Not even bad in a good way

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Don't get me wrong. This is a sort of fun slap sticky screwball comedy from and of the 40's. It is Kirk Douglas's sixth film and he is billed second after the lovely Laraine Day. It is just two films and two years before his Academy Award winning turn in Champion in 1950. BUT Kirk is best at those scene chewing, somewhat over-dramatic, tooth baring roles. Comedy, not so much ! Keenan Wynn is fun to watch in another of his frequent appearances as best pal to the star. He has the most clever wise cracks in the film but they aren't all that funny, really. The whole deal with him using the kitchen and burning everything is just sort of annoying and goes on way too long. Grady Sutton and Alan Mowbray are their usual competent selves. As the housekeeper there was a "Oh, wow.. looky here that's Irene Ryan, Granny from the Beverly Hillbiliiies !" Rudy Valle is sticklike as always.The story is silly and rather garbled and total nonsense but it's a chance to see the 32 year old, on the threshold of stardom, Kirk Douglas.

I'm starting to wonder, after reading some of the opinions here, if I watched the same film as the other reviewers but after checking my facts I am forced to the sad conclusion that I have.This witless wannabee screwball comedy has to be one of the the longest 94 minutes I have spent, and one of the most unfunny things I have seen, for ages. Now don't get me wrong, I love screwball comedies, but this boring, set-bound drivel falls so far short of the dizzy heights of Preston Sturges and Howards Hawks that it doesn't deserve (to mix my metaphors) to be thought of in the same breath as those greats. Writer / Director Charles Martin's dialogue is neither witty, subtle or interesting - and there's so much of it. He doesn't know how to end a scene either, with some ruthless cutting, especially of people exiting rooms and saying goodbye to each other, the pace of film would have been lifted and then the fact that the limited number of characters are doing stupid and motiveless things for no other reason than this is supposed to be a comedy would have been a little less obvious. Characters in this movie fall in and out of love with each other, and move in and out of apartments, at a moment's notice only to move what little plot there is forward. One moment people are desperately yearning for one person, the next they are getting married to someone else - having wooed and been wooed off screen so we know nothing about it until one of the characters tells us - "Oh, they're getting married!" (usually after someone has made a faux-pas or jumped to the wrong conclusion). If we had known that these two characters were in love or supposed to be engaged before hand we, the audience, might have enjoyed the experience of watching someone making a fool of themselves in front of them. As it is the characters just come over looking like selfish, petulant idiots and we have no sympathy for any of them.The sets are limited and the action confined to them in a way that makes the whole thing look like a badly filmed stage play. The only moments of relief from the tedium are Keenan Wynn who looks like he has wandered in from a different movie and has decided to hang around and be slightly funnier than all the unfunny stuff going on around him.Highly avoidable.

Charles Martin directs this charming and entertaining, but trivial comedy. The all-star cast is the redemption of MY DEAR SECRETARY. Best-selling novelist Owen Waterbury(Kirk Douglas)proves himself to be a die-hard skirt-chaser. When an aspiring novelist Stephanie Gaylord(Laraine Day)becomes his secretary, he decides to give up squiring the ladies and puts all of his attention toward her. No sooner than they marry, Stephanie finds out that Owen's new secretary is not only intelligent, but very beautiful as well. Let the fun begin. Evocative of the 40's, this movie is pretty straight-laced. At times Douglas seems too earnest to be so tempted by women. Day exudes natural beauty. Rounding out the cast: Keenan Wynn, Rudy Vallee and Irene Ryan.

An overlooked and underrated gem in the genre of American Screwball comedy, "My Dear Secretary" pits Kirk Douglas and Laraine Day together in a romantic battle of the sexes set against the literary world of the 1940's. The script, complex in its plot as one expects from these brilliant comedies from that era, is flawless, and the performances by Day and Douglas, who demonstrates an early knack for comedic acting sorely underused in most of his later films, are solid. It is Keenan Wynn however as Douglas' wisecracking best friend who does a great deal of scene stealing in one of his most memorable roles. A shame Kirk Douglas claimed a lack of affection for this picture in his autobiography as it is a real treat to watch him in this type of film. Made by low key United Artists at a time when screwball comedy was winding down, it is not hard to see why this picture was overlooked then and is all but forgotten now. In the shadow of the more famous Cary Grant and Roselind Russell et al comedies it is nevertheless an intricate and finely tuned piece of screwball which deserves better recognition. Look for it at the video store, you will pleasantly surprised. And while you're there check out "A Lady Takes a Chance" with Jean Arthur and John Wayne, another sadly under-appreciated comedy from the 40's.