Icons of Screwball Comedy, Vol. 2 (Theodora Goes Wild / Together Again / A Night to Remember / The D - Region 99 DVD

The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940) is a likable outing: Loretta Young is a bestselling author of an advice book for unmarried ladies--which makes it difficult to explain her sudden marriage to a physician (Ray Milland) she just met. The explanation is one of those screwball contrivances--it'll spare a scandal, for starters--required for the plot to work. And, largely because of the deft playing of Young and Milland, it does work. The 1942 A Night to Remember sounds like more fun than it is: Young and hubby Brian Aherne arrive at their new Greenwich Village apartment only to learn the place comes furnished… with a corpse. Alas, the body isn't the only stiff in sight: the comic sleuthing is surely meant to evoke the Thin Man series, but despite Aherne's breezy approach, the movie clumps badly. In this company, Theodora reigns head and shoulders above the rest. --Robert Horton