3. Rex Harrison - Unfaithfully Yours
The second Preston Sturgess film on the list (he is one of my favorite filmmakers) has him cast another non-comedic actor as the lead in another black comedy. Rex Harrison has always been known as the suave, debonair, perfect leading man in type for the classic Hollywood period. He was so charming that he talked his way through the musical numbers of My Fair Lady to much critical acclaim. He first shows his comedic chops in the 1948 film Unfaithfully Yours. Here he plays a musician who has an urge to kill his wife when he discovers, erroneously by the way, that his wife is cheating on him. In Strugess macabre sensibilities, Harrisons character begins fantasizing all the ways he could kill his wife usually to comedic outcomes. This allowed Harrison to completely go against type of his always in control persona when he bumbles his way through one of his scheme in a roughly, ten minutes scene in which one slapstick gag after another occurs. The film plays upon comedy of paranoia that men constantly feel especially when it comes to a wifes fidelity. The comedy comes from Sturgess highest artistic period as well as his lowest period box office wise. The fantasies serve as a metaphor for his own fantasies as he was going through a divorce and financial woes as well as studio problems. There is a reason why Harrisons character is an orchestra conductor in which he rules over a production.