Film Friday: "The More the Merrier" (1943)
My initial plan for today was to write about a Vivien Leigh film in celebration of her 102th birthday. However, since I already did that yesterday for The Vivien Leigh & Laurence Olivier Blogathon , I've decided that today I would honor Vivien's "birthday twin" instead. So, this week on "Film Friday" I'm going to tell you a little bit about one of Joel McCrea's most iconic films, which also happens to be the first film I ever saw with him. Theatrical release poster Directed by George Stevens, The More the Merrier (1943) concerns Connie Milligan (Jean Arthur), a young goverment worker who reluctantly agrees to rent out half of her apartment to an older gentleman, Benjamin Dingle (Charles Coburn), in order to ease the housing shortage in wartime Washington, D.C. Without Connie's knowledge, Mr. Dingle then sublets half of his half of the apartment to Sergeant Joe Carter (Joel McCrea), a handsome aircraft technician waiting to be shipp...