Gloria Swanson has been called "the first Movie Star," and she certainly played the part. As one of the silent screen's biggest stars, she had the lavish lifestyle, the multiple husbands, and the acclaim. But though she made an easy transition to talkies, Swanson's 1930's films were not successful, and the offers dwindled. With her finances, career and personal life in disarray, Swanson turned her attention to raising her children and getting involved in various business interests, along with half-hearted attempts to resuscitate her career, which came to nothing.

Swanson had not been seen on the screen since Music in the Air (1934), when in 1941 an offer came out of the blue to co-star with Adolphe Menjou in a comedy, Father Takes a Wife (1941). RKO was offering her $35,000 for the film. "A comedown as well as a comeback," Swanson sniffed in her memoirs, but it was "exactly $35,000 more than any other studio had offered me in seven years." She accepted.

In Father Takes a Wife, Swanson played a Broadway star who marries shipping magnate Menjou, to the consternation of his son and daughter-in-law. Like Swanson, Menjou had been a silent screen star, and he and Swanson were old friends, but the two had never worked together. Menjou, whose career was still thriving, was top-billed in Father Takes a Wife, but most of the publicity went to Swanson. "There's GLAMOUR on the screen again, because GLORIA'S BACK!" the ads read. They also promised, "You'll swoon over her trunkfuls of stunning fashions!" by Rene Hubert, who had designed most of Swanson's personal and onscreen wardrobe since Madame Sans-Gene (1925).

Charming in a comic supporting role in Father Takes a Wife was Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz. He had been in a hit Broadway show, Too Many Girls (1939), and had been brought to Hollywood to star in the film version of that show. Co-starring in the movie Too Many Girls (1940) was Lucille Ball, and she and Arnaz fell madly in love. Father Takes a Wife was Arnaz's second film but was always an embarrassment to him. He was supposed to sing "Perfidia" in the movie but the studio executives felt like his voice was unsuited to the classical orchestration and had him dubbed by a singer with an Italian accent. As a result, he received letters for years from his Spanish fans who wondered why he affected a different accent for the part. The excellent supporting cast also includes former silent screen star Neil Hamilton, farceur Helen Broderick (mother of Broderick Crawford), and up-and-coming comedy character actors Grady Sutton and Mary Treen.

In her autobiography, Swanson writes that Father Takes a Wife director Jack Hively "treated me like returning royalty." But in a 1975 interview, she recalled him as inept, saying the film "could have been good, but the director had never been out of Pomona." It's more likely that the film's failure was due to bad timing. When Father Takes a Wife was released in September of 1941, Europe was at war, and the U.S. was on the verge of it. Filmgoers apparently weren't in the mood for lightweight comedies. Neither were critics, who greeted the film with such adjectives as "trifling," "fluffy," and "insubstantial." Swanson would not make another film until her stunning comeback in Sunset Boulevard (1950).

Director: Jack Hively
Producer: Lee Marcus
Screenplay: Dorothy Fields, Herbert Fields
Editor: George Hively
Cinematography: Robert De Grasse
Costume Design: Rene Hubert
Art Direction: Van Nest Polglase
Music: Roy Webb
Principal Cast: Adolphe Menjou (Fredric Osborne, Sr.), Gloria Swanson (Leslie Collier), John Howard (Fredric Osborne, Jr.), Desi Arnaz (Carlos Bardez), Florence Rice (Enid Osborne), Helen Broderick (Aunt Julie), Neil Hamilton (Vincent Stewart).
BW-80m.

by Margarita Landazuri