Cooper's eighth wife is his last.

A pre-stardom David Niven is fourth-billed in Bluebeard's Eighth Wife , as one of Colbert's admirers. Niven was thrilled to be in such stellar company as Colbert and Cooper, and even more so to work for the first time with Lubitsch. So was Wilder, who called Lubitsch "the best writer that ever lived." In his autobiography, Niven described Lubitsch as sitting "like a little gnome, beside the camera, perched on a step ladder, giggling and hugging himself at all his own wonderful inventiveness...I learned major lessons about playing comedy during that time and will forever remember a statement of his: 'nobody should play comedy unless they have a circus going on inside.'"

Brackett and Wilder's fraught partnership continued through more than a dozen memorable films, including comedies like Lubitsch's Ninotchka (1939), and Howard Hawks's Ball of Fire (1941), and dramas like The Lost Weekend (1945), and their final film together, Sunset Boulevard (1950), both of which Wilder also directed. Brackett took on producer duties, but the collaboration that thrived on conflict had stopped working. As Wilder diplomatically explained it, "The sparks weren't flying anymore." Brackett found out that their partnership was over not from Wilder, but from a studio press release.

The team that Wilder himself had jokingly called "the happiest couple in Hollywood" went their separate ways, and each had his own success, Brackett moving to 20th Century Fox as a writer and producer. Wilder's career and his subsequent writing collaboration with I.A.L. Diamond produced many hits, and with 1960's The Apartment, Wilder became the first person to win Oscars for writing, producing and directing the same film. But none of Brackett's subsequent films were as brilliant as those he wrote with Wilder. Recalling the end of their partnership, Brackett wrote, "It was such a blow, such an unexpected blow. I thought I'd never recover from it. And in fact, I don't think I ever have."

Producer, Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Screenplay: Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder
Cinematography: Leo Tover
Editor: William Shea
Costume Design: Travis Banton
Art Direction: Hans Dreier, Robert Usher
Music: Boris Morros
Principal Cast: Claudette Colbert (Nicole de Loiselle), Gary Cooper (Michael Brandon), Edward Everett Horton (Marquis de Loiselle), David Niven (Albert de Regnier), Elizabeth Patterson (Aunt Hedwige), Herman Bing (Monsieur Pepinard), Warren Hymer (Kid Mulligan), Franklin Pangborn (Assistant Hotel Manager), Armand Cortes (Assistant Hotel Manager), Rolfe Sedan (Floorwalker), Lawrence Grant (Professor Urganzeff)
84 minutes

by Margarita Landazuri