Not Rated | 1 h 32 min | Drama, Comedy | 1939
Director John Cromwell’s film may be old hat for long-married couples, but it can be a  welcome insight for those just married or about to be. Opening credits overlay a pair of hands signing the names of his lead actors into a marriage register, picking out a ring, bearing a bouquet, and opening a book of matrimony service rites. By starting rather than ending with such imagery, Cromwell inverts the typical romance, implying that marriage should mark the growth, rather than the death, of romance.
A young couple meet and promptly marry, but the husband, John Mason (James Stewart) isn’t able to earn or save enough despite his success at lawyering. His wife, Jane (Carole Lombard), can’t seem to run a household, at least not well enough to please her widowed mother-in-law, Harriet (Lucile Watson). The couple run through over a dozen maids, each new one more fed up than the last, with Harriet’s hectoring. As bills pile, their baby son falls critically ill, testing their marital resolve to the breaking point….