James Hitchcock Owen Waterbury, a successful novelist, hires an aspiring young writer named Steve Gaylord as his secretary. This being a romantic comedy, the two end up falling in love. Yes, I know what you're thinking. And, of course, you're wrong. This was 1948, for God's sake. Homosexuality was still, in Hollywood as in most other parts of the Western world, the love that dared not speak its name. There is no way that the Breen Office would have given their seal of approval to a rom-com about a gay love affair. Steve is a girl, and a very pretty one too. (It's short for Stephanie). Kirk Douglas is not an actor I normally associate with comedy. Virtually all of his best films- "Young Man with a Horn", "Champion", "The Weak and the Wicked", "Lust for Life", "Gunfight at the OK Corral", "Paths of Glory", "Spartacus", "Lonely are the Brave", and so on- are serious dramas, as are most of his lesser ones. "My Dear Secretary" is a rare example of a Douglas comedy. And, for its first half, it's a pretty good one. The main joke is the difference between Owen Waterbury the great writer, whom Stephanie admires so deeply, and Owen Waterbury the less-than-great man, who she soon discovers has feet of clay. He has a massive ego and is something of a playboy and womaniser. He is unable to manage his finances and is constantly in debt, despite the large amounts he earns from writing, largely because he wastes so much on gambling. He finds it difficult to work, not so much because he is suffering from writer's block but because he would rather spend every day enjoying himself, either on the beach of (given his gambling problem) in a casino or at the races. Stephanie soon discovers that she is merely the latest in a long line of secretaries; all her predecessors have left Owen when they could not tolerate him any longer. Stephanie, of course, does not leave Owen. Instead, she does something far more inexplicable. She marries him, despite his many all-too-obvious flaws. This plot development might have been an acceptable denouement had it come at the end of the film after a reformed Owen had changed his ways. Instead, it comes about halfway through, at a time when Owen is still far from reformed, and he proves no more satisfactory as a husband than he did as an employer. He slips back into his old ways, hiring more attractive young women as his secretaries. An even greater threat to their marriage, however, is Owen's professional jealousy when Stephanie not only has a novel published but also starts to enjoy greater success as a writer than he does. It is round about this half-way mark that the film starts to run out of steam. It is a lot more interesting with Owen and Stephanie as boss and secretary than as husband and wife. In the second half we are supposed to accept her as simultaneously impossibly naïve (for having married a selfish egomaniac like Owen in the first place) and as impossibly saintly (for continuing to tolerate his behaviour). Kirk Douglas, on this evidence, was probably wise not to concentrate on comedy in his future career, but Laraine Day, an actress I was not previously familiar with, does enough to suggest that she had a gift for comedy and that with a better script she could have given a better performance. The script itself seems to have been written according to all the standard Hollywood rules about happy endings; it might have been better if the scriptwriters had had more freedom to disregard those rules. 5/10

Robert J. Maxwell Since I'd bought the DVD, I watched as much of this as I did out of a sense of obligation to my wallet.The plot has Kirk Douglas as a successful first novelist who hired Laraine Day as a secretary, falls in love, and marries her. Complications ensue.Douglas is usually thought of as an intense actor, given to heavily dramatic roles, sometimes hero, sometimes rat. He's not bad in this thoroughly comic part. The problem is that the part isn't particularly comic and neither is anything else.The plot rambles on. A dozen "quirky" characters come and go -- most prominently Keenan Wynn as Douglas's friend who does nothing but make wry comments. Thelma Ritter was better at this sort of thing.Well, if the plot is weak it could still have been rescued by some sparkle in the dialog but there is none to speak of. Some gags are silly. Others don't clear that bar. Here's what I thought of as an amusing line. Douglas has just hired Day and wants to get her down to the beach house and seduce her. Day is disturbed and remarks that she's never heard of a writer working in a beach house. Wynn asks if she liked Douglas's previous book, "Last Year's Love." Yes, of course she did. "Well, most of 'Last Year's Love' was done in the beach house." Ha ha.Nice cast, including support, but a failed comedy. There have been better sitcoms on television.

sddavis63 The stars of this movie are supposed to be Kirk Douglas and Laraine Day, but it's worth saying right off the top that the movie is worth watching primarily for Keenan Wynn's hilarious performance as Ronnie Hastings. He really is the one who makes this movie.Ronnie is a neighbour of and assistant to author Owen Waterbury (Douglas.) After writing a best-seller, Waterbury gives a lecture to a writing class and meets Stephanie Gaylord (Day.) Waterbury offers Gaylord a job as his secretary, and she accepts, but what she didn't know is that Waterbury's secretaries don't last very long. He's a bit of a playboy type, and he and Hastings always insist on a certain "type" of secretary (ie, extremely cute) and most of them don't take very kindly to being hit on as soon as they walk through the door.Basically, this movie deals with the evolution of the relationship between Waterbury and Day. Both play their parts very well, but, as I said, the show is stolen by Wynn right from the beginning, and it all leads up to an ending (again with Wynn as the comedic centrepiece) that I didn't see coming, particularly given what seemed to be Ronnie's taste in women.All in all, it's good, clean entertaining comedy, with a plot that admittedly gets a little bit tired by the end, but still there's quite a few laughs here. 7/10

Ishallwearpurple One of my favorite comedies because of the character actors. Keenan Wynns very best droll efforts as the songwriting best friend and neighbor of Kirk Douglas; Florence Bates, a busybody as the owner of the apartment building where they live; Irene Ryan, the building maid who sings "Sniff, sniff where's your handkerchief; kerchoo, kerchoo, gazundheidt to you; Let yourself go and blow; Oh, let youself go and blow" Wynns latest song; Helen Walker, one of Kirks secretaries; Rudy Vallee, as Day's former boss; and Alan Mowbray as the dense detective Kirk hires to watch Day.As in all screwball comedies, the story is just a framework for the characters to do and say their funny business. And they don't dissapoint. Douglas is a writer who has had a successful first novel and goes to a college to give a class and meets Day who is there as a student, and he hires her as his new secretary. When she arrives the next day, after quitting as Vallee's secretary, Walker goes up in the elevator with her to retrieve her belongings because she has just quit as the last secretary. It gets crazier as Wynn answers the door and receives a slap from the mother of one of the girls Kirk has just interviewed, which he immediately passes on to Kirk. Wynn spends most of his time at Kirks trying recipes which he is hilarious preparing, but no one ever dreams of eating.More complications and silly goings on but it is all fun and is still one of my favorite videos, which I just watched again today. My rating: 8/10.