My Dear Secretary (1948)

Best movie of this year hands down!

An Exercise In Nonsense

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Steve Gaylord (Laraine Day) has a stupid name. It's a man's name but she's a woman. Anyway, she gets a job as a secretary to best-selling author Owen (Kirk Douglas). However, Owen has no real need for a secretary and uses this position as an excuse to date lots of women with his annoying, hanger-on friend, Ronnie (Keenan Wynn). Secretaries are constantly coming and going. Indeed, Steve - who is a woman - also quits as Owen's secretary only to marry him and write her own best-selling book. Complications and misunderstandings follow before the film finally finishes.The film is meant to be a comedy. Well, it's just not funny. The plot is ridiculous as we have Steve (who is a woman!) falling in love with Owen and marrying him at the same time as not liking him. She's about to marry Charles (Rudy Vallee) and then she's suddenly in love with Owen after so obviously wanting to see the back of him. It's a nonsense. The story is also very contrived as we have an ending with Steve mirroring the scenes that Owen played out with her at the start of the film. It's all so very obvious.There is also a fault with the cast. While Laraine Day is mainly good in her role, despite being schizophrenic when it comes to the affairs of the heart - more to do with poor story construction, Kirk Douglas tends to overact. His reactions are over-the-top at times and not believable. His side-kick, Keenan Wynn is extremely annoying with his constant unfunny wisecracks. What exactly is his role? I suspect it is to be funny. He's not. Irene Ryan has a role as a housekeeper "Mary" and she, too, fails to come up to scratch by providing absolutely NO humour. The best character is "Felicia" played by Virginia Hewitt a Veronica Lake look-a-like who wants to break into movies and has the funniest scene in the film. She plays a complete moron very well. It's the ONLY humorous part of the film.Don't bother with this film unless you want silly. Keenan Wynn wisecracks his way through the film, so of course, on a couple of occasions there is a good line. But it really is not good enough.

My Dear Secretary proved one thing in the career of Kirk Douglas, comedy was not his strength.Kirk Douglas has made a career of playing dramatic and egotistical heels, but in this case the director didn't keep him under control. I could not believe that Owen Waterbury could have anyone other than himself fall in love with him.Plot such as it is has Laraine Day as a student becoming enthralled with writer Kirk Douglas's lecture at her night school and then going to work as his secretary. She's a budding writer also and I think you can see where the rest of this film is going.There are some nice performances from some of the supporting players. One has to single out Keenan Wynn as Douglas's neighbor and partaker in merriment. If My Dear Secretary was done today, Wynn's character would be openly gay instead of it just being hinted at. As it is, he camps it up to beat all the Boys in the Band.

One of my favorite comedies because of the character actors. Keenan Wynns very best droll efforts as the songwriting best friend and neighbor of Kirk Douglas; Florence Bates, a busybody as the owner of the apartment building where they live; Irene Ryan, the building maid who sings "Sniff, sniff where's your handkerchief; kerchoo, kerchoo, gazundheidt to you; Let yourself go and blow; Oh, let youself go and blow" Wynns latest song; Helen Walker, one of Kirks secretaries; Rudy Vallee, as Day's former boss; and Alan Mowbray as the dense detective Kirk hires to watch Day.As in all screwball comedies, the story is just a framework for the characters to do and say their funny business. And they don't dissapoint. Douglas is a writer who has had a successful first novel and goes to a college to give a class and meets Day who is there as a student, and he hires her as his new secretary. When she arrives the next day, after quitting as Vallee's secretary, Walker goes up in the elevator with her to retrieve her belongings because she has just quit as the last secretary. It gets crazier as Wynn answers the door and receives a slap from the mother of one of the girls Kirk has just interviewed, which he immediately passes on to Kirk. Wynn spends most of his time at Kirks trying recipes which he is hilarious preparing, but no one ever dreams of eating.More complications and silly goings on but it is all fun and is still one of my favorite videos, which I just watched again today. My rating: 8/10.

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.