April 30 movie: The Doughgirls. Jane Wyman, Ann Sheridan, and Alexis Smith star as three best friends who hate each other. Also they're all newlyweds whose husbands hate them. Then on the same day, they all find out they're not really married. What's a girl to do?
I found this movie unwatchable. I hate those screwball comedies about married couples who loathe each other. Here's a typical exchange:
Wife: "Oh Arthur, I love you."
Husband (rolling eyes and smirking): "Couldn't happen to a nicer fellow."
Making the friends all loathe each other too ratcheted up the unpleasantness to a level I just couldn't stand. Also the movie was too stagey -- almost the whole thing takes place in one room, with people constantly running in and out of doors. They tried to make comedy out of the overcrowding in wartime DC, just like The More The Merrier, but it's hard to do when the whole movie is trapped inside one room.
Eve Arden played a sassy Soviet officer, and even she couldn't save this movie. That's saying something.
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