MartinHafer "Her Husband's Affairs" is not a very good film. It also has an incredibly sexist message that must have ticked off many in the audience when they went to see this picture, as its underlying message is that wives should keep their mouths shut and let the man do all the thinking...even if he's wrong!!The basic idea behind the film could have been great...but wasn't handled especially well...sexist message or not. Bill (Franchot Tone) is an advertising executive and his wife (Lucille Ball) often has great ideas. In the midst of making a very successful campaign for hats (thanks in large part to the wife) his goofy neighbor, a crackpot inventor, shows him his new invention. It seems this cream instantly cleans off whiskers. With no scientific testing to see if it really works AND if it has any negative side-effects, a multi-million dollar campaign is initiated....and only a day later do they learn that instead of removing hair, it creates lush hair overnight! There's more to the dopey invention than this...but by that point my patience was gone. I just wanted this incredibly bad film to end!! This is tough, however, as the film got progressively worse.The bottom line is that this movie comes off like a very bad sitcom...very bad. The story goes everywhere...too many places. It also has lots of folks getting upset and acting like caricatures instead of real folks. Pretty dopey...as well as incredibly sexist.

vincentlynch-moonoi Yes, I actually found this film annoying, particularly early on. But, I stuck with it because it has a strong cast.I've always though Franchot Tone to be an undervalued actor. Unfortunately, here, his character is just plain annoying, and clearly Tone is far more suited to drama. Lucille Ball was yet to come into her own, her television series still off a few years. I found her annoying here, also, although she had done rather nicely as a supporting actress in a number of other roles prior to this. The key supporting actor here is Edward Everett Horton, who essentially plays Edward Everett Horton...which he fine...he's always a hoot.The plot had possibilities. A husband and wife who do love each other always seem to end up squabbling because she has a lot of good ideas to supplement his profession -- an ad executive. But, he resents her interference. Then along comes a hair remover...which backfires and grows hair profusely after first dissolving the hair that was already there. There are some funny moments here, but overall it seems to be a grand opportunity for over-acting and hysteria. Please, Mr. Director, take a Paxil! It was often said that Columbia Pictures knew how to do comedy. There's an exception to every rule. What was supposed to be screwball comedy turned out to just be kinda dumb. As I said at the beginning, I stuck with this film till the end...and I wish I hadn't.

Neil Doyle There's a lot of the Lucy Ricardo personality in the wife LUCILLE BALL plays in HER HUSBAND'S AFFAIRS--only here the husband who gets exasperated with her brainstorms is FRANCHOT TONE. It starts out with an amusing idea about a scientist MIKHAIL RAHSUMNY whose embalming lotion can be used to remove beards without shaving. It does so very efficiently until several hours have passed--and then it grows abundant amounts of hair.FRANCHOT TONE is an advertising man who thinks he's going to have some successful products to launch with the help of the mad scientist, except that most of the plans go haywire thanks to the manipulations of his scatterbrained wife. The plot fizzles out after the first half-hour or so and after that it just gets sillier until the courtroom ending when things finally get straightened out in time for a happy ending.Summing up: Below average vehicle for Lucy five years before she made her big splash on TV as an even more troublesome wife in America's most beloved situation comedy I LOVE LUCY. Some laughs but the jokes wear thin long before the conclusion.Trivia note: LARRY PARKS has a bit part as himself in a scene where various big shots gather to try the new product.

mark.waltz Four years before "I Love Lucy", Lucille Ball had not yet found her niche as a movie star. Films had mostly typecast her as a hard boiled dame, and while she was called "Queen of the B's", she was not yet a household name. In this film, her first chance to show her talent as a comedienne, Lucy plays the wife of advertising exec Franchot Tone (real-life ex-husband of Joan Crawford). Lucy inspires her husband at every turn, eventually getting him attention as the man who advertised the most comfortable hat in the world. (So comfortable, in fact, a mayor was booed for wearing a hat during the Star Spangled Banner at a ballgame when he had no idea he was wearing one...) A wacky scientist convinces him to advertise a shaving and hair tonic which ends up causing more than its share of chaos.While Lucy had done comedy before on-screen ("Go Chase Yourself" and "A Girl, A Guy, and a Gob" were typical RKO comedys of the late 30's and early 40's), she never had a chance to really be anything more than a hard-boiled wisecracker. These movies make her less likable than the equally wisecracking Eve Arden and did not portray her in a positive or feminine light. When both Eve and Lucy went onto do radio shows, their future as the first queens of primetime TV comedy were set in stone. (Check out Lucy and Eve in the drama with wisecracks, "Stage Door", and the entertaining comedy "Having Wonderful Time", both starring the more glamorous wisecracker, Ginger Rogers)."Her Husband's Affairs" is a fast moving, but formula comedy, filled with some hysterical comic bits, but not as well done as her best pre-TV comedy, "The Fuller Brush Girl". Both films involve comic sequences involving hair. While "The Fuller Brush Girl" is hysterical throughout, there are only fleeting moments of hysterical laughter in this film (most memorably the scene where the defects of the shaving lotion is revealed). This film was made during her declining days at MGM at the then not yet major Columbia studios where Jean Arthur reigned as comedy queen and probably turned this film down before departing a few years before it was released. Shabbily treated by L.B. Mayer after some colorful "A" musicals, Lucy ended up on the bottom of the bill in secondary features such as this. The film features such great character actors as Grant Mitchell and Edward Everett Horton (here quite bald). Featured in a cameo is Columbia's biggest star Larry Parks as himself. "Her Husband's Wife" is sure to entertain as an example of what Lucy was really good at. If only the script was a little better.