Hired Wife (1940)

This is an entertaining film that we first encountered as an old radio show, then we found it on DVD (after having to look for a while). This was one of a series of look-alike roles that Rosalind Russell played so well - the efficient businesswoman who eventually melts. In this entry, she is the executive secretary and right hand of cement company owner Brian Aherne. Every spring, Aherne falls in love with the "blonde of the season." And it happens that as our film start he has been smitten once again, this time by Virginia Bruce, a model that he also is trying to get to be the face for their advertising campaign. Sparks fly when Russell and Bruce meet, but Aherne takes Bruce to lunch and they hit it off despite Russell's attempts to break it up.

Dexter Cement is in the middle of trying to fend off a takeover bid by a bigger competitor, who are going to get an injunction to tie up his assets on a technicality. His lawyer, Robert Benchley, comes up with the idea that if he marries immediately, he can transfer all his assets to his wife and stop the takeover. He sends Russell to talk to Bruce to get her to go along, but the way Russell phrases the proposal, she refuses. Then Dexter has to grasp at the nearest straw, so he talks Russell into going with him to South Carolina to get married, purely as a business arrangement. However, before their turn, they watch a young couple being married and are both seriously impacted by the ceremony. When they get home, however, she admits to him that she set up Bruce's refusal. He fires her, but the next morning realizes that legally he can do nothing without her.

Dexter proposes to Bruce, but she is understandably cool when she comes to the office and sees the office celebration. He explains, however, and she warms back up to him. The competing company suspects that the marriage is not bona fide, and so Benchley says that they need to live under the same roof to prove it. They have to have a chaperone to verify the situation, and they draft Benchley. Then John Carroll, a Latin American friend of Russell's, comes to the office. He is strapped for funds and she hires him to romance Bruce, which he does at great expense. Then the other company gives up their suit, and Aherne tells Russell he wants a divorce. She, however, likes the arrangement and refuses to give him one. Then the judge who married them shows up and tells them that they are not legally married, because his license had not been renewed. So Russell gives up - but not before she kicks Aherne in the seat of the pants. As she leaves the office she meets Carroll coming in. He tells her he asked Bruce to marry him. But just then Aherne finds out that Carroll had been hired by Russell, Things almost break out into a four-way brawl, but at the last moment Aherne realizes the loves Russell, and the same with Bruce toward Carroll, and all ends happily.




Russell and Aherne