The Lady Wants Mink (1953)

Dennis O'Keefe is a credit and collection agent for a department store, but he is too soft-hearted. Gene Lockhart is his boss. He buys a new coat for his wife (Ruth Hussey). But neighbor Eve Arden comes in with a cake, wearing the fur coat that her used car dealer husband (William Demarest) bought for her. O'Keefe gets depressed because he can't make enough money to buy similar things for Hussey. Hussey gets the idea to raise her own mink, so she goes to visit Hope Emerson's mink ranch. When O'Keefe gets home, Emerson drives up to deliver the mink.

At work, O'Keefe is called on the carpet again, this time for being too aggressive with a rich client (Hillary Brooke), who knows the store owner. Hussey goes to the ranch to see mink born. She gets stranded and goes to the mink breeders' meeting with Emerson. A thunderstorm begins, and O'Keefe has to round up the mink who escaped. Hussey arrives home, carried over the water to the porch by Brad Johnson, who gave her a ride home. They have a big fight, and O'Keefe sleeps on the couch. At work, Keefe begins to exhibit irrational behavior and gets fired, so he agrees to work for Demarest, not realizing that the girls have just had a big blow-up at home. On the way home, the guys decide to play a trick on the girls and pretend that they have had a fight until they learn the bitter truth. The zoning commissioner stops by because of complaints about the mink, but Hussey tells him they are just a hobby. Then Isavel Randolph (Abigail Uppington on the Fibber McGee radio show), their landlady, stops by and evicts them, effective in 30 days.

Hussey has their furniture picked up by a van. She has the boys give back the thing they had borrowed from Arden. They drive to a broken-down place in the country. She bought it with the money she got from selling all the minks but her original stock. She intends for them to raise mink. They argue, but it is interrupted when they realize the two boys are not there any more. They were hiding upstairs. They are sweeping out in order to make a clubhouse. O'Keefe gets a job digging ditches. Hussey says she is going to buy a how-to book about repairing roofs, but he says it never rains in California. But that night it does, and the roof leaks right over their bed. So, the next day he fixes the roof, or tries to. A special delivery letter arrives offering him a job with the department store at a large salary. The family is devastated, because they love living in the country. When he gets home from work, a real estate agent is looking at the house. Then Emerson shows up to buy the mink. He tells her they are not for sale. Arden and Demarest stop by (she still in her mink coat), and announce they are adopting twins and want to move out to the country.

Dennis O'Keefe was a very talented comic actor.




Emerson