I Love You Again **** (1940, William Powell, Myra Loy) – Classic Movie Review 3687

The alluring star partnership of William Powell and Myra Loy re-teams yet again – and to great advantage – in director W S Van Dyke II’s charming and funny 1940 romantic comedy.

Powell plays a one-time dull but dependable businessman husband, with an eight-year history of amnesia, who returns to his life as a conman and loose liver when he is thumped on the head. Then he has to persuade his wife (Loy) not to leave him for another man (Donald Douglas).

Based on the novel Octavius Roy Cohen, it is a clever, ingratiating story (by Maurine Watkins and Leon Gordon). But it is the superb, wonderfully timed playing and Van Dyke II’s sparkling handling that really make this movie so especially entertaining.

Also in the splendid MGM cast are Frank McHugh, Edmund Lowe, Nella Walker, Pierre Watkin, Carl Switzer, Paul Stanton, Morgan Wallace, Robert Blake, Harry Hayden, William Tannen, Charles Arnt, Harlan Briggs, Dix Davis, Winifred Harris, Mary Currier, Hazel Keener, Bea Nigro, Leni Lynn, Edward Earle, Harry Lash, Ray Teal, Barbara Bedford, George Lloyd, Charles Wagenheim, Jack Mulhall, Jason Robards Sr, John Dilson, Ted Thomson, Hooper Atchley, Warren Rock, Paul Parry, Hal Cooke, Raymond Bailey, Nell Craig, Arthur Hoyt, Joe Bernard, Jack Daley, Eric Wilton, George Lollie, Howard Mitchell, Sally Payne, Claire Rochelle, Gladys Blake and Edward Hearn.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3687

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