I always enjoy discovering that a classic film I like from the 1950s or 60s was a remake of a movie from the 1930s or 40s. It’s especially interesting when one of the films was produced during the Breen Era (1934–1954). This was the golden era when the Motion Picture Production Code was the guiding force behind Hollywood’s content, as far as decency.
“Walk, Don’t Run” (1966) was the remake of an earlier movie, “The More the Merrier” (1943). The basic plots are very similar, but the settings and characters are very different.
‘The More the Merrier’
“The More the Merrier” takes place in the nation’s capital during World War II. Jean Arthur plays Connie Milligan, a secretary at the department of Housing and Land Development. The city is ridiculously overcrowded, so Connie decides that it’s her patriotic duty to sublease her apartment’s extra bedroom. She isn’t happy when her ad is answered by a stubborn, eccentric old man named Benjamin Dingle (Charles Coburn), who insists on moving in despite her protestations that she wants only a female roommate. She’s unaware that he actually is a millionaire developer just in the capital for a week on government business.Connie tries to organize their crowded living quarters with a strict schedule, but Mr. Dingle has many comic mishaps while getting ready in the morning, such as getting locked out of the apartment and catapulting his pants out the window. When she gets home from work that evening, Connie has decided that Dingle has to go.
What she doesn’t know is that Dingle has sublet half of his half of the apartment to Joe Carter (Joel McCrea), a young sergeant in town for a few days. Dingle thinks Connie needs a handsome, clean-cut young beau, instead of her dull middle-aged fiancé Charles J. Pendergast (Richard Gaines), so he plays matchmaker by throwing the two young people together.
‘Walk, Don’t Run’
Over 20 years later, Columbia Pictures remade “The More the Merrier,” but changed the setting from Washington during World War II to Tokyo during the 1964 Summer Olympics. The American Connie Milligan became the British Christine Easton (Samantha Eggar), a patriotic employee at the British consul who offers to lease half her apartment because the city is overcrowded due to the Olympics.
Benjamin Dingle became the suave middle-aged Sir William Rutland, played by Cary Grant in his last film appearance. He is a prominent British manufacturer in Tokyo working on developing an automatic door, and he is very unconcerned about the Olympics. When he arrives two days early for his hotel reservation and can’t find a room anywhere, he answers Christine’s advertisement on the British Consulate’s bulletin board.
Wartime or Olympics?
Because of the setting, many aspects in the later film were changed. Although both films are set in overcrowded cities, in the original film, it’s an ongoing situation rather than a one-time event. Much that was accepted in the original because the world was at war had to be explained in the remake. Mr. Dingle’s in town on business? It’s war business. Joe has a top-secret project? It’s war business. There is a lot more character development and relationship building in the remake, particularly surrounding Sir Rutland. We learn that he’s a husband and a father, and his business is discussed at length, whereas we learn very little about Mr. Dingle.“The More the Merrier” was made when Joseph I. Breen was the strong leader of the Production Code Administration (PCA). “Walk, Don’t Run” was made near the end of the Shurlock Era (1955–1968), when Geoffrey Shurlock allowed the PCA to lose its effectiveness before eventually being replaced by the rating system.
Despite a weaker moral standard in Hollywood, the later film is a very wholesome family movie. Although profanity in films was commonplace by 1966, there is no swearing in this film. The relationships are decent, and marriage is treated with respect.
The main scenario, which refers to the Shurlock era, is why Christine throws the two men out of her apartment. One evening, they make coffee and discuss their hostess, who they think can’t hear them from her room. Rutland comments that she’s a nice girl, and Jim agrees but gives the word “nice” a negative slant, implying that she’s prudish. They argue about whether she is chaste, but most of their conversation can’t be heard because the water is on. She is mortified as she listens to their demeaning conversation. In the 1943 film, they offend her by reading her diary, which she left on the rooftop.
