So You Don't Trust Your Wife

When the story begins, Joe is trying to get some sleep but his wife Alice keeps waking him up to ask 1001 questions about their finances. When he tells her he's heavily insured and probably worth more dead than alive, he suddenly can't sleep. Over the course of the story, various innocent things done by Alice are interpreted as her planning on killing him...leading Joe to slowly lose his mind!

While not among the very best of the Joe McDoakes shorts, it is quite funny and keeps your attention.

When his wife keeps Joe McDoakes from going to bed, worrying about money, he tells her the insurance is paid up. This and other events convince him she is trying to kill him for his insurance money in this typically silly entry in the Warner Brothers short subject series.

Jane Frazee plays Mrs. McDoakes in this short, as she did in several other entries in the series. She had been appearing in movies in 1936, and in the early and mid-1940s, Universal had plumped for her as a singing ingenue to build musicals around. They were fairly popular, but minor, and they tailed off in the second half of the decade. Her appearances ended with this series, which likewise ended in 1956. She died in 1985, age 70.

So You Don't Trust Your Wife (1955)

*** (out of 4)

Hilarious entry in the series has Alice asking questions about Joe's life insurance and soon poor McDoakes begins to think she's trying to kill him. He's paranoia grows even worse when a man shows up with an ax and a new "cook" shows up with rat poison. The Joe McDoakes series was always one of my favorites and this one here is without question one of the best because it has some of the biggest laughs and there were several moments where tears were running down my face from laughing. George O'Hanlon turns in one of his greatest performances as McDoakes because of the paranoia he has to pull off here. The look on his face as he feels Alice is trying to kill him is priceless and his final breakdown was downright hilarious and contained some of the biggest laughs of the series. The stuff dealing with the man and ax was terrific but things get even better once Joe is locked up in an asylum because he begins to think he's a dog. Fans of the series will certainly want to check this one out and if you're new to Joe McDoakes then it's a good place to start.