Misbehaving Husbands - 1940 - American comedy film.

Misbehaving Husbands is a 1940 American comedy film directed by William Beaudine for Producers Releasing Corporation. The film had the working titles At Your Age and Dummy Husbands. Harry Langdon, Betty Blythe, Esther Muir, and others in the cast had been stars in silent films. It was Gig Young's film debut, under his real name Byron Barr.


Absent-minded department store owner Henry Butler (Harry Langdon), forgetting his wedding anniversary, ends up working late and missing the surprise party thrown by his wife, Effie (Betty Blythe). He has to have a store mannequin repaired. On the street he is spotted, with the mannequin, by a friend of his wife who thinks Henry is escorting a strange blonde. Other bystanders think it's a murder victim and call the police.

Henry is picked up by the police and kept for interrogation until the wee hours of the morning, but his troubles are just starting. Effie has overheard the gossip spread among her party guests and, seeing Henry come home with the mannequin's blonde hair on his clothes and one of the mannequin's shoes, fears the worst. Her friend, Grace Norman (Esther Muir), and an unscrupulous lawyer, Gilbert Wayne (Gayne Whitman), urged her to file for a divorce. Since neither one will leave the family home, lawyers ask witnesses to prove that the husband and wife are living apart. Due to Henry's alleged violent temper, Effie's lawyer demands that she have a bodyguard: a thug named Gooch (Frank Hagney) who stays at the home.

When Effie decides to stop the divorce, her lawyer stages a scene. His girlfriend Nan (Florence Wright) poses as the blonde Henry was supposedly seeing, and convinces Effie to proceed. It is only then that the live-in witnesses, her niece Jane (Luana Walters), and Henry's friend Bob Grant (Ralph Byrd) notice that the shoe Henry brought back that night is too small for Nan. Jane also notices that Gooch and Nan seem to recognize each other, and tricks Gooch into calling Nan. They overhear her on an extension phone and get the truth out of her.

A tipsy Henry drags the mannequin all over town, only to meet the police, Effie, and her lawyer waiting for him at home.