Radio review – SDP – “My Favourite Wife” (1951) **

The playing of Cary Grant and Betsy Drake (standing in for Irene Dunne) is immaculate, the central idea is a good one – but listening to this again it is striking how bitsy this is for a comedy considered to be a classic. There’s an awful lot of jumping up and down on the spot as the ex-wife turns up, then the other guy on the island turns up. This really needed a spine –some reason to propel the action (of course in the 40s maybe it was enough to stop Grant having sex with his new wife but that doesn’t come across now). At the end producer Leo McCarey speaks and he’s careful to praise actual director Garson Kanin.