AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

mark.waltz Gary Cooper believes in marriage. In fact, he believes in it so much, he has done it seven times. Will new amour Claudette Colbert be the eighth and last one? Only 90 minutes will tell.Wealthy banker Cooper is in France and while desperately searching for pajama tops (he never wears the bottoms) he meets pretty Claudette Colbert who agrees to purchase the bottoms. This hysterical sequence (featuring some very funny obscure character actors fretting over how buying only pajama tops will lead to another revolution) leads into an even funnier sequence where a prissy hotel manager (Franklin Pangborn) takes Cooper to a hotel suite where he finds impoverished marquis Edward Everett Horton in bed and proceeds to kick Horton out. Cooper learns that Colbert is Horton's daughter and proceeds to scheme to make her his 8th wife. Cooper is not really a blue-beard, but the story focuses on how Colbert works to change her new husband into the man she intends to spend the rest of her life with.This was not a critical hit in its day, but in reflection, it is very good to look at and filled with a lot of droll humor that makes it lightly funny and very fast moving. Cooper and Colbert are lovely to look at, while the "veddy" British David Niven does what he can with a mostly miscast role (Colbert's French suitor who discovers that Cooper is his employer). The rest of the cast is a character actor lover's dream. To see Pangborn and Horton together is to compare the art of how two different types of "prissy" men made their characters so totally different, yet are remembered as the golden age of Hollywood's most notable obviously gay characters. Warren Hymer is his typical dumb tough guy as the prizefighter Colbert hires to make Cooper jealous. The always wonderful Elizabeth Patterson adds delicious imperiousness to her matriarchal character. Finally, Herman Bing is always good for a laugh (with his over-the-top accent) as Cooper's private detective who isn't above switching allegiances to Colbert if it brings him another buck or two.While Ernest Lubitsch's line of films has some credits that are certainly greater than this piece of French Pastry, the film is actually quite better than its reputation has made it out to be. Post-depression and pre-World War II audiences loved these art decco slices of strudel, and no studio did it better or more than Paramount. Forget about the premise of a charming rogue getting his comeuppance and just enjoy the fluff. You'll find your funny bone tickled as much as the champagne bubbles tickle Colbert and Cooper's noses. And just remember---that isn't a tub. It's a wash basin!

whpratt1 Gary Cooper, (Michael Brandon) played the role as an American millionaire who had seven bad marriages, but always divorced his wife's with plenty of money to live on. Michael is in Paris on business and goes into a French Department Store to buy a pair of pajama tops and the sales people refuse to sell him just the tops, he has to buy the bottoms or there is no sale. Nicole DeLoiselle, (Claudette Colbert) listens to this conversation and offers to buy the bottom of these pajama's. Michael becomes very interested in Nicole and they have occasion to meet and go on dates. It is not too long before Michael proposes marriage to Nicole and she is very taken back with his request for marriage since she really does not know him very well. However, once she finds out she is going to become the Eighth wife of Michael she begins to change her mind and this story becomes quite entertaining and funny. Don't miss this film, it is great entertainment by great veteran actors. Enjoy.

bkoganbing Years before pre-nuptial agreements became a regular thing, Ernest Lubitsch made a screen comedy on which they are the basis. Bluebeard's Eighth Wife involves Gary Cooper as a multi-millionaire living on the French Riviera who's been married seven times and now marries Claudette Colbert for number eight. But Cooper's a good sport about it, he always settles with his ex-wives for a $50,000.00 a year as per an agreement they sign before marrying him. Sounds like what we now call a pre-nuptial agreement.Of course Claudette wants a lot more than that and she feels Cooper takes an entirely too business like approach to marriage. She'd like the real deal and is willing to go some considerable lengths to get it.Bluebeard's Eighth Wife has some really funny moments, the original meeting of Cooper and Colbert in a men's store where Cooper is insisting he wants only pajama tops and Colbert looking for only bottoms. And of course my favorite is Colbert trailing and blackmailing the detective Cooper sends to spy on her. Herman Bing has the best supporting role in the film as that selfsame, flustered detective.I've often wondered how back in the day Hollywood could get away with casting so many people who are non-French in a film like this. Of course Cooper is an American and Colbert of the cast is the only one actually of French background. Though David Niven is charming as always, having him be a Frenchman is ludicrous, he is sooooooo British.Nevertheless Bluebeard's Eighth Wife is an enjoyable film and a great example of what was called 'the Lubitsch touch' back in the day.

theowinthrop This film reappeared on channel 13 in the 1990s when they did a series of comedies from Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s. In fact, to the tune of "The Jolly Fat Policeman", they had a montage of scenes from the films to introduce the series of people laughing, including one of Gary Cooper chortling when watching a film in a movie house - a sequence from this film.It all begins innocently enough when Cooper, a millionaire, goes into a fancy department store in France to buy pajamas. But he only likes to sleep in the tops. The clerk (Tyler Brooke) insists that he cannot sell half a pair of pajamas as Cooper wants. Claudette Colbert hears the argument and offers to help - she only likes to sleep in pajama bottoms. What if Brooke sells them each half? Brooke has never had such an offer before, so he goes to the floor walker (Rolfe Sedan) and asks him if this can be done. He is disturbed too - the request is quite unconventional. Eventually they contact the store's owner (Charles Halton). Halton is in bed, and gets out - his skinny frame supporting only a pajama top (if a suitably long one for the sake of censorship). Can they sell the two customers one set of pajamas (half for each)? Properly horrified, Halton answers, "No, of course not! That is Communism!!". So the sale is not allowed. Apparently nobody thinks that Cooper can buy the total pair and sell half to Colbert.Lubitsch's BLUEBEARD'S EIGHTH WIFE has had a reputation of falling flat, most viewers not liking it because of a misreading of Colbert's character. She is seen as quite mercenary towards Cooper - selling herself to him on her terms.Actually Cooper's character is the nastier, as he is rich and figures that everything has a price. He is correct most of the time. Look at the way Colbert's aristocratic pauper of a father, Edward Everett Horton, sees his new son-in-law as a golden goose he can use. Cooper's willingness to marry Colbert somehow includes an agreement that if he is hesitant or chooses to not marry her he has to pay damages. Horton, when he realizes this, takes out a watch, and (in a most reassuring voice) says to Cooper - "Take your time my boy!", to come to a decision. Later we see Horton's wardrobe has gotten more modern and fancier.The film, script by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, compares well with their script for Mitchell Leisin's MIDNIGHT (also with Colbert, but with Don Ameche and John Barrymore). There Colbert is willing to sell herself for a money marriage to (to Francis Lederer), but it is complicated by a fictitious marriage to Ameche. She really loves Ameche (a taxi driver) but she explains to him in an unexpectedly realistic moment that her parents married "for love" but poverty made them grow to hate each other. This is not found in BLUEBEARD'S EIGHTH WIFE, where Colbert does not have a background like that (she is, after all, the daughter of a Marquis). Her mercenary plotting is to teach Cooper a lesson about his standards.The film has some nice work by the supporting staff, including Herman Bing as a private eye who turns out to be hiding things that Colbert learns about, and a young David Niven, who has a set of choice moments as a stand in punching bag and as a willing ear to Cooper. Coop tells Niven about his problems with Colbert, and how she is so infuriating. Niven listens respectfully. At the end, Cooper is touched by his willingness to hear what he had to say. "Albert, how much do I pay you?", Cooper asks him. Niven thinks and says, "Thirty five francs a week sir.". Cooper looks deeply into his soul, and says (shaking his head), "That's fair!"