Her Husband's Affairs (1947)

Simply A Masterpiece

Excellent but underrated film

The acting in this movie is really good.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

"Her Husband's Affairs" is not a very good film. It also has an incredibly sexist message that must have ticked off many in the audience when they went to see this picture, as its underlying message is that wives should keep their mouths shut and let the man do all the thinking...even if he's wrong!!The basic idea behind the film could have been great...but wasn't handled especially well...sexist message or not. Bill (Franchot Tone) is an advertising executive and his wife (Lucille Ball) often has great ideas. In the midst of making a very successful campaign for hats (thanks in large part to the wife) his goofy neighbor, a crackpot inventor, shows him his new invention. It seems this cream instantly cleans off whiskers. With no scientific testing to see if it really works AND if it has any negative side-effects, a multi-million dollar campaign is initiated....and only a day later do they learn that instead of removing hair, it creates lush hair overnight! There's more to the dopey invention than this...but by that point my patience was gone. I just wanted this incredibly bad film to end!! This is tough, however, as the film got progressively worse.The bottom line is that this movie comes off like a very bad sitcom...very bad. The story goes everywhere...too many places. It also has lots of folks getting upset and acting like caricatures instead of real folks. Pretty dopey...as well as incredibly sexist.

This somewhat black comedy is from the pen of Ben Hecht and may remind you a bit of his classic NOTHING SACRED although it's more in the tone of the Hepburn & Tracy films. Lucille Ball stars as a newlywed, newly retired from a successful career writing ad copy but now "just married" to her former co-worker Franchot Tone. Trouble is Tone was never quite the "ad man" his wife was and is hell bent to prove his worth to the company. When an eccentric scientist friend of his invents a new embalming fluid (to turn corpses into permanent glass statues!) he mentions as a side note, it can also be used for an "instant shave" on facial hair. Tone sees this use as his ticket to success and fortune and promotes it in a big time product premiere inviting dignities and the famous (including actor Larry Parks in a cameo as himself) to try the product. They all rave about it but the trouble is that it GROWS hair thicker and worse than before within 24 hours. The day after is a major fiasco for the corporation but it's Lucy to the rescue as she cleverly points out this "new" turn is perhaps an even bigger market - selling it to men bald or with thinning hair - and a new campaign starts much to her husband's irritation. (This particular plot twist the viewer can see miles away given supporting actor Edward Everett Horton is fitted with a very phony looking skull cap to play bald for the first several reels. You can see the edges lines of it on the small screen, can't imagine how obvious it was on the big screen). Determined to be back in the driver's seat, Franchot plots more behind the scene maneuvers which ends up having him on trial for the presumed murder of the professor.The comedy is hit and miss but Lucy is always excellent and she looks a vision in some very attractive fashions. Tone is over the top at times but does well, the trouble is the brazen sexism of his character is more than a little unpleasant to latter-day viewers and likely to more than a few 1940's ones as well. There's also delicious irony with the movie's theme that Lucy is far more talented than he as "ad man" as the movie starts off with Tone twiddling with lots of unfunny shtick as he plots out his newest ad copy while that goes on for several minutes but Lucy merely raises her eyebrow in sleepy exhaustion as is far funnier showing - to no surprise of course - she's also his superior as a comic and an actor. Among the supporting cast Columbia character contractee Nana Bryant stands out as a socialite who can't help but take a discreet dip in the miracle product during it's premiere to rid herself of a touch of facial hair and lives to regret it.

A witty, amusing, highly novel and really ingenious comedy which takes a somewhat mordant view of the marriage relationship, big business, advertising and politics. True, it runs right off the rails so far as credibility is concerned about halfway through when its gets progressively wilder and wilder and further and further way-out. There are doubtless many viewers who would wish that the movie had carried on with the splendid satire of high pressure advertising salesmanship with which the first half of the movie is primarily concerned and which is fully integrated with a biting look at modern marriage and women's place. It's amazing that the film anticipates the pressures and strains caused in a marriage by women's lib (though of course this name is not used) in which it is 25 years ahead of its time.The casting is perfect. Franchot Tone is just right as the advertising executive who objects to his wife helping him in his business and Lucille Ball is ideal as the wife who just can't help lending some able assistance to rescue hubby from an apparent jam. Edward Everett Horton, making a surprise appearance in the earlier scenes (the reason for this is evident later on) gives a delightful portrayal as the advertising agency chief, while Gene Lockhart is a joy as "a man of instant action" tycoon. There's also an agreeable array of character players including Selmar Jackson and Charles Trowbridge brought face to face as judge and defense attorney respectively. Arhur Space is the prosecutor, Jonathan Hale, the governor, Pierre Watkin, a member of Lockhart's board, Robert Emmett Keane, the sarcastic manager of a ticket agency, Mabel Paige, a nosy neighbor, Douglas Wood, the hat manufacturer, while Larry Parks makes a cameo appearance as himself. As the crazy inventor, Emil, Mikhail Rasumny is a joy even if he is chiefly responsible for the plot running right off the rails! Sylvan Simon's direction is very slick, as usual, putting the comedy across with unobtrusively professional skill. I almost forgot to mention, the movie's delightfully crazy introduction that has Franchot Tone weighing hats! By Columbia's standards, production values are exceptionally lavish. In view of the movie's indifferent performance at the box office, this must have been rather mortifying for producer Andre Hakim after his fine work in assembling such a top cast and engaging a really first rate crew headed by Charles Lawton on photography. The sets, costumes and music scoring are first class and the cast list, as noted by IMDb, is as long as your arm!

There's a lot of the Lucy Ricardo personality in the wife LUCILLE BALL plays in HER HUSBAND'S AFFAIRS--only here the husband who gets exasperated with her brainstorms is FRANCHOT TONE. It starts out with an amusing idea about a scientist MIKHAIL RAHSUMNY whose embalming lotion can be used to remove beards without shaving. It does so very efficiently until several hours have passed--and then it grows abundant amounts of hair.FRANCHOT TONE is an advertising man who thinks he's going to have some successful products to launch with the help of the mad scientist, except that most of the plans go haywire thanks to the manipulations of his scatterbrained wife. The plot fizzles out after the first half-hour or so and after that it just gets sillier until the courtroom ending when things finally get straightened out in time for a happy ending.Summing up: Below average vehicle for Lucy five years before she made her big splash on TV as an even more troublesome wife in America's most beloved situation comedy I LOVE LUCY. Some laughs but the jokes wear thin long before the conclusion.Trivia note: LARRY PARKS has a bit part as himself in a scene where various big shots gather to try the new product.