Her Husband's Affairs

1947 "HAVE YOUR HEAD EXAMINED... to make sure you won't laugh it off when you screen Her Husband's Affairs"
6| 1h24m| NR| en
Details

Bill Weldon is an Ad man who craves his wife Margaret's approval of his work, instead he gets constructive (and on-target) feedback, which he hates. Things get really strange when Bill creates advertising for a wacky inventor's embalming fluid.

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Reviews

GamerTab That was an excellent one.
GazerRise Fantastic!
Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
MartinHafer "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.
JohnHowardReid 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!
ksf-2 Lucy had a bit part in Franchot Tone's "Moulin Rouge" ten years prior to this film, but this time she gets the female starring role up against Tone. Right from the beginning of "Her Husband's Affairs", we see that William Weldon (Tone) gets himself into jams, and wife Margaret (Lucy) has to get him out of them every time. William's boss JB, is the awesome Edward E. Horton, made up to look quite old and bald. (Viewers will recognize Horton's effeminate, whining, voice from Fractured Fairy Tales and all those Fred Astaire films.) Our story seems to be an early version of the TV show "Bewitched", where hubby is an advertising man, and relies on the wife's quick thinking to save him. When one of the products they are involved with causes a major crisis, they must figure out a solution quickly before the newspapers get there to take pictures. Lucy had been getting starring roles for a few years now, and she does just fine in this lightweight one. The second half of the picture takes place in a courtroom, and feels like an episode of I Love Lucy (Oh Fred!)...Gene Lockhart is here as Mr. Winterbottom. Also look for a 13 year old Dwayne Hickman (played in his own show "Dobie Gillis") in the laboratory scene. Directed by Sylvan Simon, who died at age 41, just a couple years after this project. No big surprises here, but we get a fun, early look at Lucy being Lucy just a couple years before her TV show.
Neil Doyle 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.