Dream Wife is a 1953 romantic comedy film

Comedy film

Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

 starring Cary Grant

Cary Grant

Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...

 and Deborah Kerr

Deborah Kerr

Deborah Kerr, CBE was a Scottish film and television actress from Glasgow. She won the Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago performance as Laura Reynolds in Tea and Sympathy, a role which she originated on Broadway, a Golden Globe Award for the motion picture The King and I, and was a three-time...

 made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...

.

It was directed by Sidney Sheldon

Sidney Sheldon

Sidney Sheldon was an Academy Award-winning American writer. His TV works spanned a 20-year period during which he created The Patty Duke Show , I Dream of Jeannie and Hart to Hart , but he became most famous after he turned 50 and began writing best-selling novels such as Master of the Game ,...

 and produced by Dore Schary

Dore Schary

Isadore "Dore" Schary was an American motion picture director, writer, and producer, and playwright who became head of production at MGM and eventually president of the studio...

, from a screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 by Herbert Baker

Herbert Baker

Sir Herbert Baker was a British architect.Baker was the dominant force in South African architecture for two decades, 1892–1912....

, Alfred Lewis Levitt and Sidney Sheldon. The music score was by Conrad Salinger

Conrad Salinger

Conrad Salinger was an American arranger, orchestrator and composer, who studied classical composition at the Paris Conservatoire. He is credited with orchestrating nine productions on Broadway from 1931 to 1938, and over seventy-five motion pictures from 1931 to 1962...

, the cinematography by Milton R. Krasner

Milton R. Krasner

Milton R. Krasner, A.S.C. was a film cinematographer. He won an Academy Award for Three Coins in the Fountain .-Career:...

 and the art direction by Daniel B. Cathcart and Cedric Gibbons

Cedric Gibbons

Austin Cedric Gibbons was an Irish American art director who was one of the most important and influential in the field in the history of American film. He also made a great impact on motion picture theater architecture through the 1930s to 1950s, the period considered the golden-era of theater...

. The costume design by Herschel McCoy

Herschel McCoy

Herschel McCoy was a costume designer who first began designing costumes for Hollywood films in 1936.McCoy's early efforts were largely focussed on B movies, such as several entries in the Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto canons...

 and Helen Rose

Helen Rose

Helen Rose was an American costume designer and clothing designer who spent the bulk of her career with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer-Career:...

 received an Oscar nomination.

The film's secondary stars included Walter Pidgeon

Walter Pidgeon

Walter Davis Pidgeon was a Canadian actor, who starred in many motion pictures, including Mrs...

 and Betta St. John

Betta St. John

Betta St. John is an American actress, singer and dancer.Born as Betty Jean Striegler, St. John made her film debut at the age of ten in Destry Rides Again and as an orphan in Jane Eyre . She was discovered by Rodgers and Hammerstein and played a small role in the Broadway musical, Carousel in 1945...

, with supporting performances by Eduard Franz

Eduard Franz

Eduard Franz , born Eduard Franz Schmidt, was an American actor of theater, film, and television. Franz portrayed King Ahab in the 1953 biblical low-budget film Sins of Jezebel, Jethro in Cecil B...

, Buddy Baer

Buddy Baer

Jacob Henry "Buddy" Baer was an American boxer. In 2003, Baer was chosen for the Ring Magazine's list of 100 greatest punchers of all time...

, Richard Anderson

Richard Anderson

Richard Norman Anderson is an American actor in film and television, known to TV audiences as Steve Austin's and Jaime Sommers' boss, Oscar Goldman, in both The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman TV series and their three subsequent TV movies: The Return of the Six-Million-Dollar Man...

, Dan Tobin

Dan Tobin

Dan Tobin was an American supporting actor who generally played gentle, urbane characters, sometimes with a concealed edge of malice....

, Dean Miller

Dean Miller (broadcaster)

Dean Miller, born Dean C. Stuhlmueller , was an American actor and broadcaster, perhaps best known for his role as the son-in-law in the CBS sitcom December Bride...

, and Movita

Movita Castaneda

Maria "Movita" Castaneda is an American actress best known for being the second wife of actor Marlon Brando. She was six years older than Brando. In films, she played exotic women/singers, such as in Flying Down to Rio and Mutiny on the Bounty , of which she is the last surviving cast member....

.

The character of "Princess Tarji" was slightly resurrected in one of Sheldon's I Dream of Jeannie

I Dream of Jeannie

I Dream of Jeannie is a 1960s American sitcom with a fantasy premise. The show starred Barbara Eden as a 2,000-year-old genie, and Larry Hagman as an astronaut who becomes her master, with whom she falls in love and eventually marries...

TV episodes, "This Is Murder" (4/9/66), portrayed by Gila Golan

Gila Golan

Gila Golan is an Israeli former fashion model and actress.Golan was born in Krakow, Poland, around 1940. Her exact birthday is not known, as she was hidden from the Nazis at a young age. She was adopted by a Roman Catholic family that found her left in a bundle at a train station during the...

. Shortly after the release of this film, Cary Grant went into a self-imposed retirement from acting, subsequently turning down many film offers including Sabrina

Sabrina

-People:*Sabrina , a feminine given name *Sabrina , British entertainer*Sabrina *Sabrina *Sabrina Salerno , Italian pop singer aka Sabrina...

, in which he would have co-starred with Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century...

 and A Star Is Born

A Star Is Born

A Star Is Born may refer to:* A Star Is Born , starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, directed by William A. Wellman* A Star Is Born , starring Judy Garland and James Mason, directed by George Cukor...

with Judy Garland

Judy Garland

Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...

. In 1955, director Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...

 persuaded Grant to return to films with his classic thriller To Catch A Thief

To Catch a Thief

To Catch a Thief is a 1952 thriller novel by David Dodge. John Robie is a retired American jewel thief, formerly known as Le Chat , who now spends his time tending to the rose garden in his villa on the Côte d'Azur. Following a series of recent jewel robberies on the Riviera that resemble his...

, which started a whole new phase for Grant as a film star.

Plot summary

Businessman Clemson Reade (Grant) breaks his engagement with workaholic U.S. diplomat girlfriend Effie (Kerr) for an adoring "old-fashioned" girl from the fictional country

Fictional country

A fictional country is a country that is made up for fictional stories, and does not exist in real life, or one that people believe in without proof....

of Bukistan, Princess Tarji (St. John). Reade wants a wife who can "just find having babies and taking care of a man" pleasurable.

While Reade tries to get closer to his bride-to-be, Effie, who has been assigned by the State Department to see that the marriage does not disturb a major oil deal with Bukistan, ends up educating the Princess about such Western ideas of the role of a wife and women's emancipation, while, simultaneously moderating some of her own ideas about making the happiness of her "man" (i.e. Grant) a primary concern.

Grant's courtship of the Princess, which he attempts to conduct by "American" customs, must be adjusted to Bukistanian tradition, to protect the proposed oil deal.

Effie explains to him that the marriage, called "hufi," is followed by a prolonged period of celebration called "bruchah." These terms are borrowed for comedic effect from the Jewish terms "hupah" -- the canopy beneath which the marriage ceremony takes place (thus the ceremony itself is sometimes called "hupah") and "Sheva 'bruchis' or 'brachot'" - 7 blessings ("bruchah" means "blessing," in the Ashkenazic pronunciation) that are recited as part of both the ceremony and a week-long celebration that follows.