Nov 11, 2022
This week's Jean Arthur Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode is a directed-by-Wesley Ruggles double feature of disparate genres: the bigamy farce Too Many Husbands and the epic Western Arizona (both 1940). Although the films, both with screenplays by Ruggles' frequent collaborator Claude Binyon, interrogate marriage and gender respectively, one ends with the reassertion of patriarchal authority, while the other... fails to stick to its (or her) guns. We talk about Ruggles' special version of the romantic comedy triangle, Jean Arthur's erotic face journeys, and the limits of Hollywood's tolerance for gender nonconformity in female stars.
Time Codes:
0h 1m 00s: TOO MANY HUSBANDS [dir. Wesley Ruggles]
0h 25m 48s: ARIZONA [dir. Wesley Ruggles]
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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring
* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s
* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)
* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”
* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!
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