Purely Joyful Movie!

just watch it!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

An anytime bore if ever there was one, this is a Clayton's sex comedy – namely the sex comedy you have when you're not having a sex comedy. In fact, the word "sex" is never so much as breathed, let alone mentioned. Indeed, we are given to understand that although the thoughts of both protagonists (played respectively by Ty Power and Linda Darnell) may have strayed towards marital indiscretions, no such indiscretions have actually taken place. Mind you, the movie does provide a good reason for straying. The wife won't even allow her husband to sleep with her. Oddly, this fact is not pointed out in the dialogue at all, although it is visually presented to our amazed eyes at least a dozen times. (I was going to say at least fifty times, but maybe that's a slight exaggeration). In all, Day- Time Wife (a true title if ever there was one) is a forced, witless excuse for a comedy. Although it is beautifully photographed by Miss Darnell's husband, Pev Marley, and gloriously mounted (Royer costumes, Wright sets), the mindless chatter and hokey plot wears out long before the movie is even half over. What makes it watchable, however, is sixteen-year-old Linda Darnell. Never has such a beauty been so eloquently captured by a movie camera, either before or since, at such a young age. (This one was available on a Fox DVD at a special low price for insomniacs, but I understand it has now sold out.)

Day-Time Wife starred Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell together for the first time, they went on to do two more films and much better ones, The Mark Of Zorro and Blood And Sand. Look very closely at Darnell she was only 16 at the time playing a relatively new bride with only two years of marriage under her belt. Back then Darnell's mother added a couple of years to her resume so she would be hired and it worked. In fact this was only Linda Darnell's second feature film all together.The story involves the age old gambit of the spouse starting to suspect the husband is cheating on her. In this case Darnell has a candidate with the flirtatious Wendy Barrie who is Ty's secretary and would love to have him nail her. Darnell also has a confidante in the older much married Binnie Barnes who is functioning as Eve Arden here. She feeds Darnell's suspicions with a good wisecrack or three.So Linda goes out in the working world and becomes a secretary to another man with a roving eye, Warren William. Of course that Power and William are business associates she doesn't know and finds out after she's taken the job. That's when the film gets interesting.Joan Davis is in Day-Time Wife as the receptionist at William's office and she's somewhat subdued and a bit wasted here. Her zaniness was not all that in evidence.Day-Time Wife will never make the list of best screwball comedies of the era nor of the top ten films of Tyrone Power or Linda Darnell. Still it's a pleasant and none too taxing diversion for the viewer.

Just 7 reviews on this one by the time I'm writing this, with a couple of them being very very negative.Bla, bla, bla... 1939 was the best year in Hollywood history (since when? who said that?) ... bla, bla, bla...Tyrone Power is terrible... bla, bla, bla... they should have casted Cary Grant.NONSENSE. The script is fairly good (as long as someone has seen a couple of 1930's films more than just "Holiday" and "Bringing Up Baby") and Tyrone Power is quite descent and very funny.Furthermore, someone who has watched just a few of the dozens of romantic - screwball comedies of that era, would have known that there were MANY other male leads besides Cary Grant, actors who gave as wonderful performances as C.G. gave in some of his films. They would also know that even though Cary Grant was magnificent, he also had done some VERY BAD movies through the 30's. Finally, a request for the IMDb stuff. It's terribly unfair for a movie to have on it's main page a 100 word review with the title "Simply awful!". Especially when this review gives absolutely no reasons on why the movie is "awful". The fact that 22/26 people who have read the review, DISAPPROVED it, speaks for itself.

1939 may have been the shiniest of Hollywood's Golden Years, but this gilded stinker should certainly keep us from getting too gassy about the whole thing.Yes, the principals are pretty, and given that (if you can believe the biographical info) Darnell had barely entered puberty by the time she was outfitted in this ermine-lined straitjacket, she acquits herself fairly well (altho her girlish piping seems bizarre vis a vis the later, memorable alto of "Letter to Three Wives").But if you ever needed proof that Tyrone Power was no Cary Grant, brother, stop here. His double-takes and eye-rolling are appalling and his comic timing non-existent. Power looks heroic in a dinner jacket, but otherwise he's just plain rotten here.So is most of the dialogue. And the direction. I suppose "Day-Time Wife" merits some historical attention as one more '30's "comedy of remarriage," but its essential feature is its mind-boggling stupidity.