The movie’s based on a poem by Tennyson.
Wife lost at sea. A judge declares her dead,
freeing the grieving husband to remarry.
But then the wife comes back from a desert island,
rescued with one companion, a scientist.
They called each other, in their makeshift garden,
Adam and Eve. It’s meant to look suspicious,
but she’s determined to get her husband back
(since, after all, he’s played by Cary Grant)
and claims a puny bald man, really a salesman
from a shoe store, was the other castaway.

Then Randolph Scott shows up in a swimsuit,
blond and buff, as gorgeous as Irene Dunne,
naked without his usual cowboy hat.
When Cary asks what happened on the island
for seven years, and Randolph’s mum, and she
says, “He was a perfect gentleman,” the thing
to improve the movie is for him to say,
“No, nothing went on, you see, ha-ha, I’m gay.”

“I see,” the husband says, letting his eyebrow
rise a little. She doesn’t stand a chance.

Update the sensibilities, but make
the set designs Art Deco and the score
Cole Porter, gowns and tuxes from the Thirties,
cigarette holders and martini glasses.
Give us a screwball shock of recognition
and let the chemistry between the stars
be unfeigned, unstopped, and combustible.
The looks between them tell you what they want:
an island of their own, a private pool,
relief from the great depression thwarting them
from tanned and muscled bodies they’d embrace.