Julian West Another great screwball comedy starring the incomparable Jean Arthur. Charles Coburn is at his annoying best, too, and won a Supporting Actor Oscar for his trouble. If you like 1930s-1940s comedies, you'll LOVE this film!

SimonJack "The More the Merrier" is set in Washington, D.C. smack dab in the middle of World War II. The housing shortage of the time and place sets up the plot for this wonderfully funny movie. Jean Arthur is Connie Milligan who does her patriotic duty by advertising to share her apartment. Charles Coburn is Benjamin Dingle, a businessman who arrives in the city two days early for some government business and finds no hotel space. He weasels his way past a long line of people waiting to see Connie about her apartment, and convinces her to accept him. While Connie's off to work the next day, Dingle rents half of his half of the apartment to a young man, Joe Carter, played by Joel McCrea. One can guess where this story will go as Dingle plays cupid and matchmaker for Connie and Joe. But the humor is over the top funny as the trio go from situation to situation. There are scenes with little or no dialog that resemble slapstick one would see from the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello. A small supporting cast contributes to the fun, but this film is mostly a three-person show. While Connie and Joe are excellent in their roles, it is Coburn's Dingle who is the heart of the comedy.Coburn has never been funnier. This second lead and top supporting actor didn't arrive in Hollywood until he was 56. But over the next nearly three decades he made almost 100 movies. He played dramatic roles, in historical and biopic films, and others; but his forte was comedy. In most instances he was a straight man, or a stern character with clever repartee. Never was he funnier than in this film. And, I can't recall any scenes in his many films in which he smiled, but he gives a huge ear-to-ear grin in this film. Coburn was most deserving of the Oscar he won as best supporting actor in "The More the Merrier." This was the first Columbia movie to be held over by theaters across the nation. It was an obvious hit with audiences in 1943, and it should continue to delight people of all ages these many decades later. Besides the comedy of the three leads, this film gives a glimpse of life in the American capitol during WW II. That is, a glimpse of the social life. Washington then was known for its ratio of eight women to one man. The film scores that point with a little humor as well with a couple of scenes. In one, a line of women whistle and gawk at a man who walks by. And in a restaurant scene with Connie and Joe, some women are dancing together, and when Connie goes to powder her nose, Joe is immediately surrounded by a bevy of beauties. It may be hard to imagine a sudden huge housing shortage in any city today. But the situation in Washington, D.C. was very real during WW II. Two factors contributed to it. The number of government employees increased dramatically to staff the many new offices and jobs related to the war. And, droves of single women were arriving to replace men who left every kind of job imaginable to go off to war. The families of the men who went off to war were still there in their homes. So, new housing had to be found for those moving into the area. The Good Housekeeping magazine issue of January 1942 had a feature article about the "government girls." The article said, "There's a new army on the Potomac – the bright-eyed, fresh-faced young Americans who have poured into Washington from remote farms, sleepy little towns, and the confusion of cities, to work for the government in a time of national emergency."The article noted that these young women went to work in crowded federal buildings, instant offices created in warehouses, apartment buildings and wartime temporary office buildings tossed up on the Washington Mall. Besides the mushrooming numbers of office jobs for women that the war brought, women replaced men in the local service garages, in the utilities jobs, pumping gas, driving trucks, delivering mail, etc.Those who have lived near or visited the U.S. Capitol know how beautiful the Washington Mall is. Just imagine that toward the end of WW II, more than two-thirds of the Mall was occupied with office buildings. Temporary structures filled the mall along Constitution and Independence avenues. And, the park below the West side of the capitol building was filled with buildings. Only the narrow strip with the Washington Monument and reflecting pool remained open and one could see the narrow park strip from the Capitol west to the Lincoln Memorial. After the war, some of the temporary buildings remained for decades. Some were still there when I worked in the nation's capital in the 1970s. I think the last of the temp buildings were torn down by about 1980. Of course, more permanent buildings had been built over the years to house the larger government that continued to grow even after the war years.

misteroregon It has a cute script, and perfectly fine acting, but for some reason Jean Arthur affects an accent that sounds like Fran Drescher ate Snookie and then cried about it for more than an hour.It was so distracting that I was hard to maintain immersion and suspension of disbelief. I'm not usually put off by dialog/accent choices, but this was so inexplicable and so unavoidable that it sort of ruined the movie watching experience.Other than that, it was a perfectly serviceable romantic comedy from the 40's. Nothing amazing, nothing awful, certainly worth a view - especially subtitled on mute.

btm1 The war-time influx of people Into Washington, D.C., had created a major housing shortage by 1943. As a patriotic gesture Connie (Jean Arthur) advertises a spare room in her apartment. Benjamin Dingle (Charles Coburn), a dignified senior citizen with an appointment with a Senator, has arrived in Washington 2 days early for his hotel reservation. There are no vacancies anywhere. But he spots Connie's ad and boldly tricks the line of other people who answered the ad to leave. Then he talks Connie into subletting half the apartment to him even though she intended to only accept a lady tenant. He then rents half of his half to Joe Carter (the ruggedly handsome Joel McCrea) without telling Connie about it. That is the premise of this situation comedy.I watched this on TCM and think it may have been an abridged version. In one instance the scene switched from the main characters inside the apartment to everyone (not just the main characters but many extras who I suppose were meant to be other residents of the apartment building) enjoining the sun on the roof-top. Also, there possibly was some earlier scene introducing the relationship between Connie and her teenage friend, Morton. In the TCM version there is no set up for the scene where Connie advises Morton to join the Boy Scouts. Morton's character is odd because he talks in the manner of a New York street kid, whereas D.C. at the time was still very much a southern town. Still, the story was not difficult to follow. But in the nearly 70 years since this was an original concept, this kind of story has been copied and adapted into so many comedies that it now seems stale and predictable. Academy Award nominations and winners, particularly in the studio years, have often seem to be based on popularity or advertising, not strictly merit. Charles Coburn won the 16th Academy Awards Best Supporting Oscar for this film, beating (among others) Claude Raines in Casablanca. Inexplicable.