"Hired Wife" is cute. It isn't significant. It isn't even anti-Nazi. In fact, as far as it's concerned, the world will lounge in stream-lined easy-chairs casually sipping high-balls till the Millennium. To see it on the same bill with the news-reels and a raving, screaming, hair-tearing March of Time is quite refreshing. If the end of the world is imminent, if Willkie and Roosevelt aren't both elected, if England and Germany don't both win, it won't do anyone any barm to have a good laugh before Judgment Day.
And "Hired Wife" is a good laugh. Cementtycoon Brian Aherne has to get married. He wants to marry Virginia Bruce, which is under standable even though she can't cook. But Rosa lind Russell, who has bossed him for six years as his secretary, decides she's going to boss him for sixty more as his wife. She baits him with a strictly business arrangement, hooks him strictly on love. All of which is very incredible, but very amusing. Complicating actors include Robert Benchley and a magnificent Russell-to-Aherne kick in the pants.
There have been disasters in history -- the sacking of Rome, the Black Plague, the Hundred Years War. But in its small and subtle way, "Argentine Nights" tops them all. That movie is so frightful that it has a sort of sinister grandeur.
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