Together Again (1944)

Together Again is a moderately entertaining 1944 Columbia screwball comedy, although it definitely is not in the genre’s top rank.

Anne Crandall (Irene Dunne) is the mayor of Brookhaven Vermont. Her late husband Jonathan had been mayor. In fact the Crandalls have always pretty much run the town. There’s even an impressive statue of Anne’s late husband looming over the place. At least there is until the statue is struck by lightning and decapitated. 

Anne’s father-in-law Jonathan Crandall Sr (Charles Coburn) is delighted. He sees the lightning strike as a sign that it is time for Anne to move on. He feels that rather than devoting her life to continuing her husband’s work she should live her own life, and she should remarry.

Anne decides that her husband’s statue must be replaced by a new one so she sets off for New York to offer the commission to sculptor George Corday (Charles Boyer). At which point a certain craziness starts to take over Anne’s previously orderly life. Respectable mayors do not normally get arrested for indecent exposure!

Of course George has fallen for Anne and Anne has fallen for him although it will take her a while to admit such a thing. There is a major complication, in the person of Anne’s neurotic step-daughter Diana (Mona Freeman). Diana reveres her father’s memory and she’s rather highly strung. In fact she’s very highly strung indeed. The complication comes from the fact that Anne had promised Diana that she would never remarry.

When George Corday follows her back to Brookhaven and begins work on the statue Anne’s life gets really crazy. In typical screwball comedy style wires get crossed and misunderstandings blossom and everyone seems destined to get married, but to the wrong people.

Charles Vidor was a competent director but not really a specialist in this genre, and it’s a very demanding genre. It’s very easy for a screwball comedy to fall flat and for the intended zaniness to fizzle out into mere silliness. That doesn’t happen here but at the same time it doesn’t quite have the needed spark.

The cast is excellent. Irene Dunne gives it everything she’s got and her performance works. Charles Boyer is fine although personally I found Corday to be not entirely likeable. Charles Coburn is wonderful, as always. Mona Freeman manages the difficult job of making the step-daughter suitably neurotic without being irritating.

The setup has plenty of potential and with such a strong cast this should have been a winner. Unfortunately it rubbed me up the wrong way. Brookhaven seems like a delightful little town but of course George Corday points out to Anne that actually it’s full of hypocritical small-minded bigots. He knows this because he knows that anyone who doesn’t live in New York City is automatically a hypocritical small-minded bigot. The film accepts this as a fact so obvious that it doesn’t need to be debated. There’s a certain sneering contempt here that made me uncomfortable.

Columbia have released this movie as part of their Icons of Screwball Comedy Volume 2 DVD boxed set. The four-movie set is excellent value and the transfers are extremely good.

Together Again is reasonable entertainment and fans of Irene Dunne or Charles Coburn will find plenty to enjoy. The major weakness, for me, is that for a film like this to work we have to be hoping that the two leads will end up together, whereas I found myself hoping that Anne would realise that George Corday was a pompous self-satisfied ass so for me it didn’t really work. Your mileage may vary.