George Stevens is the class of director whose movies everybody knows but whose name goes almost entirely unrecognized. As one of Hollywood's most prolific and diverse directors, Stevens has surprisingly received little critical attention. By the end of his filmmaking career, he had been honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Award from the Academy and had received a lifetime achievement award from the Director's Guild of America. Some film journals were even dedicating entire issues to his lifetime of work. Now, however, three decades after the release of his last film, The Only Game in Town, the art of George Stevens seems to have been forgotten. With only two small books and a few dozen articles about his work scattered over more than four decades, the history of George Stevens has yet to be written.

When remembered, Stevens is known best for films like Gunga Dun, Giant, The Diary of Anne Frank and The Greatest Story Ever Told. What has been dismissed are the two decades of comedy films he created. His trilogy of comedies from the 1940s, Woman of the Year (1942), The Talk of the Town (1942) and The More the Merrier (1943), are most deserving of reconsideration. Created under the unusual circumstances of World War II and despite all three having received multiple Academy Award nominations, these films have been almost completely neglected in contemporary film studies. However, it is The More the Merrier that seems the most unusually neglected and most worthy of further exploration. Even when reading what little has been written on Stevens' comedy work, The Talk of the Town and Woman of the Year receive noticeably more attention than The More the Merrier. Despite receiving seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture, and winning George Stevens the New York Film Critics Circle's Best Director award, The More the Merrier has gone virtually unnoticed in film history.

What marks The More the Merrier as especially unusual is that it stands as George Stevens' final picture before departing for World War II. When considering Stevens' filmmaking career, there emerge two distinct periods: the years before World War II and the years after. This makes The More the Merrier an especially interesting case for study. How does the film foreshadow his transition of style, from light-hearted romantic comedy to the more serious tragedy and melodrama? How does the war, which he was about to join, play a role in The More the Merrier? And how are the elements of his more contemplative emerging style combined with his characteristic flair for comedy? When reading The More the Merrier, these are all important questions to consider. In order to rescue the film from obscurity, its overall significance must be defined.

The story of The More the Merrier centers on Connie Milligan (Jean Arthur), a young woman living in overcrowded, wartime Washington, D.C. Due to the city's housing crisis, she decides it's her patriotic duty to open up her two-room apartment to a roommate. Through a set of less than coincidental circumstances, she finds herself sharing her apartment with a portly, peculiar old gentleman named Mr. Dingle (Charles Coburn). Before he's even had time to unpack, Mr. Dingle assumes the role of matchmaker on Connie's behalf. While she is away at work the first morning, Mr. Dingle stumbles upon a "high-type, clean-cut" young fellow named Joe Carter (Joel McCrea) who happens to be looking for a place to stay. Without further adieu, the three are sharing Connie's small apartment where they will become enraptured with scandalous comedy and the inevitable romance.

The film exhibits some very characteristic George Stevens comic traits. His typical distrust of the intellectual, as seen in Woman of the Year and The Talk of the Town, is captured in the stodgy character of Mr. Pendergast while being celebrated through the foolish absentmindedness of Mr. Dingle. His sentimental treatment of women is carried through in Connie Milligan, the prize of the show, whose every whim is attended to by one of her many suitors, all eager to take her hand despite the scarcity of available men in the city. As the master of the easy laugh, Stevens' impeccable timing and creative set-work allow for non-stop interaction of the characters even when they aren't in the same room, as seen where Connie, Joe and Mr. Dingle all dance the rumba together while being located in separate spaces of the apartment.

Most prevalent throughout the film, however, is Stevens' focus on the theme of the "outsider." This is a theme that he touches on lightly in his earlier comedies but that soon evolves into a key theme of his later melodramas. This focus on the "outsider," one of the few elements of Stevens' style that has elicited critical consideration, was first considered by James Silke in his article on George Stevens in Cinema in 1965. Silke argues that Stevens' constant thematic focus has been on the individual trying to live in a society that does not want him. In The More the Merrier, Mr. Dingle has clearly invited himself into Connie's apartment despite her constant complaints. Further, once Joe and Connie start kindling the fires of romance, Mr. Dingle's pestering presence is even less regarded. Mr. Dingle persists, however, in trying to make a match of the two.

Five years after Silke's first comments on Stevens' "outsiders," Donald Richie, in his book George Stevens: An American Romantic, also addresses this common theme. While specifically considering the tragedies that became Stevens' later filmmaking focus, Ritchie's ideas still apply to The More the Merrier. He explains that Stevens' romantic outsiders are often centered on "some personal utopia" whereby they do not "feel the full impact of the world as it really is." Mr. Dingle is clearly this type of romantic outsider. Despite the crisis of World War II, with all its controversy and implications, Mr. Dingle concentrates his efforts on matchmaking Connie and Joe. Meanwhile, the two in question remain focused on the crises of civilian life, finding reason after reason to refute their romantic feelings.

Richie points out that over the course of George Stevens' career, the role of the distanced outsider is critical to the discourse of each film. In his later films, Shane and Giant for example, the romantic outsider is ripped from his utopian fantasy world and his "maturity is shortly followed by death." In Stevens' prewar comedies, however, the utopian idealist is celebrated rather than denounced. It is his unfaltering starry-eyed action and devotion to these romantic ideals that separate him from society. His naively utopian traits serve to not only create but also venerate our hero.

Interestingly, the creation of the Mr. Dingle "outsider" posits viewer identification with him rather than with either of the two romantic leads. This is a change in Stevens' typical classical conventions whereby viewer identification is focused on one of the two romantic leads, as in Woman of the Year. When we meet our protagonist, Mr. Dingle, he has arrived at his hotel in overcrowded Washington, D.C. to find that he is two days early to meet with a senator who is two days late. Without a place to stay in the overcrowded city, he finds his way, via a newspaper advertisement, to Connie's apartment. Outsmarting a dozen other eager applicants, Mr. Dingle awaits the arrival of our leading lady at her home, which he is soon to make his own.

It is through this elaborate introduction that the viewer is led into identification with Mr. Dingle. Watching the events from the perspective of a guest traveling alongside him, we accompany Mr. Dingle inside Connie's building and then watch as he invites himself into her apartment, and subsequently, into her life. While this takes place, the camera, as the viewer, is stationed outside the apartment's front door watching the events unfold. As Connie and Mr. Dingle move into the spare bedroom, the viewer's perspective is relocated to outside the window. As the viewer peers in, Mr. Dingle persuades Connie to accept him as her new tenant and he subsequently opens the window, signaling our own invitation inside.

It is with Mr. Dingle that we are associated, as an outsider whose idealistic intrusion will bring about the romance that is the focus of the film. Our visual location as the camera outside the main space of the action of the film reinforces this "outsiderness" and throughout the film this "outsiderness" is intentionally maintained. We watch from the entry hallway, as if from outside the front door of the apartment, as Connie and Mr. Dingle run through the debacle of their first morning schedule. We watch from the same position as Connie, Mr. Dingle and Joe throttle back and forth between the bathroom and bedrooms, leading up to their anticipated and inevitable collision. Later in the film, when the characters are downtown at FBI headquarters, we spy in through the window behind the lead detective's desk. In the cab, following the FBI scene, the consequences of the roommate scandal unfolds as we are again peering in through the cab window or from the cab driver's front seat. The camera's perspective remains outside the scenes, separated, as if objectively allowing fate to play its hand while we serve merely as casual onlookers.

"Doors, posts, pillars, trees and other framing devices [are] placed between us and the action," notes Bruce Petri in his essay on The More the Merrier. Stevens uses these elements to create a detached perspective and these objects serve as visual barriers to our over-involvement. We are intentionally held away from identifying with the two romantic lead characters, instead taking on the hopeful, matchmaker perspective of Mr. Dingle. As a companion to Mr. Dingle's romantic plots, we remain engaged in the romance through our own implicated involvement. Throughout the film we are the seemingly objective but undeniably implicated outsiders to the romance, hoping for a happy ending, just like Mr. Dingle.

Beyond our basic identification with Mr. Dingle, our emotional investment in the romance is developed through other creative camera perspectives. Like our early view from outside the window while Connie and Mr. Dingle talk in the spare bedroom, much of the action of the film that takes place in the apartment is shot looking through these windows. Cleverly, the windows into the spare bedroom are situated neatly next to the windows into Connie's bedroom. With this privileged view we observe the activities going on in both rooms simultaneously. While Connie and Joe are actually located in separate rooms, they are visually placed in one common space. Our view through these windows even fixes the two separate beds, located in entirely separate bedrooms, side by side. Our love interests are sleeping together visually even before being paired romantically. Combining and then defeating this perspective by coming inside, we see that by the end of the film, Mr. Dingle, as our physical force in the film, has literally removed the wall that separates Connie and Joe, forcing them to finally bed together (in marital bliss, of course). It is with this creative framing that we further become optimistically invested in the romantic pairing of Connie and Joe.

As the viewer, we remain outside the space of action of the film while simultaneously identifying with the "outsider" character, Mr. Dingle. We adopt an optimistic outlook on the scenes and a romantic goal akin to Mr. Dingle's. This "outsiderness" in Stevens' later films will come with much bleaker results, as previously mentioned, while his earlier comedies typically used this "outsiderness" to intentionally collide different personalities in a romantic encounter. The More the Merrier is unusual because the outsider to the romance is the protagonist that we, as the viewer, are aligned with. Likewise, it is as the unpunished, idealistic outsider that we watch the events unfold.

Refuting Richie's theory, Vincent Canby, in his New York Times article, Stevens: What Went Wrong?, argues that Richie overemphasizes Stevens' fondness for filming his outsiders through windows to stress their "outsideness." Canby asserts that almost all modern films posit the protagonist as an outsider. While there may be some validity to Canby's observations on modern protagonists, it has been shown thus far that Stevens' focus on the outsider is not only constant and intentional but are also part of his stylistic approach. Underestimating the role and importance of the outsider in The More the Merrier, or any other Stevens' film, generally underestimates the entire film itself. Without Mr. Dingle, the story may have matched any other typical love story. By adding this oddball outsider, an otherwise unfounded romance is initiated and the viewer's identification remains unusually but effectively posited outside the leading characters.

The "outsiderness" of all the characters is also a general issue in the film. Since the story unfolds in overcrowded Washington, D.C. where everything seems turned upside down by the war, all the characters in the film are inhibited by another level of "outsiderness": that of civilian; as people outside the war. Whereas the forces of the war are rampant through the film's narrative, the character's themselves entirely lack the ability to affect the war in any way. They are outside the war but the war is inside their lives. Connie is driven to open her apartment up to a roommate because of the housing shortage. Mr. Dingle is in town to address the city's housing crisis due to the influx of wartime residents. Joe is brought to Washington on military assignment. Mr. Dingle ends up meeting Connie's fiancé, Mr. Pendergast at a conference to discuss the housing shortage. The scandal that breaks out in the FBI office is a result of false reports of Joe being a Japanese spy while watching Connie and Mr. Pendergast through binoculars from the window. By the end of the story, if Joe is to save Connie's reputation, he has to marry her immediately before being shipped off to Africa for the war.

Despite the characters being located "outside" the battlefields, the war is an irrefutable force in their lives. If Joe and Connie were left up to their own devices they would never have gotten together. Connie wouldn't have had the occasion to meet Joe, the FBI wouldn't have been alarmed by Joe's binocular incident and the urgency of their marriage wouldn't have been mandated. The war becomes a narrative force and works alongside Mr. Dingle to drive the coupling. When Connie and Joe eventually come to admit their love for each other, they end up legitimizing away their feelings. It is the break in of the FBI (as representatives of the war) that forces them down a path that will lead to their marriage.

The effects of war are visible in even smaller ways in the narrative. One of the most humorous scenes in the film comes about when Connie introduces Mr. Dingle to the morning schedule. She explains to him the minute-by-minute plan and diagrams their actions on a map of the apartment. Her plan regiments the use of each room and leaves Mr. Dingle asking "Is this on railroad time or eastern war time?" The wartime situation is also behind the two-year engagement between Connie and Mr. Pendergast as they claim to be waiting for the world situation to become more settled before getting married. It further plays a part in the flood of women interested in Joe, as a single man in a city full of dateless, man-crazy women. Throughout the film, wartime predicaments force Connie and Joe together in unusual ways.

While it is understandable that Stevens would take on such a timely project, the outsiderness that is so prevalent throughout the narrative and through the characters' own civilian relationship to the war projects what many believe were Stevens' own feelings at the time. According to the documentary George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey, it was during the filming of The More the Merrier that Stevens was invited to join the U.S. Army to film the war in Europe. It is further explained that Stevens immediately sped up production on the film in order to facilitate his own quick leave for the war. At the end of The More the Merrier, when Joe is being sent to battle, Stevens' also signifies his own departure. Following the war, he would not return to comedies and the dubious unsettled ending of The More the Merrier seems to signify this unknown future for both himself and his characters.

Despite the timely wartime themes and Stevens' new, evolving vision of "outsiderness," the film continues to employ many of Stevens' characteristic comedic tropes. The acting and filming style is intentionally objective and seemingly unstaged. The interactions between the characters seem commonplace and natural, a typical style in Stevens' works. As mentioned previously, Stevens' also seems to continue to pay tribute to the simpleminded goodness of characters like Mr. Dingle while poking fun at the pomposity of intellectual characters like Mr. Pendergast.

Likewise, Stevens' plays mercilessly with the character's names and identities. There are name switchings, confusion of identities and intentional swappings of formal, common and nicknames throughout the film. Throughout the film, Mr. Dingle refers to Joe Carter as Bill Carter. Joe Carter similarly refers to Dingle as Milligan. Even on the general character level, as spectators we are taught to think of Connie and Joe as "Connie" and "Joe" while on the contrary thinking of Mr. Dingle as "Mr. Dingle" and Mr. Pendergast as "Mr. Pendergast." Even on the most basic narrative level, Stevens plays with names and implies further intentionally constructed emotional investments in them.

Beyond that, forenames are used in place of proper surnames to signify changing relationship dynamics between characters. For example, "Miss Milligan" is engaged to "Mr. Pendergast" while Connie and Joe have their own emotional engagements. When Connie first announces her engagement to Mr. Pendergast, she refers to him as "Mr. Pendergast" which raises curiosity from Mr. Dingle as to why she doesn't refer to him by a less formal name like "Chuck" or "Charlie." During the FBI interrogation scene, this switching between formal and friendly names is most tellingly used. Connie refers to Mr. Pendergast as "Charlie" and even to Mr. Dingle as "Ben," meanwhile masking her true feelings for Joe by calling him "Mr. Carter." While the name swapping might appear casual enough, it actually signifies changes in the characters' relationships. By the time Joe and Connie acknowledge their love for one another, they don't even use their own first names anymore, instead referring to each other as "dear" and "darling."

It is through this name-play that Stevens' deals with the two faces of each character that contribute to their emotional struggles. The romantic lead characters are forced to decide between logic and love. The logical course of Connie's life leads her to a well-regimented and properly scheduled lifestyle, along with a long-term, unemotional engagement to Mr. Pendergast. The irrational circumstances of the war, however, force her to reconsider her plans, leading her to find love with an unplanned guest. Likewise, Joe Carter has spent his life avoiding the commitments of love, shuffling between cities and girlfriends until he finally meets Connie. Even then, it is only a wartime scandal and a forced marriage that prompts him to acknowledge his true emotional attachments. Like Stevens' other films, Woman of the Year and The Talk of the Town in particular, the characters are thrown together and led into a romantic relationship through an unusual set of circumstances. This is a continued and classic use of Stevens's "coincidental love" theme.

Like all of Stevens' romantic comedies, it is the undeniable "truth of love" that eventually must overcome the overly logical demands of modern life. The values Mr. Dingle represents as the idealistic, utopian outsider wages a battle against the rational, repressive values of dominant society. Like any of Stevens' comedy works, this idealistic investment in love is rewarded in the end. To its own benefit, The More the Merrier uses the odd circumstances of civilian wartime life to assist in bringing this inevitable "truth of love" forward. In the end, Connie is rewarded for doing her patriotic duty, Joe finds love when only passing through on military assignment, Mr. Dingle's menacing home-front actions prove to be valuable and needed and all three therefore reinforce and encourage common American, democratic principles.

It is with this continued use of his own comedic filmmaking talents, combined with a conscious focus on the war and an evolving consideration of the outsider as narrative driver that make The More the Merrier a unique film. George Stevens' construction of the visual composition posits the viewer as an optimistic outsider who becomes an implicated matchmaker alongside the romantic outsider, Mr. Dingle. As a historical document, it uses undercurrents of civilian life during World War II as more than a background but as an effective narrative force in itself. And, finally, like many George Stevens' films, it grapples in many ways between the contrasts of love and the conflicts of logic, In the end, all three merge to celebrate the inevitable truth of love at the hand of the romantic outsider.

As James Silke argues in his essay in Cinema magazine, "the early years are marked by increasing professional ability." Being that The More the Merrier was Stevens' final film before joining the war effort, this film proves itself to be the culmination of these early years of light-hearted creativity. Uniquely, it combines his trademark filmmaking style with his emerging postwar themes and serves as an interesting marker in his filmmaking career. His penchant for comedy and his aptitude for filmmaking during the first period of his career were best executed in this comedic finale and foreshadowed the attitudes that would prevail in his later work.