The subject of marriage for convenience in classic cinema has been well-documented in reviews of films from Hollywood’s Golden Age here on The Legionnaire.  The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940) is no exception.  When I watch a plot with this kind of twist, I cannot help but have my Catholic views on marriage in the back of mind.  Then again, the Catechism of the Catholic Church does not specify how two people are supposed to meet and fall in love.  There is so much about love that is a mystery, whether you are using the term in regards to relationships or spiritually.  There is, at the same time, not much to understand since God is love, He love all of us, and that should be enough for anyone.  Anything else is a result of His abundant grace.  As such, while there is a bit of uncomfortableness here with how this story unfolds from a Faith perspective, its light-hearted tone and conclusion are mostly satisfactory.

The latter person in The Doctor Takes a Wife is June Cameron (Loretta Young), though she is the last person one might expect to be a bride.  She is a best-selling author of a book titled Spinsters Aren’t Spinach, which has been empowering single women around the country.  Her editor and love interest, John R. Pierce (Reginald Gardiner), summons her back to New York.  She is currently on vacation in the hinterland, and happens to be staying at the same hotel as Dr. Timothy Sterling (Ray Milland).  He, too, is in need of returning to the Big Apple, but can barely hear why over the argument she is having with the desk clerk over the fact that there is no train back to the city.  This does not make him pre-disposed to giving her a ride when she finds him getting into his car and headed to the same destination.  On their way, she asks that they stop where she can send a telegram ahead to notify John of her imminent arrival.  As she wires her message, a wedding is taking place in the courtroom next door.  A boy is given a quarter (cheap labor back then) to put a “Just Married” sign on the back of a car.  Because the vehicle is not specified, the banner is placed on Dr. Sterling’s vehicle.  As he and June are leaving, the woman in the telegram office, who had recognized June since she is a fan of the author, sees the words and presumes that June and Dr. Sterling are the ones to whom they apply.  As such, before they get to New York, word is getting around that the supposedly un-marry-able June and the uncertain-of-a-woman’s worth John are hitched.  The first person to learn of this is John, who gets a call from a newspaper wanting the scoop.  With this information, he greets June at her apartment before she enters.  She would have parted ways with Dr. Sterling had she not inadvertently carried up his prized model human head on which he experiments.  Seeing the mix-up, John leaves, but Dr. Sterling is less inclined to depart.  He demands money for her accidently breaking the model’s nose, and proceeds to get drunk as restitution for her unwillingness to pay.  Being overserved, he passes out in her bedroom, which makes for an awkward moment when John calls in person the next morning.  It appears that June’s days of being a champion for the unmarried woman are finished, but John has an alternative plan.  Believing that wives are a large, untapped audience for her writing, he proposes that she write another book tailored to this audience.  The problem is Dr. Sterling.  Upon finally coming to, he is not pleased to be in her bed, and told that he must play along with a farce until publication.  Instead, he vows to go to the newspapers to give the real story until he gets to New York State University where he is an instructor.  He is met there by his father and fellow faculty member, Dr. Lionel Sterling (Edmund Gwenn), who tells his son that the young man has been given a full professorship in light of his marriage.  Because having such a position has always been a dream of the younger Dr. Sterling, he decides that he, too, must keep up the charade of marital bliss.  There is another problem, however: he is about to be engaged to Marilyn Thomas (Gail Patrick).  Despite seeing the headlines like everyone else, Dr. Sterling manages to convince her that it is all a mix-up, but promising her to secrecy.  Actually, if there is a spiritual lesson to be gained from all this, it is how much of a bad idea to tell lies, especially ones that grow this big.  Even with Marilyn Dr. Sterling is not completely honest.  While June hosts a party of university professors, Dr. Sterling keeps Marilyn in the neighbor’s apartment so as not to confuse the faculty over the situation and jeopardize his new position.  What shifts everything is when June and Dr. Sterling are invited upstate to spend a weekend with one of his colleagues.  While they are on the road, they are pulled over by a police officer who seems to know, somehow, that he is a doctor.  Either way, he is called to a nearby farm to deliver a baby.  While he attends to the mother, June proves that she is more than a brainy and mouthy writer, taking care of the rest of the large family.  Her behavior, coupled with Marilyn’s simpering attitude, endears June to Dr. Sterling.  This stop also puts an end to any chances of making it to his colleague’s home, thus they turn around.  With this, it is time for Dr. Sterling to go home, having fulfilled his end of their bargain with the book about to be finished.  Yet, it is clear that neither of them are eager for it to be over.  Thus, with the newspapers threatening to expose everything when they discover there was no wedding, June interrupts what is supposed to be an engagement party for Marilyn and Dr. Sterling.  On the way home, he almost spoils everything until he realizes his true feelings, calling a justice of the peace to make everything legal.

The Doctor Takes a Wife ends before the justice of the peace gets to the little motor inn at which they stop for the night.  The fact that there is a justice of a peace seemingly on call should tell you everything you need to know about the issues with cinematic marriages at this time that I raised in the introduction.  I will grant, though, that June and Dr. Sterling do have a version of the discernment process the Church usually recommends to couples seeking the Sacrament of Matrimony, albeit not in the most ideal of circumstances.  Never mind the fact that they are lying for personal gain, cohabitating before marriage is another no-no according to Catholicism.  The obvious sin it desires us to avoid is pre-marital sex.  Physical intimacy is an act that the Church encourages in the correct circumstances more than most people are willing to admit.  Then again, there is the stereotype of large Catholic families, so I do not fully understand why a Catholic husband and wife would be considered prudes, but I digress.  One of the common arguments against discouraging a man and woman from living with one another before they wed is that there is no better way for two people to get to know one another.  Indeed, a film like this one would seem to suggest the rightness of this view.  After all, despite them sleeping in separate rooms and apparently giving each other as much space as possible, June and Dr. Sterling discover their love by learning the other’s peculiarities.  On the other hand, I do not know of too many couples who will tell you that once they shack up, the growing together (or apart, unfortunately) stops.  Besides, a healthy marriage, at least in the Catholic view, does not rely on the compatibility of your jobs or who does the cooking.  These factors should not be dismissed, but they are secondary to whether God is at the center of the relationship.  Religion is not a part of this story, which explains its quirks from a Catholic point of view.

Then again, how many Hollywood marriages like that in The Doctor Takes a Wife have any mention of God.  The answer, sadly, is few, even at a time when supposedly more people cared about their Faith.  At the same time, I do not mean to put a serious tone to this film.  As mentioned before, it is light-hearted and even got a few chuckles out of me.  That is worth something.